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 he