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held Old Tom prisoner. He estimated the distance, a deep furrow of concentration drawing his dark brows together.
    Long-neglected engineering elementals werecoming back to him. He groped in his mind, trying to pin down an elusive memory, a memory that dealt with heavy timbers on an incline—timbers that were needed higher up the slope at a time when there was no windlass or hoist available, and insufficient man-power to move them by hand.
    “We got those logs up, though,” he muttered. “Let’s see, now, there was a tree growing on top of the rise. We had—”
    Suddenly he whirled to face the conductor, his eyes blazing with excitement.
    “You got rope in your caboose?” he demanded.
    “Shore,” the railroad man replied, “nigh onto a hundred feet of stout cord in the forward cushion box—chains, too; but what good’ll that do? Can’t pull that sill off with rope.”
    “I’ll show you,” the cowboy barked, and scrambled up the slope.
    “I gotta hustle to the head end and see what happened to the boys there,” the conductor bawled after him. “The rear man’s gone back to flag the Western Flyer. She’ll have telegraph instruments and can cut in on the wire and call the wrecker.”

V
Spanish Windlass
    Huck waved a hand to show he understood, and headed for the caboose at a dead run. He found it sagging crazily to one side, the front wheels off the track and its coupling twisted loose. He leaped up the steps, into the aisle and flung back the cushion seat that was hinged to the box.
    The rope was there, neatly coiled. Huck hauled it out, shouldered it and staggered down the steps. It was a heavy weight and it was rough going through the dark; but he made almost as good time back to the burning wreckage as he had coming from it. He could see the conductor’s lantern bobbing about the dark mass of the avalanche; but Lank Mason still crouched beside Gaylord, coughing and choking in the smoke.
    “Gettin’ hotter’n hell,” he panted as Huck came sliding down the embankment.
    “That powder car’s blazin’ fine, too,” the cowboy grunted. “She’ll go any minute now.”
    With swift, sure hands he looped one end of the rope about the steel sill.
    “Get two strong beams, ten or twelve feet long,” he shouted back at Mason as he clambered up the slope again, trailing the rope.
    To reach the track and secure the free end of therope to the outside rail took only minutes. The rope sagged down the slope with plenty of slack.
    Huck found a spot halfway down the slope where a large flat stone provided secure footing.
    “Bring those beams up here,” he called to Lank.
    The miner panted up with them, mumbling questions which Huck didn’t have time to answer. He handed one to the cowboy, who stood the unsplintered end on the flat rock, thrusting the splintered end through a loop twisted in the slack of the rope.
    “Hold it,” he grunted, took the other timber and thrust one end through the widened loop.
    With Lank holding the upright beam steady, Huck gripped the far end of the horizontal beam and walked around the upright, winding the slack of the rope about the vertical beam. And now he had a crude Spanish windlass capable of exerting a tremendous pull on the sill that penned Old Tom.
    “If the rope’ll hold, we’ll do it,” he told Mason. “You come and take the end of this—the upright will stand by itself now the rope’s taut. Wind her up slow and steady and pull the sill up the slope. I’m going to jerk Tom out soon as the weight’s off him.”
    “If that powder let’s go, you won’t have a chance!” warned Mason. “Let me go down, son.”
    “I’m faster on my feet and stronger,” Huck replied. “You’re better here. All right, steady, now.”
    Swiftly he lunged back into the inferno of smoke and fire. The rope hummed with tension and asHuck crouched beside Old Tom, the heavy steel sill began to slowly move up the sloping timber. As it moved, the lower end of the timber and the