Success | Page 5

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?"
"I fancy so."
"Will you take an urgent message to be wired from Manzanita?"
"Certainly," said the youth with good-will.
Tearing a leaf from his pocket-ledger, Banneker scribbled a dispatch which is still preserved in the road's archives as giving more vital information in fewer words than any other railroad document extant. 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