Aladdin & Co.: A Romance of Yankee Magic
keeping with the fearful and unprecedented exigency now upon us, we
moved out through the yards, jolting over the frogs, out upon the main
line; and soon began to feel a cheering acceleration in the recurrent
sounds and shocks of our flight, as Schwartz began rolling back the
miles under his flying wheels.
We sat in silence on the oil-cloth cushions of the seats which ran along
the sides of the caboose. Corcoran, the only person who shared the car
with us, seemed to have some psychical consciousness of the peril which
weighed down upon us, and moved quietly about the car, or sat in the
cupola, as mute as we.
There was no need for speech between my friend and me. Our minds,
strenuously awake, found a common conclusion in the very nature of the
case. Both doubtless had considered and rejected the idea of
telegraphing Pendleton to wait for us at the Junction. No king upon his
throne was more absolute than Avery Pendleton, and to ask him to waste a
single quarter-hour of his time might give great offense to him whom we
desired to find serene and complaisant. Again, any apparent anxiety for
haste, any symptom of an attempt to rush his line of defenses, would
surely defeat its object. No, we must quietly and casually board his
train, and secure the signing of the contract before we reached Chicago,
if possible.
"You brought that paper, Al?" said Jim, as if my thoughts had been
audible to him.
"Yes," said I, "it's here."
"I think we'd better be on our way to St. Louis," said he. "He can
hardly refuse to oblige us by going through the form of signing, so as
to let us turn south at the river."
"Very well," said I, "St. Louis--yes."
Out past the old Trescott farm, now covered with factories, cottages,
and railway tracks, leaving Lynhurst Park off to our left, curving with
the turnings of Brushy Creek Valley, through which our engineers had
found such easy grades, dropping the straggling suburbs of the city
behind us, we flew along the rails in the waning twilight of this
grewsome day. On the windward windows and the roof rattled fierce
flights of sleet and showers of cinders from the engine. Occasionally we
felt the car sway in the howling gusts of wind, as we passed some
opening in the hills and neared the more level prairie. Stories of cars
blown from the rails flitted through my mind; and in contemplating such
an accident my thoughts busied themselves with the details of plans for
getting free from the wrecked car, and pushing on with the engine, the
derailing of which somehow never occurred to me.
"We're slowing down!" cried Jim, after a half-hour's run. "I wonder
what's the matter!"
"For God's sake, look ahead!" yelled Corcoran, leaping down from the
cupola and springing to the door. We followed him to the platform, and
each of us ran down on the step and, swinging out by the hand-rail,
peered ahead into the dusk, the sleet stinging our cheeks like shot.
We were running along the right bank of the stream, at a point where the
valley narrowed down to perhaps sixty rods of bottom. At the first dim
look before us we could see nothing unusual, except that the background
of the scene looked somehow as if lifted by a mirage. Then I noticed
that up the valley, instead of the ghostly suggestions of trees and
hills which bounded the vista in other directions, there was an
appearance like that seen on looking out to sea.
"The flood!" said Jim. "He's not going to stop, is he Corcoran?"
At this moment came at once the explanation of Schwartz's hesitation and
the answer to Jim's question. We saw, reaching clear across the narrow
bottom, a great wave of water, coming down the valley like a liquid
wall, stretching across the track and seeming to forbid our further
progress, while it advanced deliberately upon us, as if to drown engine
and crew. Driven on by the terrific gale, it boiled at its base, and
curled forward at its foamy and wind-whipped crest, as if the upper
waters were impatient of the slow speed of those below. Beyond the wave,
the valley, from bluff to bluff, was a sea, rolling white-capped waves.
Logs, planks, and the other flotsam of a freshet moved on in the van of
the flood.
It looked like the end of our run. What engineer would dare to dash on
at such speed over a submerged track--possibly floated from its bed,
possibly barricaded by driftwood? Was not the wave high enough to put
out the fires and kill the engine? As we met the roaring eagre we felt
the engine leap, as Schwartz's hesitation left him and he opened the
throttle. Like knight tilting against knight, wave and engine met. There
was a hissing as of the plunging of a great red-hot bar into a vat. A
roaring sheet of water, thrown into the air by our momentum, washed cab
and tender and car, as a billow pours over a laboring ship; and we stood
on the steps, drenched to the skin, the water swirling about our ankles
as we rushed forward. Then we heard the scream of triumph from the
whistle, with which Schwartz cheered us as the dripping train ran on
through shallower and shallower water, and turning, after a mile or so,
began climbing, dry-shod, the grade which led from the flooded valley
and out upon the uplands.
