THE WRECK
Jeff noticed that “Ol’ Ed” was proceeding to fulfill Tim’s predictions
with a will. The wrecking train was gathering speed with every passing
second. The clank of rail joints as the wheels passed over them
developed from a measured beat to a steady hum. Jeff had never moved
so fast in all his life. Up and down grades they roared, around curves
they snapped with a vengeance that threatened to send the caboose off
the tracks and whizzing through the air like the snapper of a whip.
“Ol’ Eleven-o-seven’s” whistle seemed never to stop shrieking for grade
crossings, and Jeff wondered what would happen to a luckless automobile
or team of horses that might get caught on one of the crossings as the
wrecking train plunged down upon them.
Mile after mile was clicked off with measured regularity and in
twenty-two minutes by Jeff’s watch the thirty-five miles to the wreck
were covered and the monster engine began to slow down as grinding,
spark-flinging brake shoes were applied.
Jeff and big Tim and the rest knew that they were approaching the wreck
long before the train began to come to its crunching stop, for far
ahead on the tracks, far beyond the stabbing white ray of the engine’s
searching headlight, they could make out a pink glow in the sky and a
blotch of lurid red behind some trees.
“There it is and it’s caught fire, too,” said Tim, letting himself
down from the cupola and slipping off his heavy coat again. “Come on,
men. Tumble out. We got a job to do. The line must be open before the
commutation trains start to come down to-morrow morning. Lively now.
Snap to it.”
And snap to it they did. Jeff marveled at the enthusiasm with which
they prepared to go out into the near zero weather and do battle with a
stubborn wreck that was on fire in the bargain.
By the time the train had come to a halt and the wreckers had tumbled
out, Jeff could see by the rays of the searching headlight, in all its
stark unpleasantness, a huge mass of twisted iron and steel, up-ended
cars, overturned trucks and splintered ties and débris through which
licked red-tongued flames. Here was the wreck that was blocking the
line, the wreck that these men must clear away before daylight. It was
a sight almost horrible to behold. Part way down the embankment and
turned on its side was the locomotive, steam and smoke still curling
about it. It looked like some prehistoric giant wounded and dying. A
smoke pall hung over the entire scene, into which the wreckers, armed
with axes and crowbars plunged, looking more like gnomes than human
beings in that weird setting.
Keyed up with the excitement of it all, Jeff, also armed with an ax
that he had hastily seized from an open tool box on one of the flat
cars, followed them, and soon he found himself in the thick of things.
Piled up across the right of way and down the embankment on either side
were what an hour ago had been ten big red and yellow freight cars. Now
they were junk; just a mass of terribly twisted, splintered and crushed
wood and iron, all mixed up with railroad ties and corkscrew-looking
rails that had been torn from the roadbed by the force of the
catastrophe.
Tim, the boss wrecker, stopped a moment and looked the mess over. In
particular he looked at the fire that was raging at the other end of
the wreck.
“Looks like that fire was going to help us some in getting this thing
clear. But we can’t wait for that. Hello, Tracy,” the last was said to
a railroad man who came out of the smoke, followed by two others. He
was the conductor of the luckless freight.
“Hello, Tim. Rotten mess, ain’t it?”
“You said it. Any one hurt? How’s the engineer and fireman?”
“Both back in our hack. Pretty well shaken up but outside of a slight
burn that Norton got they are both all right. They’ll be out to lend a
hand as soon as they get some of the cinders picked out o’ their hides.”
“Fine. All right, men. We clear the eastbound track first. You, Casey,
take your men and get that No. 1 derrick up here. You, Saunders, start
to cut away and move that stuff so we can get the derrick up to the
first car. Come on, men, snap to it. Casey, tell that biscuit-shooter
of ours to get that hot coffee and sandwiches on the job in a hurry. We
want a snack before the cold gets into us. Shake a leg. Shake both of
’em.”
