He
instructed the messenger where to find a substitute telegrapher.
"Answer?" asked the youth, unfurling his long legs.
"No," returned Banneker, and the courier, tossing his coat off, took the
road.
Banneker turned back to the improvised hospital.
"I'm going to move these people into the cars," he said to the man in
charge. "The berths are being made up now."
The other nodded. Banneker gathered helpers and superintended the
transfer. One of the passengers, an elderly lady who had shown no sign
of grave injury, died smiling courageously as they were lifting her.
It gave Banneker a momentary shock of helpless responsibility. Why
should she have been the one to die? Only five minutes before she had
spoken to him in self-possessed, even tones, saying that her
traveling-bag contained camphor, ammonia, and iodine if he needed them.
She had seemed a reliable, helpful kind of lady, and now she was dead.
It struck Banneker as improbable and, in a queer sense, discriminatory.
Remembering the slight, ready smile with which she had addressed him, he
felt as if he had suffered a personal loss; he would have liked to stay
and work over her, trying to discover if there might not be some spark
of life remaining, to be cherished back into flame, but the burly old
man's decisive "Gone," settled that.
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