Aladdin and Company Part 33

"Al," said Jim slowly, "can you fire an engine?"

"I guess so," said I, seeing his meaning dimly. "Why?"

"Al," said he, as if stating the conclusion of a complicated calculation, "we must run this train in alone!"

I saw his intent fully, and knew why he walked so resolutely up to the engine, now backed down to take us on again. Schwartz leaned out of his cab, a man of snow and ice. Ole stood with his shovel in his hand white and icy like his brother worker. Both had been drenched, as we had; but they had had no red-hot stove by which to sit; and buffeted by the blizzard and powdered by the snow, they had endured the benumbing cold of the hurricane-swept cab.

"Get down here, boys," said Jim. "I want to talk with you."

Ole leaped lightly down, followed by Schwartz, who hobbled laboriously, stiffened with cold. Youth and violent labor had kept the fireman warm.

"Schwartz," said Jim, "there is a chance that we'll find the trestle weakened and dangerous. We'll stop and examine it if we have time, but if it is as close a thing as I think it will be, we propose to make a run for it and take chances. Barslow and I are the ones, and the only ones, who ought to do this, because we must make this connection. We can run the engine. You and Ole and Corcoran stay here. Mr. Kittrick will be along with another train in a few hours. Uncouple the caboose and we'll run on."

Schwartz blew his nose with great deliberation.

"Ole," said he, "what d'ye think of the old man's scheme?"

"Ay tank," said Ole, "dat bane h.e.l.lufa notion!"

"Come," said Mr. Elkins, "we're losing time! Uncouple at once!"

We started to mount the engine; but Schwartz and Ole were before us, barring the way.

"Wait," said Schwartz. "Jest look at it, now. It's quite a run yet; and the chances are you'd have the cylinder-heads knocked out before you'd got half way; and then where'd you be with your connections?"

"Do you mean to say," said Jim, "that there's any likelihood of the engine's dying on us between here and the Junction?"

"It's a cinch!" said Schwartz.

"For G.o.d's sake, then, let's get on!" said Jim. "I believe you're lying to me, Schwartz. But do this: As you come to the trestle, stop. From the approach we can see down the other track for ten miles. If Pendleton's train is far enough off so as to give us time, we'll see how the bridge is before we cross. If we're pressed for time too much for this, promise me that you'll stop and let us run the engine across alone."

"I'll think about it," said Schwartz; "and if I conclude to, I will.

It's got to clear up, if we can see even the headlight on the other road very far. Ready, Jack?"

We wrung their hard and icy hands, leaped upon the train, and were away again, spinning down the grade toward the Elk Fork, and comforted by our speed. Jim and I climbed into the cupola and watched the track ahead, and the two homely heroes in the cab, as the light from the furnace blazed out upon them from time to time. Now we could see Schwartz stoking, to warm himself; now we could see him looking at his watch and peering anxiously out before him.

It was wearing on toward nine, and still our goal was miles away.

Overhead the sky was clearing, and we could see the stars; but down on the ground the light, new snow still glided whitely along before the lessening wind. Once or twice we saw, or thought we saw, far ahead, lights, like those of a little prairie town. Was it the Junction? Yes, said Corcoran, when we called him to look; and now we saw that we were rising on the long approach to the trestle.

Would Schwartz stop, or would he run desperately across, as he had dashed through the flood? That was with him. His hand was on the lever, and we were helpless; but, if there was time, it would be mere foolhardiness to go upon the trestle at any but the slowest speed, and without giving all but one an opportunity to walk across. One, surely, was enough to go down with the engine, if it, indeed, went down.

"Don't stay up there," shouted Corcoran, "go out on the steps so you can jump for it if you have to!"

Out upon the platform we went in the biting wind, which still came fiercely on, sweeping over the waste of waters which covered the fields like a great lake. There was no sign of slowing down: right on, as if the road were rock-ballasted, and thrice secure, the engine drove toward the trestle.

"She's there, anyhow, I b'lieve," said Corcoran, swinging out and looking ahead; "but I wouldn't bet on how solid she is!"

"Can't you stop him?" said Jim.

"Stop nothing!" said Corcoran. "Look over there!"

We looked, and saw a light gleaming mistily, but distinct and unmistakable, across the water on the other track. It was the Pendleton special! Not much further from the station than were we, the train of moving palaces to which we were fighting our way was gliding to the point beyond which it must not pa.s.s without us. There was now no more thought of stopping; rather our desires yearned forward over the course, agonizing for greater speed. I did not see that we were actually upon the trestle until for some rods we had been running with the inky water only a few feet below us; but when I saw it my hopes leaped up, as I calculated the proportion of the peril which was pa.s.sed. A moment more, and the solid approach would be under our spinning wheels.