The wreckers went into action. The engine’s big headlight illuminated
the scene and made the night as light as day. Men with crowbars and
axes fell to clearing the wreckage that might obstruct the movement of
the derrick. Another crew attended to the laying of temporary tracks by
means of which the engine could be shunted from the front to the rear
of the wrecking train so that the first of the big derricks could be
moved slowly up into place close to the wreck.
All this was accomplished in a remarkably short time considering the
work involved, and while Jeff worked and sweated with the rest of the
men and gulped down innumerable cups of steaming coffee and ate all the
sandwiches he could consume as they were brought up by the grinning
negro cook of the wrecking train, the first big derrick was moved up
into place and like a giant elephant began to slowly nose its way into
the wreck.
Then didn’t the men work! With this giant helper the task of clearing
one track seemed to simplify. The men burrowed into the wreckage like
so many field mice, carrying the chains of the derrick with them. These
they snapped around heavy trucks, backed away and gave the signal, and
the derrick would slowly lift the obstruction out of the way and swing
it around onto one of the flat cars or off onto the embankment where
it was deposited for the time being. Whole sections of freight cars
were lifted by this mastodontic machine, as slowly it crept further and
further into the heart of the wreckage foot by foot, clearing one track
so that the line would be partially opened as soon as possible.
Jeff left off toiling when this big thing came into action, for it
was the first time that he had ever seen one of the machines at work
and he could not do other than stand and marvel at its power. But the
wreckers kept right on working. They had all stripped themselves of
their heavy coats and now worked in sweaters, and many of them even in
shirt sleeves, despite the zero weather. And Jeff could see that most
of them were sweating with the terrific exertion that the work called
for. Indeed he could hardly believe that human beings could keep right
on laboring the way they did and not drop from exhaustion. Already he
was so tired that he could scarcely swing the ax he had been wielding
and yet he realized that he had not done one-tenth part of the work any
one of the wreckers had. The realization made him feel almost ashamed
of himself, and gritting his teeth, he spat on his hands and prepared
once more to wade into the wreckage with the rest of them.
But before he bent to his task, Big Tim Crowley, who had been climbing
over the wreckage, jumped down from the slanting roof of a partly
crushed car almost alongside of him. Jeff noticed that there was a
strange look on the face of the big boss, as he spoke to Tracy, the
conductor, who was prying at a stubborn mass with a crowbar.
“Tracy, you sure none o’ your crew was caught in this?”
“Yep, they’re all accounted for. Why?”
“Well, there’s some poor devil pinned down in under that mass toward
the other end and the fire’s movin’ up on him fast. I heard him
groaning and I located him. He’s pinned down under an up-ended truck
with almost a whole freight car piled on top of him. And t’ fire’s
creepin’ in there, too. T’ worst of it is he’s too far into the wreck
for us to reach him with t’ derrick, before t’ fire gets to him, and if
we go digging for him we’ll bring a whole pile of wreckage down on top
of him.”
“Great Scott, you don’t say so,” said Tracy, standing up and looking
troubled. “I know he ain’t one of my train crew but he might be a hobo.
Kahalan said he thought there was a ’bo tryin’ t’ hop aboard when we
left t’ yard at New City, but he said it was too danged cold to go out
and drive him off t’ bumpers if he did get aboard. Poor devil. I’ll bet
that’s who it is an’ he got nipped.”
Others, including Jeff, had stopped working now and were listening.
Jeff looked off toward the other end of the wreck where the fire,
undiminished in its fury, was eating into the mass of splintered
woodwork that had been perfectly good freight cars a few hours since,
and shuddered as he realized the horrible position the man was in; as
he realized the horrible death that he was facing, pinned in there
waiting for the flames to reach him.
“Well, hobo or not, we got to get him out if we can,” snapped Tim.
“But t’ worst of it is he’s in about the nastiest place in t’ whole
wreck. We can’t cut our way down to him because there’s a truck and
twisted brake beams and like of that in the way, an’ if we go pryin’
around tryin’ to clear things out to get at him we’re liable to bring
the whole mass slidin’ down on top o’ him and crush him to death.
Anyhow, come on, fellows, we’ll see what we can do.”