The Johnstown Horror!!! Part 32

Fifteen Years to Recover.

"What do you think will be the time required for the Conemaugh Valley to recover from the shock of the flood?"

"At least fifteen years, and vigilant efforts will be required at that.

I speak now from a financial stand-point. Of course we will never recover fully from the terrible loss of life which is now being revealed in its dreadful entirety."

Survivors in Camp.

There are two camps on the hillside to the north of Johnstown, and they are almost side by side. One is a camp for the living, for the most woebegone and unfortunate of the refugees from the Conemaugh Valley of the shadow of death, and the other is for the dead. The camp of the living is Camp Hastings and the ministering spirits are members of the Americus Republican Club of Pittsburgh. The camp for the dead is the new potters' field that was laid out on Monday for the bodies of unknown victims. The former is populous and stirring, but the latter has more mounds already than the other has living souls. The refugees are widely scattered; some are in the hospital, some are packed as closely as the logs and dead bodies at the stone bridge in the houses yet tenable, and the rest are at Camp Hastings.

In the despairing panic and confusion of Sat.u.r.day the first thought that presented itself to those who were hurried in to give relief was to prepare shelter for the survivors. The camp has been in operation ever since, and will be for days and may be weeks to come.

Gloomy Pictures of Despair.

It looked desolate enough to-day after the soaking downpour of last night, and groups of shivering mothers, with their little ones, stood around a smoky fire at either end of the streets. The members of the Americus Committee, for the time being cooks, waiters, grocery dealers and dry goods men, were in striking contrast to their usual appearance at home. Major W. Coffey, one of the refugees, who was washed seven miles down the Conemaugh, was acting as officer of the guard, and limped up and down on his wooden leg, which had been badly damaged by the flood.

Palefaced women looked out through the flaps of tents on the scene, and the only object that seemed to be taking things easy was a lean, black dog, asleep in front of one of the fires.

In one of the tents a baby was born last night. The mother, whose husband was lost in the flood, was herself rescued by being drawn up on the roof of the Union Schoolhouse. One of the doctors of the Altoona Relief Corps at the Cambria Hospital attended her, and mother and babe are doing better than thousands of the flood sufferers who are elsewhere. There are other babies in Camp Hastings, but none of them receive half of the attention from the people in the camp that is bestowed upon this little tot, whose life began just as so many lives were ended. The baby will probably be named Johnstown Camp O'Connor.

The refugees who are living along the road get their supplies from the camp. They pour into the wretched city of tents in a steady stream, bearing baskets and buckets of food.

He Wanted Tobacco or Nothing.

An old Irishman walked up to the tent early in the day. "Well, what can we do for you?" was asked.

"Have yez any tobaccy?"

"No, tobacco don't go here."

"I want tobaccy or nothin'. This is no relief to a mon at all, at all."

The aged refugee walked away in high dudgeon.

Just down the row from the clothing tent are located two little girls, named Johnson, who lost both father and mother. They had a terrible experience in the flood, and were two of the forty-three people pulled in on the roof of the house of the late General Campbell and his two sons, James and Curt.

"How do you fare?" one of the little girls was asked.

"Oh, very well, sir; only we are afraid of catching the measles," she answered; and with a grimace she tossed her head toward a tent on the other side and further up. A baby in the tent indicated has a slight attack of the measles, but is getting better, and is next door to a tent in which is a young woman shaking with the ague.

A Mult.i.tude to be Fed.

In the houses along the road above the camp are several hundreds of refugees. In one of them are thirty or forty people rendered homeless by the flood. These are all supplied with food from the camp. Some idea of the number of people who have to be fed can be gathered from the fact that 350 pounds of coffee have been given out since yesterday. In the hills back of Cambria there are many hundreds of survivors. Dr. Findley, of the Altoona Relief Corps, went there to-day and found that they were without a physician. One from Baltimore had been there, but had gone away. He found many people needing medical care, and they will be looked after from day to day.

"Wherever we go," said one of the doctors yesterday, "we find that there is an alarming spread of pneumonia." Of the refugees at the Cambria Hospital but two have died.

Bayonets in Control.

The ruined city lies to-night within a girdle of steel--the bayonets of the 14th regiment. The militia has captured Johnstown and to-night over the desolate plain where the city proper stood, through the towering wrecks and by the river pa.s.ses, marches the patrol, crying "Halt" and challenging vagabonds, vandals and ghouls, who cross their path. General Hastings, being the highest officer in rank, is in command, and when the survivors of the flood awake to-morrow morning, when the weary pickets are relieved at sunrise a brigade headquarters will be fully established on the slope of Prospect Hill overlooking the hundreds of white tents of the regiments that will lie down below by the German Catholic Church.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENCAMPMENT OF RELIEF PARTIES.]