But the moment more was not to be given us! For, even as this joy rose in my breast, I felt a shock; I heard a confused sound of men's cries, and the shattering of timbers; the caboose whirled over cornerwise, throwing up into the air the step on which I stood; the sounds of the train went out in sudden silence as engine and car plunged off into the stream; and I felt the cold water close over me as I fell into the rushing flood. I arose and struck out for the sh.o.r.e; then I thought of Jim. A few feet above me in the stream I saw something like a hand or foot flung up out of the water, and sucked down again. I turned as well as I could toward the spot, and collided with some object under the surface. I caught at it, felt the skirt of a garment in my hand, and knew it for a man. Then, I remember helping myself with a plank from some washed-out bridge, and soon felt the ground under my feet, all the time clinging to my man. I tried to lift him out, but could not; and I locked my hands under his arm-pits and, slowly stepping backwards, I half carried, half dragged him, seeking a place where I could lay him down. I saw the dark line of the railroad grade, and made wearily toward it. I walked blindly into the water of the ditch beside the track, and had scarcely strength to pull myself and my burden out upon the bank.

Then I stopped and peered into his face, and saw uncertainly that it was Jim--with a dark spot in the edge of the hair on his forehead, from which black streaks kept stealing down as I wiped them off; and with one arm which twisted unnaturally, and with a grating sound as I moved it; and from whom there came no other sound or movement whatever.

And over across the stream gleamed the lights of the Pendleton special as it sped away toward Chicago.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The End--and a Beginning.

As to our desperate run from Lattimore to the place where it came to an end in a junk-heap which had been once an engine, a car reduced to matchwood, a broken trestle, and a chaos of crushed hopes, and of the return to our homes thereafter, no further details need be set forth.

The papers in Lattimore were filled with the story for a day or two, and I believe there were columns about it in the a.s.sociated Press reports. I doubt not that Mr. Pendleton and Mr. Cornish each read it in the morning papers, and that the latter explained it to the former in Chicago. From these reports the future biographer may glean, if he happens to come into being and to care about it, certain interesting facts about the people of this history. He will learn that Mr. Barslow, having (with truly Horatian swimming powers) rescued President Elkins from a watery grave, waited with his unconscious derelict in great danger from freezing, until they were both rescued a second time by a crew of hand-car men who were near the trestle on special work connected with the flood and its ravages. That President Elkins was terribly injured, having sustained a broken arm and a dangerous wound in the forehead.

Moreover, he was threatened with pneumonia from his exposure. Should this disease really fasten itself upon him, his condition would be very critical indeed. That Mr. Barslow, the hero of the occasion, was uninjured. And I am ashamed to say that such student of history will find in an inconspicuous part of the same news-story, as if by reason of its lack of importance, the statement that O. Hegvold, fireman, and J.

J. Corcoran, conductor of the wrecked train, escaped with slight injuries. And that Julius Schwartz, the engineer, living at 2714 May Street, and the oldest engineer on the L. & G. W., being benumbed by the cold, sank like a stone and was drowned. Poor Schwartz! Magnificent Schwartz! No captain ever went down, refusing to leave the bridge of his sinking ship, with more heroism than he; who, clad in greasy overalls, and sapped of his strength by the icy hurricane, finding his homely duty inextricably entangled with death, calmly took them both, and went his way.

This mine for the historian will also disclose to him the fact that the rescued crew and pa.s.sengers were brought home by a relief-train in charge of General Manager Kittrick, and that Mr. Elkins was taken directly to the home of Mr. Barslow, where he at once became subject to the jurisdiction of physicians and nurses and "could not be seen." But as to the reasons for the insane dash in the dark the historian will look in vain. I am disposed now to think that our motives were entirely creditable; but for them we got no credit.

Much less than a nine days' wonder, however, was this tragedy of the Elk Fork trestle, for other sensations came tumbling in an army upon its very heels. Times of war, great public calamities, and panic are the harvest seasons of the newspapers; and these were great days for the newspapers in Lattimore. Not that they learned or printed all the news.

I received a telegram, for instance, the day after the accident, which merely entered up judgment on the verdict of the day before. It was a message from Mr. Pendleton in Chicago.

"In matter of Lattimore & Great Western," this telegram read, "directors refuse to ratify contract. This sent to save you trip to Chicago."

"No news in that," said I to Mr. Hinckley; "I wonder that he bothered to send it."

But, in the era of slug heads which set in about three days after, and while Jim was still helpless up at my house, it would have received recognition as news--although they did very well without it.

