sheets.

For a grisly instant Banneker thought of the one mangled
monstrosity--_that_ to have been so lately loveliness and charm, with
deep fire in its eyes and perhaps deep tenderness and passion in its
heart. He dismissed the thought as being against the evidence and
entered the initials in his booklet.

"I'll look out for her," said he. "Probably she's forward somewhere."

Without respite he toiled until a long whistle gave notice of the return
of the locomotive which had gone forward to meet the delayed special
from Stanwood. Human beings were clinging about it in little clusters
like bees; physicians, nurses, officials, and hospital attendants. The
dispatcher from Stanwood listened to Banneker's brief report, and sent
him back to Manzanita, with a curt word of approval for his work.

Banneker's last sight of the wreck, as he paused at the curve, was the
helpful young man perched on the rear heap of wreckage which had been
the observation car, peering anxiously into its depths ("Looking for I.
O. W. probably," surmised the agent), and two commercial gentlemen from
the smoker whiling away a commercially unproductive hiatus by playing
pinochle on a suitcase held across their knees. Glancing at the vast,
swollen, blue-black billows rolling up the sky, Banneker guessed that
their game would be shortly interrupted.

He hoped that the dead would not get wet.