For the first few yards the a.s.sistant engineer ran almost as well as though on a cinder track. Then his feet sank in. Soon he stumbled.

Then there came a time, within ten feet of Tom, when Harry felt his feet settling in the sand despite his efforts to pull himself out.

In the meantime the haulers on the other line had forgotten to pull the laborer nearer to safety.

"You men get your eyes on the job!" sternly commanded Payson, who seemed capable of having eyes everywhere.

Harry got out, somehow. He made a bound, landing within arm's length of Tom Reade.

"I'm here, old chum!" gasped Hazelton.

"I knew you'd be," returned Tom calmly, "if there were any way of doing it."

Harry pulled himself together and floundered still closer.

Nor was there a moment to be lost. Tom was already reduced to the choice between silence and having his mouth filled with sand.

Harry's hands worked with lightning speed. Feverishly he dug out the sand, until he had scooped away enough to bare Tom's shoulders and a few inches beneath.

Swoop! Down went the extra noose over Tom's lifted arms, and then down to a snug noose under his armpits.

From the platform a cheer went up, for the unconscious laborer had just been hauled to safety.

It was with a thrill of horror that Hazelton found his own legs firmly embedded in the sand well up to his thighs.

"Get Reade started first!" shouted the young a.s.sistant engineer. "Don't bother with me until I give the word."

How the line fastened to Tom tightened and strained! At times it seemed as though it must give way.

Presently Tom's shoulder and a part of his torso were free.

In the meantime Harry Hazelton had sunk in up to the waist line.

"We'll haul on you, too, now, Mr. Hazelton!" sounded the voice of Foreman Payson.

"Don't you dare do it until I give the word," thundered back the voice of the a.s.sistant engineer.

With a line securely about him, Harry felt that he could afford to take the slight chance of waiting his turn.

He saw Tom's knees coming up out of the sand before he called:

"Now, Payson, you can give me a little boost if you like. Don't pull me in ahead of Tom Reade, however."

Presently deafening cheers went up. Both young engineers were being slowly, surely hauled to safe ground.

Then Tom and Harry reached a spot where they could rise to their own feet and floundered. Tom started, then swayed dizzily.

"Steady, there, old Gridley boy!" mumbled Hazelton, slipping an arm around his recovered chum.

Then the two young engineers reached the platform and a fresh tumult of joyful cheering burst forth.

"Payson," exclaimed Harry, going up to the foreman, and holding out his hand, "will you accept my apologies for all I said to you? I had to use strong language, or you'd have held me back from Reade."

"I didn't believe he could be saved," returned the foreman, with a sickly smile, as he grasped Hazelton's outstretched hand.

Tom, too weak at first to stand, had dropped to his knees at the side of the unconscious laborer, over whom some of the bystanders were working in stupid fashion.

"This man must have medical attention at once!" Tom declared. "Some of you men lift him to your shoulders. Be careful not to jolt him, but travel at a jog all the way to the office building. Harry, can you sit on your horse?"

"Surely," said the young a.s.sistant.

"Lucky boy, then," smiled Reade. "I won't be able to sit in saddle for some minutes. Ride into camp and tell the operator to wire swiftly for a physician to come out and attend to that man."

"But you--"

"I'm here, am I not!" smiled Reade.

"I should say you are, Mr. Reade!" came a hoa.r.s.e, friendly roar from one of the laborers.

Hazelton did not delay. He was soon speeding back over the desert.

As for Tom, there were many offers of a.s.sistance, but he explained that all he needed was to keep quiet and have a chance to get his breath back.

Payson, in the meantime, had started the work going again, though most of his men toiled with far less spirit than before the accident.

Ten minutes later Tom mounted his horse and rode slowly back toward camp. By the time he reached there he made out the automobile of a Paloma physician coming in haste.

Tom was still weak enough to tremble as Harry stepped outside and helped him to the ground.

"Harry," Reade remarked dryly, "I'm not going to bother to thank you for such a simple little thing as saving my life out yonder. I am well aware that you had the time of your life in doing it."

"I might have had the time of my life," returned Harry, with an imitation of his chum's calmness, "if there had been more excitement about it. It was all rather dull, wasn't it, old chap?"

Smiling, both stepped inside. Then Tom's face became grave when he saw that the rescued laborer had not yet recovered consciousness.

"Somewhere in the world," murmured Reade, as he dropped to one knee and rested a finger-tip on the laborer's pulse, "there's someone--a woman, or a child, or a white-haired old man--who wouldn't wish us to let this man die. What have you men been doing for him?"

Before the answer could be given a honk sounded at the door. Then a young doctor clad in white duck and carrying a three-fold medicine case, stepped inside.

"Sucked down by the sand and hauled out again, Doc," Tom explained.

The physician looked closely at his patient and Harry drove out the men who had no especial business there.

"A little pin-head of glonoin on his tongue for a beginning," decided the physician, opening his case. From one of the vials he took a small pellet, forcing it between the lips of the unconscious man. Then, with his stethoscope, he listened for the heart beats.

"Another glonoin, and then we'll start in to wake up our friend," said the young doctor in white duck, after a pause.

Two or three minutes later the laborer opened his eyes.