First this afternoon arrived Governor Beaver's staff, mostly by way of Harper's Ferry on the Baltimore and Ohio. All the officers in brilliant uniform and trappings reported to General Hastings. They found their commander in a slouch hat, a rough-looking cutaway and rubber boots.

The 14th Regiment, reinforced this morning until it is now 600 strong, is still camped in freight cars beyond the depot, opposite the late city proper. s.p.a.ce is being rapidly cleared for its tents, however, over by the German Catholic Church, and near the ruins of the Irish Catholic Church, which was on fire when the deluge came.

Early this morning the 14th Regiment went into service, but it was a volunteer service of two young officers and three privates when at noon they dragged gently from the rushing Conemaugh the body of a beautiful young girl. She was tenderly borne through the lines by regimental headquarters to the church house morgue, while the sentinels stood aside with their bayonets and the corporal ordered "Halt!" Guards were placed at the Johnstown stations and all the morgues.

Marched out of Camp.

During the day many people of questionable character, indeed all who were challenged and could not satisfactorily explain their business here, had a military escort to the city limits, where they were ordered not to return. Every now and then two of the National Guard could be seen marching along with a rough fellow between them to the post where such beings are made exiles from the scene of desolation. To-night the picket lines stretch from brigade headquarters down Prospect Hill past General Hastings' quarters even to the river. The patrol across the river is keeping sharp vigilance in town. At the eastern end of the Pennsylvania Railroad's stone bridge you must stop and give the countersign. If you don't no man can answer for your safety.

A Lieutenant's Disgrace.

Down the Cambria Road, past which the dead of the River Conemaugh swept into Nineveh in awful numbers, was another scene to-day--that of a young officer of the National Guard in full uniform and a poor deputy sheriff, who had lost home, wife, children and all, clinched like madmen and struggling for the former's revolver. If the officer of the Guard had won, there might have been a tragedy, for he was drunk. The homeless deputy sheriff with his wife and babies swept to death past the place where they struggled was sober and in the right.

The officer of the National Guard came with his regiment into this valley of distress to protect survivors from ruffianism and maintain the peace and dignity of the State. The man with whom he fought for the weapon was Peter Fitzpatrick, almost crazy in his own woe, but singularly cool and self-possessed regarding the safety of those left living.

A Man who had Suffered.

It was one o'clock this afternoon when I noticed on the Cambria road the young officer with his long military coat cut open leaning heavily for support upon two privates of Company G, Hawthorn and Stewart (boys). He was crying in a maudlin way, "You just take me to a place and I'll drink soft stuff." They entreated him to return at once to the regimental quarters, even begged him, but he cast them aside and went staggering down the road to the line, where he met the grave-faced deputy face to face. The latter looked in the white of his eyes and said: "You can't pa.s.s here, sir."

"Can't pa.s.s here?" he cried, waving his arms. "You challenge an officer?

Stand aside!"

"You can't pa.s.s here," this time quietly, but firmly; "not while you're drunk."

"Stand aside," yelled the Lieutenant. "Do you you know who I am? You talk to an officer of the National Guard."

"Yes; and listen," said the man in front of him so impatiently that it hushed his antagonist's tirade; "I talk to an 'officer' of the National Guard--I, who have lost my wife, my children and all in this flood no man has yet described; we, who have seen our dead with their bodies mutilated and their fingers cut from their hands by dirty foreigners for a little gold, are not afraid to talk for what is right, even to an officer of the National Guard."

A Big Man's Honest Rage.

While he spoke another great, dark, stout man, who looked as if he had suffered, came up, and upon taking in the situation every vein in his forehead swelled purple with rage.

"You dirty cur," he cried to the officer; "you dirty, drunken cur, if it was not for the sake of peace I'd lay you out where you stand."

"Come on," yelled the Lieutenant, with an oath.

The big man sent out a terrible blow that would have left the Lieutenant senseless had not one of the privates dashed in between, receiving part of it and warding it off. The Lieutenant got out of his military coat. The privates seized the big man and with another, who ran to the scene, held him back. The Lieutenant put his hand to his pistol pocket, the deputy Fitzpatrick seized him and the struggle for the weapon began. For a moment it was fierce and desperate, then another private came to the deputy's a.s.sistance. The revolver was wrested from the drunken officer and he himself was pushed back panting to the ground.