BLIND FOR LIFE
Bart's first thought was of his father. He instantly leaped from the
platform.
As he did so there was a violent explosion in the storage room, the
sashes were blown from place outright, and Bart dodged to escape a
shower of glass.
He was fairly appalled at the suddenness with which the flames enveloped
the interior, for they shot up in every direction, and the partition
dividing the shed appeared blown from place.
Rockets were fizzing, giant crackers exploding by the pack, and colored
chemicals sending out a varied glow.
Bart dashed for the front--a muffled cry caused him to hurry his speed.
His father had uttered the cry.
Dazed by the light, his eyes filled with smarting particles of burned
powder, Bart suddenly came in violent contact with a human form just as
he turned the corner of the shed.
Both nearly upset in the collision. At first Bart fancied it might be
one of the burglars, but peering closer he recognized the friendly
roustabout.
"Told you so!" gasped the latter in a desperate fluster. "Fire--I'll
help you."
"Yes, quick! run," breathed Bart, rushing ahead, "My father's in that
burning building!"
Bart was thrilled. The main room of the express shed was one bright blur
of brilliancy and colored smoke.
It rolled and whirled, obliterating all outlines within the room.
"Father! father!" shouted Bart, dashing recklessly in at the open
doorway.
He could not make out a single object in that chaos, but he knew the
location of every familiar article in the place, and made for the chair
in which his father usually sat.
"Father!" he screamed, as his hands touched the arms of the chair and
found it empty.
The sulphurous flames nearly choked him, the heat from the crackling
wooden partition singed his hair, but he could only grope about blindly.
"Here he is," sounded a suffocating voice.
"Where, oh! where?" panted Bart.
He threw out his arms wildly, groping to locate the speaker, whom he
knew to be the roustabout. "Where is he--where is he?"
He had come in contact with the roustabout now, who with all his
timidity was proving himself a hero in the present instance.
"Lying on the floor--stumbled over him--I'm on fire, too!"
Bart's feet touched a prostrate form. It was moved along as Bart stooped
and got hold of the shoulders.
The roustabout was helping him. They dragged together, stumbling to the
doorway on the very verge of fatal danger, and reeled across the
platform.
The roustabout jumped to the ground. Once there he gently but in a
masterly way drew the inanimate form of Mr. Stirling from the platform,
and carried him over to a pile of ties outside of the glow and scorch of
the burning express shed.
Bart anxiously scanned his father's face. It was black and blistered but
he was breathing naturally.
"Overcome with the smoke--or tumbled and was stunned," declared the
roustabout.
Excited approaching shouts caused the speaker to glare down the tracks.
Half a dozen people were hurrying to the scene of the fire. The
roustabout with a nervous gasp vanished in the darkness.
Bart was hovering over his father in a solicitous way as a night
watchman and a freight crew appeared on the scene. There was a volley of
excited questions and quick responses.
No means of extinguishing the flames were at hand. The newcomers
suggested getting the insensible Mr. Stirling over to the street beyond
the tracks a few hundred yards distant, where there was a drug store.
Bart ran for the hand truck on the platform, saw two of the men start
off with his father on it, and hurried back to the burning express shed.
He had hoped to save something, but one effort drove him back, realizing
the foolhardiness of repeating the experiment. The building and its
contents were doomed.
The crowd began to gather and grew with the moments. A road official
appeared on the scene. Bart made a brief, hurried explanation and ran
over to the drug store.
To his surprise his father was not there. Bart approached the druggist
to ask an anxious question when the companion of the latter, a
professional-looking man, spoke up.
"You are young Stirling, are you not?" he interrogated.
"Yes, sir," nodded Bart.
"Don't get frightened or worried, but I am Doctor Davis. We thought it
best to send your father to the hospital."
"To the hospital!" echoed Bart turning pale. "Then he is badly
injured--"
"Not at all," dissented the physician reassuringly. "He was probably
overcome by the smoke or fell and was stunned, but that injury was
trifling. It is his eyes we are troubled about."
"Tell me the worst!" pleaded Bart in a choked tone, but trying to
prepare himself for the shock.
"Why, one eye is pretty bad," said the doctor, "and the other got the
full force of some powder explosion. They have good people up at the
hospital, though, and they will soon get him to rights."
"I must tell my mother at once," murmured Bart.
He left the place with a heart as heavy as lead. It seemed as if one
furious Fourth of July powder blast had disrupted the very foundations
of all the family hopes and happiness, leaving a blackened wreck where
there had been unity, comfort and peace.
If his father was disabled seriously, their prospects became a very
grave problem. Bart, too, was worried about the loss to the express
company. The books were probably out on the desk when the fire
commenced, the safe was open, and the loss in money and records meant
considerable.
Bart felt that he was undertaking the hardest task of his life when he
reached home and broke the news to his mother--it was like disturbing
the peace of some earthly Eden.
Mrs. Stirling went at once to the hospital with her eldest daughter,
Bertha. Bart, very anxious and miserable, got the younger boys to bed
and tried to cheer up his little sister Alice, who was in a transport of
grief and suspense.
The strain was relieved when Bertha Stirling came home about eleven
o'clock.
She was in tears, but subdued any active exhibition of emotion until
Alice, on the assurance that her father was resting comfortably at the
hospital, was induced to retire.
Then she broke down utterly, and Bart had a hard time keeping her from
being hysterical.
She said that her mother intended staying all night at the side of her
suffering husband and had tried to send some reassuring word to her son.
"You must tell me the worst, you know, Bertha," said Bart. "What do
they say at the hospital? Is father in serious danger? Will he die?"
"No," answered the sobbing girl, "he will not die, but oh! Bart--the
doctor says he may be blind for life!"