-eyed trainmen--lounged on the tables and in chairs discussing the
reports from Point of Rocks, and among them crew-callers and
messengers moved in and out. From the door of the big operators' room,
pushed at intervals abruptly open, burst a blaze of light and the
current crash of many keys; within, behind glass screens, alert,
smooth-faced boys in shirt sleeves rained calls over the wires or bent
with flying pens above clips, taking incoming messages. At one end of
the room, heedless of the strain on the division, press despatches and
cablegrams clicked in monotonous relay over commercial wires; while at
the other, operators were taking from the despatchers' room the train
orders and the hurried dispositions made for the wreck emergency by
Anderson, the assistant superintendent. At a table in the alcove the
chief operator was trying to reach the division superintendent,
McCloud, at Sleepy Cat; at his elbow, his best man was ringing the
insistent calls of the despatcher and clearing the line for Sinclair
and the wrecking gang. Two minutes after the wrecking train reported
ready they had their orders and were pulling out of the upper yard,
with right of way over everything to Point of Rocks.

The wreck had occurred just west of the creek. A fast east-bound
freight train, double-headed, had left the track on the long curve
around the hill, and when the wrecking train backed through Ten Shed
Cut the sun streamed over the heaps of jammed and twisted cars strung
all the way from the point of the curve to the foot of Smoky Hill. The
crew of the train that lay in the ditch walked slowly up the track to
where the wreckers had pulled up, and the freight conductor asked for
Sinclair. Men rigging the derrick pointed to the hind car. The
conductor, swinging up the caboose steps, made his way inside among
the men that were passing out tools. The air within was bluish-thick
with tobacco smoke, but through the haze the freightman saw facing
him, in the far corner of the den-like interior, a man seated behind
an old dining-car table, finishing his breakfast; one glimpse was
enough to identify the dark beard of Sinclair, foreman of the bridges
and boss of the wrecking gang.

Beside him stood a steaming coffee-tank, and in his right hand he held
an enormous tin cup that he was about to raise to his mouth when he
saw the freight conductor. With a laugh, Sinclair threw up his left
hand and beckoned him over. Then he shook his hair just a