"Payson, I'll discharge you, if you interfere with me!" stormed
Hazelton.

"Don't be a fool, sir. You can't help Mr. Reade. Be cool, sir. Keep
your head and direct us like a man of sense."

"Be a man of sense, and see my chum going under the sands of the Man-
killer?" flared Hazelton.

He made a bound, doubling his fists threateningly. Then three or four
men, at a sign from Payson, seized the young assistant engineer and
threw him to the ground.

"Tom," called Harry, "order these fools to let me go."

Reade, however, who had just pulled in all the slack of the rawhide
lariat, and had made it fast about his own left arm, seemed wholly
unaware of his own great peril.

Tom Reade was now submerged to his waistline in the engulfing sand.

Unless rescued within five minutes the young chief engineer was plainly
doomed to be swallowed up in the treacherous sands of the Man-killer.
Only a few seconds below the shifting level of the sand would be enough
to smother the life out of him. Scores of strong men, powerless to
help, watched hopelessly within a few yards of the two whose lives were
being slowly but surely snuffed out.

The laborer, whose carelessness or ignorance had caused all the trouble,
was now in the sand up to his mouth. The agonized watchers could see