the desert.

"Oh," said Banneker. "You've been interviewing a cactus owl."

"Did he unwind his neck carefully and privately after I had gone?"

"No," returned Banneker gravely. "He just jumped in the air and his body
spun around until it got back to its original relation."

"How truly fascinating! Have you seen him do it?"

"Not actually seen. But often in the evenings I've heard them buzzing as
they unspin the day's wind-up. During the day, you see, they make as
many as ten or fifteen revolutions until their eyes bung out. Reversing
makes them very dizzy, and if you are around when they're doing it, you
can often pick them up off the sand."

"And doesn't it ever make _you_ dizzy? All this local lore, I mean, that
you carry around in your head?"

"It isn't much of a strain to a practiced intellect," he deprecated. "If
you're interested in natural history, there's the Side-hill Wampus--"

"Yes; I know. I've been West before, thank you! Pardon my curiosity, but
are all you creatures of the desert queer and inexplicable?"

"Not me," he returned promptly if ungrammatically, "if you're looking in
my direction."

"I'll admit that I find you as interesting as the owl--almost. And quite
as hard to understand."

"Nobody ever called me queer; not to my face."

"But you are, you know. You oughtn't to be here at all."

"Where ought I to be?"

"How can I answer that riddle without knowing where you have been? Are
you Ulysses--"

"'Knowing cities and the hearts of men,'" he answered, quick to catch
the reference. "No; not the cities, certainly, and very little of the
men."

"There, you see!" she exclaimed plaintively. "You're up on a classical
reference like a college man. No; not like the college men I know,
either. They are too immersed in their football and rowing and too
afraid to be thought high-brow, to confess to knowing anything about
Ulysses. What was your college?"

"This," he said, sweeping a hand around the curve of the horizon.

"And in any one else," she retorted, "that would be priggish as well as
disingenuous."

"I suppose I know what you mean. Out here, when a man doesn't explain
himself, they think it's for some good reason of his own, or bad reason,
more likely. In either case, they don't ask questions."

"I really beg your pardon, Mr. Banneker!"

"No; that isn't what I meant at all. If you're interested, I'd like to
have you know about me. It isn't much, though."

"You'll think me pryin