"Come in, Mr. Elkins," said Corcoran. "You'll both freeze out there, wet
as you are."
Not until I heard this did I realize that we were still standing on the
steps, our clothes congealing about us, peering through the now dense
gloom ahead, as if for the apparition of some other grisly foe to daunt
or drive us back.
We went in, and sat down by the roaring fire, in spite of which a chill
pervaded the car. We were now running over the divide between the valley
we had just left and that of Elk Fork. Up here on the highlands the wind
more than ever roared and clutched at the corners of the car, and
sometimes, as with the palm of a great hand, pressed us over, as if a
giant were striving to overturn us. We could hear the engine struggling
with the savage norther, like a runner breathing hard, as he nears
exhaustion. Presently I noticed fine particles of snow, driven into the
car at the crevices, falling on my hands and face, and striking the hot
stove with little hissing explosions of steam.
"We're running into a blizzard up here," said Corcoran. "It's a terror
outside."
"A terror; yes," said Jim. "What sort of time are we making?"
"Just about holding our own," said Corcoran. "Not much to spare. Got to
stop at Barslow for water. But there won't be any bad track from there
on. This snow won't cut any figure for three hours yet, and mebbe not at
all, there's so little of it."
"Kittrick has been asking for an appropriation to rebuild the Elk Fork
trestle," said Jim. "Will it stand this flood?"
"Well," said Corcoran, "if the water ain't too high, and the ice don't
run too swift in the Fork, it'll be all right. But if there's any such
mixture of downpour and thaw as there was along the Creek back there, we
may have to jump across a gap. It'll probably be all right."
I remembered the Elk Fork, and the trestle just on the hither side of
the Junction. I remembered the valley, green with trees, and populous
with herds, winding down to the lake, and the pretty little town of
Josephine. I remembered that gala day when we christened it. I groaned
in spirit, as I thought of finding the trestle gone, after our
hundred-and-fifty-mile dash through storm and flood. Yet I believed it
would be gone. The blows showered upon us had beaten down my courage. I
felt no shrinking from either struggle or danger; but this was merely
the impulse which impels the soldier to fight on in despair, and sell
his life dearly. I believed that ruin fronted us all; that our great
system of enterprises was going down; that, East and West, where we had
been so much courted and admired, we should become a by-word and a
hissing. The elements were struggling against us. That vengeful flood
had snatched at us, and barely missed; the ruthless hurricane was
holding us back; and somehow fate would yet find means to lay us low. I
had all day kept thinking of the lines:
"Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight
Like this last dim, weird battle of the west.
A death-white mist slept over land and sea:
Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew
Down to his blood, till all his heat was cold
With formless fear: and even on Arthur fell
Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought."
And this, thought I, was the end of the undertaking upon which we had
entered so lightly, with frolic jests of piracy and Spanish galleons and
pieces-of-eight, and with all that mock-seriousness with which we
discussed hypnotic suggestion and psychic force! The bitterness grew
sickening, as Corcoran, hearing the long whistle of the engine, said
that we were coming into Barslow. The tragic foolery of giving that name
to any place!
Out upon the platform here, in the blinding whirl of snow. The night
operator came out and talked to us of the news of the line, while the
engine ran on to the tank for water. There was another telegram from
Agnew, saying that the Pendleton special was on time, and that Mr.
Kittrick was following us with another train "in case of need."
The operator was full of wild stories of the Brushy Creek flood, caused
by the thaw and the cloudburst. We cut him short in this narration, and
asked him of the conditions along the Elk Fork.
"She's up and boomin'," said he. "The trestle was most all under water
an hour ago, and they say the ice was runnin' in blocks. You may find
the track left without any underpinnin'. Look out for yourselves."
"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 hellufa 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 God'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