slowed at small towns where street lights twinkled sleepily, but at last the hum of the wheels lulled her to sleep.

Then suddenly, several hours before dawn, there came a terrific crash and jolt. Nancy caught wildly at the clothes hammock to keep from being hurled into the aisle, as the Pullman crashed to a stop and toppled slightly to the right. Screams and moans were heard above the grinding noises.

Nancy clung to the hammock a moment, too stunned to move. She expected the tilting coach to crash to earth any moment. Lights had vanished beyond the cracks of her curtain. With shaking hands she found her flashlight in the zipper bag left at the foot of her berth. She opened the curtain and turned the light up and down the aisle. Several who hadn’t been thrown from their berths were climbing out, wanting to know what had happened. Groans, curses and cries only added to the confusion.

Then with the speed of a fireman preparing to answer a call to duty, Nancy put on her clothes. Some sure instinct warned her that in a few minutes there would be no time to think of herself. At last her long legs swung down from the berth. Her flashlight showed some people still lying where they had fallen in the aisle. Some actually climbed over them in their frantic haste to get out of the leaning Pullman.

She turned her light on the nearest injured person. It was a gray-haired lady, moaning that her arm was broken. A big man, clad only in his undershirt and army trousers, emerged from his berth.

“Here, give me a hand,” ordered Nancy. “This lady has a broken arm.”

The soldier, who was of powerful build, braced himself against the berth on the lower side, and lifted the stunned old lady to his shoulder. Nancy held her flashlight so he could see as they made their way toward the exit. She snatched a sheet to use for bandages from one of the berths as she went.

On reaching the platform they found the Pullman was leaning precariously against a clay cut on one side, while the steps on the other were high in air. Flares had already been lighted beside the track, and eager hands reached up to help with the injured woman. Nancy never remembered how she got down herself. Her one idea was to help the little old lady whose wavy gray hair was so like her own mother’s.

“Do you have a pocket knife?” she asked the service man as he was stretching the woman on the ground.

He dug in his trouser pocket and produced one.

“Cut me a splint off some bush or tree,” she ordered. “I’ll have to protect this broken arm till it can be X-rayed and properly set.”

She took off her coat to cushion the gray head. While she waited for the splint she saw that injured people were being brought from the three rear coaches. Just beyond the clay bank which had saved their car from greater damage, she saw that several coaches had overturned and telescoped into a horrible mass of wreckage.

The soldier came back promptly with a good splint from which he was deftly peeling the bark. To Nancy’s surprise he knelt on the ground, and in the light of her flash began to manipulate the broken bone into position. One glance at those skillful fingers and Nancy exclaimed, “Oh, you’re a doctor!”

“Yes,” was all he said as he proceeded to the business of the moment.

“Thank God,” she said earnestly, and began to tear the sheet into bandages.

As she had done numberless times before in the emergency room, Nancy helped bind up the broken arm.

“I see you’ve at least had first aid,” he said as they worked.

“I’m a nurse,” she retorted as tersely as he had informed her he was a doctor.

“There’ll be plenty for us to do tonight,” he told her.

When the arm was set, he lifted the frail woman and carried her out of the cut.

“Wait here with her,” the doctor ordered. “I’ll go back for my bag. She should have a hypo. You can help.”

Someone had placed some boxes for steps at the rear entrance to the coach and he returned that way. They were still hauling people out and stretching them beside the end coach, which by some miracle had not overturned. To Nancy’s surprise she recognized the ANC captain she had noticed on the train yesterday afternoon. She was trying to stop the bleeding in a leg wound of a man next to Nancy’s old lady.

“Please, someone try to find a doctor,” she said to no one in particular.

“One was here just now,” Nancy told her. “He’ll be back in a moment. He went for his bag.”

Nancy bent to help the captain make a tourniquet below the injured man’s knee. She had just secured the knot with a stick when she saw the doctor returning. The ANC captain straightened and saluted.

“This man will have to have some stitches, Major,” she said.

“I’ll look after him.”

To Nancy’s consternation she saw that the soldier she had just been ordering around, had put on his coat. His gold leaf indicated him a major, and the caduceus that he was a member of the medical corps. She felt terribly embarrassed at her mistake.

He seemed to think nothing of it, however, for he explained to the captain, “I’ll keep this young lady to help me. She says she’s a nurse.”

“Then I’ll go look after some of the others,” said the captain, alertly.

Major Reed was stooping to give attention to the injured man, and asked as he did so, “Where did you graduate?”

“Stanford Hospital. I’m Nancy Dale. I just joined the Army Nurse Corps and am on my way for basic training.”

This explanation seemed quite satisfactory to the major. He set his bag on the ground and pulled the zipper. “Give the lady there a hypo. We’ll need one here, too. Tell Captain Lewis to get what she needs from my bag.”

Until the sun rose over the red clay hills Nancy worked beside Major Reed, setting bones, sewing up cuts and giving sedatives to the hysterical. Several automobiles had gathered and focused their headlights upon the scene. Though Nancy had never faced such an emergency, she did not lose her head, nor did her hands shake as she worked to relieve the injured.

Only once did she feel an inward tremor and that was when she thought of how she had ordered Major Reed around. But there was no time to dwell on that in the busy hours before the arrival of nurses, doctors and ambulances from the nearest town.

“Someone to relieve us at last,” said Captain Mary Lewis, who now looked as weary as Nancy felt.

“I phoned the camp for a car to be sent for us,” Major Reed told them. “There’ll be plenty of room for the three of us and our baggage.”

Nancy glanced from one officer to the other in astonishment. “Oh, are we really within driving distance of the camp?”

“Only about fifty miles,” replied Major Reed.

“And you’re both going there?”

Captain Lewis nodded and smiled. “I’ve been on a tour of inspection, and Major Reed has been assigned work there.”