Aladdin & Co.: A Romance of Yankee Magic
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 pass 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 passed. 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 shore; 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 Associated 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 passengers 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 Assignment of Hinckley & Macdonald,
Bankers! Western Portland Cement Company Assigns! 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 assign. 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 assignments 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, nobody 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 passions 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