ad
for loot. "That's the superintendent's car coming, ain't it, Murray?"
he cried, looking across the creek at the approaching train.

"What of it?" returned Sinclair.

"Why, we're just loading the team."

The incoming train, an engine with a way car, two flats, and the Bear
Dance derrick, slowed up at one end of the wreck while Sinclair and
his foreman talked. Three men could be seen getting out of the way
car--McCloud and Reed Young, the Scotch roadmaster, and Bill Dancing.
A gang of trackmen filed slowly out after them.

The leaders of the party made their way down the curve, and Sinclair,
with Karg, met them at the point. McCloud asked questions about the
wreck and the chances of getting the track clear, and while they
talked Sinclair sent Karg to get the new derrick into action. Sinclair
then asked McCloud to walk with him up the track to see where the
cars had left the rail. The two men showed in contrast as they stepped
along the ties. McCloud was not alone younger and below Sinclair's
height: his broad Stetson hat flattened him somewhat. His movement was
deliberate beside Sinclair's litheness, and his face, though burned by
sun and wind, was boyish, while Sinclair's was strongly lined.

"Just a moment," suggested McCloud mildly, as Sinclair hastened past
the goods piled in the wagon-road. "Whose team is that, Sinclair?" The
road followed the right of way where they stood, and a four-horse team
of heavy mules was pulling a loaded ranch-wagon up the grade when
McCloud spoke.

Sinclair answered cordially. "That's my team from over on the
Frenchman. I picked them up at Denver. Nice mules, McCloud, ain't
they? Give me mules every time for heavy work. If I had just a hundred
more of 'em the company could have my job--what?"

"Yes. What's that stuff they are hauling?"

"That's a little stuff mashed up in the merchandise car; there's some
tobacco there and a little wine, I guess. The cases are all smashed."

"Let's look at it."

"Oh, there's nothing there that's any good, McCloud."

"Let's look at it."

As Bill Dancing and Young walked behind the two men toward the wagon,
Dancing made extraordinary efforts to wink at the roadmaster. "That's
a good story about the mules coming from Denver, ain't it?" he
muttered. Young, unwilling to commit himself, stopped to light his
pipe. When he and Dancing joined Sinclair and McCloud the talk between
the superintendent and the wrecking boss had become animated.

"I