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.