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smoke rising above the nearer wall of rocks made the

agent set his teeth. Throughout his course the voice of the engine had,
as it were, yapped at his hurrying heels, but now it was silent, and he
could hear a murmur of voices and an occasional shouted order. He
came into sight of the accident, to face a bewildering scene.
Two hundred yards up the track stood the major portion of the train,
intact. Behind it, by itself, lay a Pullman sleeper, on its side and
apparently little harmed. Nearest to Banneker, partly on the rails but
mainly beside them, was jumbled a ridiculous mess of woodwork, with
here and there a gleam of metal, centering on a large and jagged
boulder. Smaller rocks were scattered through the _mélange_. It was
exactly like a heap of giant jack-straws into which some mischievous
spirit had tossed a large pebble. At one end a flame sputtered and
spread cheerfully.
A panting and grimy conductor staggered toward it with a pail of water
from the engine. Banneker accosted him.
"Any one in--"
"Get outa my way!" gasped the official.
"I'm agent at Manzanita."
The conductor set down his pail. "O God!" he said. "Did you bring any
help?"
"No, I'm alone. Any one in there?" He pointed to the flaming debris.
"One that we know of. He's dead."
"Sure?" cried Banneker sharply.
"Look for yourself. Go the other side."
Banneker looked and returned, white and set of face. "How many
others?"
"Seven, so far."

"Is that all?" asked the agent with a sense of relief. It seemed as if no
occupant could have come forth of that ghastly and absurd
rubbish-heap, which had been two luxurious Pullmans, alive.
"There's a dozen that's hurt bad."
"No use watering that mess," said Banneker. "It won't burn much
further. Wind's against it. Anybody left in the other smashed cars?"
"Don't think so."
"Got the names of the dead?"
"Now, how would I have the time!" demanded the conductor
resentfully.
Banneker turned to the far side of the track where the seven bodies lay.
They were not disposed decorously. The faces were uncovered. The
postures were crumpled and grotesque. A forgotten corner of a
battle-field might look like that, the young agent thought, bloody and
disordered and casual.
Nearest him was the body of a woman badly crushed, and, crouching
beside it, a man who fondled one of its hands, weeping quietly. Close
by lay the corpse of a child showing no wound or mark, and next that,
something so mangled that it might have been either man or woman--or
neither. The other victims were humped or sprawled upon the sand in
postures of exaggerated _abandon_; all but one, a blonde young girl
whose upthrust arm seemed to be reaching for something just beyond
her grasp.
A group of the uninjured from the forward cars surrounded and
enclosed a confused sound of moaning and crying. Banneker pushed
briskly through the ring. About twenty wounded lay upon the ground or
were propped against the rock-wall. Over them two women were
expertly working, one tiny and beautiful, with jewels gleaming on her
reddened hands; the other brisk, homely, with a suggestion of the
professional in her precise motions. A broad, fat, white-bearded man

seemed to be informally in charge. At least he was giving directions in
a growling voice as he bent over the sufferers. Banneker went to him.
"Doctor?" he inquired.
The other did not even look up. "Don't bother me," he snapped.
The station-agent pushed his first-aid packet into the old man's hands.
"Good!" grunted the other. "Hold this fellow's head, will you? Hold it
hard."
Banneker's wrists were props of steel as he gripped the tossing head.
The old man took a turn with a bandage and fastened it.
"He'll die, anyway," he said, and lifted his face.
Banneker cackled like a silly girl at full sight of him. The spreading
whisker on the far side of his stern face was gayly pied in blotches of
red and green.
"Going to have hysterics?" demanded the old man, striking not so far
short of the truth.
"No," said the agent, mastering himself. "Hey! you, trainman," he
called to a hobbling, blue-coated fellow. "Bring two buckets of water
from the boiler-tap, hot and clean. Clean, mind you!" The man nodded
and limped away. "Anything else, Doctor?" asked the agent. "Got
towels?"
"Yes. And I'm not a doctor--not for forty years. But I'm the nearest
thing to it in this shambles. Who are you?"
Banneker explained. "I'll be back in five minutes," he said and passed
into the subdued and tremulous crowd.
On the outskirts loitered a lank, idle young man clad beyond the glories
of Messrs. Sears-Roebuck's highest-colored imaginings.

"Hurt?" asked Banneker.
"No," said the youth.
"Can you run three miles?"