"Great Failure!" said the _Times_. "Grain Belt Trust Company Goes to the Wall! Business Circles Convulsed! Receiver Appointed at Suit of Charles Harper of Chicago! Followed by a.s.signment of Hinckley & Macdonald, Bankers! Western Portland Cement Company a.s.signs! Atlas Power Company Follows Suit! Reason, Money Tied up in Banks and Trust Company. Where will it Stop? A Veritable Black Friday!"

Thus the headlines. In the news report itself the _Times_ remarked upon the intimate connection of Mr. Elkins and myself with all the failed concerns. The firm of Elkins & Barslow, being primarily a real-estate and insurance agency, would not a.s.sign. As to the condition of the business of James R. Elkins & Company, whose operations in bonds and debentures had been enormous, nothing could be learned on account of the critical illness of Mr. Elkins.

"It is not thought," said the _Herald_, "that the failures will carry down any other concerns. The run on the First National Bank was one of those panicky symptoms which are dangerous because so unreasoning. It is to be hoped that it will not be renewed in the morning. The banks are not involved in the operations of the Grain Belt Trust Company, the failure of which, it must be admitted, is sure to cause serious disturbances, both locally and elsewhere, wherever its wide-spread operations have extended."

The physical system adjusts itself to any permanent lesion in the body, and finally ceases even to send out its complaining messages of pain. So we in Lattimore, who a few weeks ago had been ready to sacrifice anything for the keeping of our good name; who by stealth justly foreclosed mortgages justly due, lest the world should wonder at their nonpayment; who so greatly had rejoiced in our own strength; who had felt that, surely, we who had wrought such wonders could not now fail:--even we numbly came to regard receiverships and a.s.signments as quite the thing to be expected. The fact that, all over the country, panic, ruin, and business stagnation were spreading like a pestilence, from just such centers of contagion as Lattimore, made it easier for us. Surely, we felt, n.o.body could justly blame us for being in the path of a tempest which, like a tropic cyclone, ravaged a continent.

This may have been weak self-justification; but, even yet, when I think of the way we began, and how the wave of "prosperity" rose and rose, by acts in themselves, so far as we could see, in every way praiseworthy; how with us, and with people engaged in like operations everywhere, the most powerful pa.s.sions of society came to aid our projects; how the winds from the unknown, the seismic throbbings of the earth, and the very stars in their courses fought for us; and when, at last, these mightinesses turned upon us the cold and evil eye of their displeasure, how the heaped-up sea came pouring over here, trickling through there, and seeping under yonder, until our great dike toppled over in baleful tumult, "and all the world was in the sea"; how business, east, west, north, and south, went paralyzed with fear and distrust, and old concerns went out like strings of soap-bubbles, and shocks of pain and disease went round the world, and everywhere there was that h.e.l.lish and portentous thing known to the modern world only, and called a "commercial panic": when I broadly consider these things, I am not vain enough seriously to blame myself.

These thoughts are more than ever in my mind to-day, as I look back over the decade of years which have elapsed since our Waterloo at the Elk Fork trestle. I look out from the same library in which I once felt a sense of guilt at the expense of building it, and see the solid and prosperous town, almost as populous as we once saw it in our dreams. I am regarded locally as one of the creators of the city; but I know that this praise is as unmerited as was that blame of a dozen years ago. We rode on the crest of a wave, and we weltered in the trough of the sea; but we only seemed to create or control. I hold in my hand a letter from Jim, received yesterday, and eloquent of the changes which have taken place.

"I am sorry," says he, "to be unable to come to your business men's banquet. The building of a great auditorium in Lattimore is proof that we weren't so insane, after all. I suppose that the ebb and flow of the tide of progress, which yearly gains upon the sh.o.r.e, is inevitable, as things are hooked up; but, after the ebb, it's comforting to see your old predictions as to gain coming true, even if you do find yourself in the discard. It would be worth the trip only to see Captain Tolliver, and to hear him eliminate the _r_'s from his mother tongue. Give the dear old secesh my dearest love!

"But I can't come, Al. I must be in Washington at that time on business of the greatest (presumptive) importance to the cattle interests of the buffalo-gra.s.s country. I could change my own dates; but my wife has arranged a tryst for a day certain with some specialists in her line in New York. She's quite the queen of the cattle range--in New York: and, to be dead truthful, she comes pretty near it out here. It is rumored that even the sheepmen speak well of her.

"These Eastern trips are great things for her and the children. I'm riding the range so constantly, and get so much fun out of it, that I feel sort of undressed and embarra.s.sed out of the saddle. In Washington I'm pointed out as a typical cowboy, the descendant of a Spanish vaquero and a trapper's daughter. This helps me to represent my const.i.tuents in the sessions of the Third House, and to get Congressional attention to the ax I want ground. I am looked upon as in line for the presidency of the Amalgamated a.s.sociation of American Ax-grinders.