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wreckage to which it was bolted raised slightly, easing the pressure on Gaylord’s chest.
    The old man opened his eyes, coughed, shuddered, stared dazedly about him. His glance centered on the cowboy crouched beside him, shielding him with his own body from the withering heat of the fire which crept nearer and nearer. Understanding brightened his pain-glazed eyes.
    “Get out, son,” he croaked. “Get out and leave me—it ain’t no use—that powder’s due to let go—get out and save yoreself while you can.”
    Huck Brannon, his hair crisping and the clothes on his back smoking from the heat, grinned painfully.
    “Go to hell, you old loafer,” he gasped. “Who’s doin’ this, anyhow?”
    With a moan, Old Tom fainted again. Huck crouched lower, hands ready to grip the beam the instant the sill lifted.
    He could hear Lank Mason grunting and cursing above the roar of the flames. A distant shout sounded as the conductor came stumbling back up the track. With a crash a whole side of the powder car fell away. Huck could see the squat containers and the tongues of fire reaching toward them. Stinging sparks showered his uncovered head. The smoke rolled about him in hot, choking clouds.
    He blinked his streaming eyes and strained ears that were now beginning to ring queerly. He couldno longer see the moving sill and pitched his hearing to the crunching that would denote its passage from the beam to the rubble of the embankment.
    Through a haze of pain he heard it, felt the sudden upward spring of the beam. He gripped the rough wood with blistered hands, felt the seared skin sluff off in a mist of white agony. With every atom of his sinewy strength he heaved at the beam, lifting till his sinews cracked and his swelling muscles threatened to crush his bones.
    The beam creaked, groaned, resisted stubbornly, then gave with a rush. Huck hurled it aside, stooped over Old Tom Gaylord and lifted his limp body. He could hear Lank shouting anxiously. From the tracks above came the conductor’s warning bellow. Huck reeled about and staggered painfully up the embankment.
    “Hightail, you fellers!” he shouted hoarsely, “she’s gonna let go! Hightail, you can’t help me—you’ll jest get in my way!”
    Cursing insanely, they obeyed him. Lank topped the rise and pounded after the conductor. Flaming timbers fell full upon the powder containers as the end of the car gave way. The fire roared its triumph. Miles above him, dancing in a welter of smoke and agony, Huck could make out the lip of the embankment and the shining rails.
    He strained toward it, reeling drunkenly, the slight body of Old Tom Gaylord an increasing weight with every wavering step. He slipped, fell to one knee and flung out a hand that touched the cold steel of the outer rail. He gripped the iron,drew himself over the lip, reeled erect and lurched down the track. A dozen frenzied strides, a score, twice a score—
    Behind him there was a mighty fluff of bluish smoke, a red blaze that paled the shrinking stars, a roar like the rending of creations. The mighty concussion flung the cowboy and the man he carried as by the thrust of a giant hand. He reeled, scrambled, tried to keep his balance, and plunged headlong. Dazzling white light blazed before his eyes as he struck the rough ties, then wave on wave of pain-streaked blackness hurled him into bottomless depths of chilling cold.
    Huck Brannon awoke with his aching head on a pillow and his pain-racked body in a comfortable bunk. To his ears came a clanging and crashing and hissing interspersed by a metallic chattering and the shouts of men.
    For a moment he lay staring up at a low, boarded ceiling. He sniffed the smell of boiling coffee and food cooking and realized that in spite of the pain that racked him, he was terrifically hungry. With a vast effort he turned his head—and looked straight into the face of an impressive-looking man he couldn’t remember ever having seen, who gazed down at him from a pair of