a wreck Sinclair
was a marvel among mountain men. He was tall but not stout, with
flashing brown eyes and a strength always equal to that of the best
man in his crew. But his inspiration lay in destruction, and the more
complete the better. There were no futile moves under Sinclair's quick
eyes, no useless pulling and hauling, no false grappling; but like a
raven at a feast, every time his derrick-beak plucked at the wreck he
brought something worth while away. Whether he was righting a tender,
rerailing an engine, tearing out a car-body, or swinging a set of
trucks into the clear, Sinclair, men said, had luck, and no confusion
in day or night was great enough to drown his heavy tones or blur his
rapid thinking.

Just below where the wrecking boss stood lay the tramp. The sun
scorched his drawn face, but he made no effort to turn from it.
Sometimes he opened his eyes, but Sinclair was not a promising source
of help, and no one that might have helped dared venture within
speaking distance of the injured man. When the heat and the pain at
last extorted a groan and an appeal, Sinclair turned. "Damn you, ain't
you dead yet? What? Water?" He pointed to a butt standing in the shade
of a car that had been thrown out near the switch. "There's water; go
get it!" The cracking of a box car as the derrick wrenched it from the
wreck was engaging the attention of the boss, and as he saw the
grapple slip he yelled to his men and pointed to the chains.

The tramp lay still a long time. At last he began to drag himself
toward the butt. In the glare of the sun timbers strained and snapped,
and men with bars and axes chopped and wrenched at the massive frames
and twisted iron on the track. The wrecking gang moved like ants in
and out of the shapeless debris, and at intervals, as the sun rose
higher, the tramp dragged himself nearer the butt. He lay on the
burning sand like a crippled insect, crawling, and waiting for
strength to crawl. To him there was no railroad and no wreck, but only
the blinding sun, the hot sand, the torture of thirst, and somewhere
water, if he could reach it.

The freight conductor, Stevens, afraid of no man, had come up to
speak to Sinclair, and Sinclair, with a smile, laid a cordial hand
on his shoulder. "Stevens, it's all right. I'll get you out of this.
Come here." He led the conductor down the track where they had walked
in the morning. He pointed to flange-marks on the ties. "See
there--there's where the