On the morning following their arrival at Bristol, John and Dora took
the train for New York. "We'll sit in the chair-car," he proposed. "It
has revolving fans and is more roomy. They say this train is usually
crowded."
Dora smiled expectantly as she followed him into the luxurious coach.
She had slept well, had eaten a good breakfast, and seemed brighter than
she had the day before. She was still a grotesque-looking creature in
the dress which was too long for a child of her age, and the hat that
was too large, being one Jane Holder, in one of her rare moments of mild
self-reproach, had discarded and hastily retrimmed for her niece. But
John Trott was not critical of outward appearances. There was something
beneath the surface in Dora--an unspoken reliance on him, a gentle
betrayal of pride and confidence in him, not to mention her abject
helplessness, which atoned for all external shortcomings. The whole
world looked dark to him, but he had determined that Dora should not
dwell in the shadow, if he could prevent it.
They were soon well into the state of Virginia. The train was quite
crowded and John congratulated himself on securing seats in the
parlor-car. From the window Dora listlessly viewed the back-drifting
fields and forests, the tobacco which she had never seen growing before,
and the old-fashioned houses on the farms as well as in the towns and
villages.
It was near night. Washington was only a few hours away.
"We are going to cross a high trestle over a ravine," John explained to
his charge. "I heard a man talking about it. There! that is the whistle.
I guess they will slow down until we get over it."
But the train was late and the locomotive's speed was not greatly
diminished. From the window John saw the line of trees marking the
ravine's sinuous course through the fields and told Dora that they would
soon be on the trestle. A moment later there was a shriek from the
locomotive, a violent jerking of the cars, a distant crashing and
grinding of timbers, and a thunderous sound of heavy bodies falling. The
coupling was broken and the chair-car lurched forward, left the track,
shot its front end against an embankment about twenty feet high and
remained poised there. Dora was thrown against a window, the thick glass
of which fortunately did not break, and John fell between the chairs to
the floor. Everywhere in the car the passengers lay over one another,
squirming and screaming in pain and terror.
"Are you hurt?" John asked Dora, as he struggled to his feet and bent
over her.
"No." She shook her head, her face blanched, her whole frame quivering.
"Come, let's get out!" he said. He offered to lift her in his arms, for
the floor of the car was sharply slanting to one side, but she refused
to permit it.
"Oh no. I can get out better by myself," she said, stepping from one
seat to another to accelerate their egress.
Some of the passengers around them were injured slightly, some had
fainted, and lay prone in the aisle, and these people blocked their
progress for a few moments. But when they had finally reached the open a
frightful sight met their view. At the bottom of the ravine which the
trestle had spanned lay an indiscriminate heap of splintered and
telescoped coaches which quite hid from view the locomotive lying
beneath. A violent hissing of steam came from the mass which all but
drowned out the cries of pain and terror from the imprisoned victims.
Now and then men or boys could be seen breaking through the car windows
and climbing down to the ground. But hundreds were out of sight. They
were doubtless stunned or killed outright.
Fifty or sixty people from the chair-car and the two connected
sleeping-coaches, which were the only parts of the train saved from the
ruin, gathered on the brink of the ravine and stood spellbound by the
sights they beheld in the smoking inferno beneath.
Suddenly a trainman near John raised a cry: "The cars are catching on
fire! They are dry as powder and will burn like oil! My God! there are
women and children down there!"
"Stay here!" John said to Dora. "I must get down there and try to help."
She nodded mutely, and he darted away. Other men followed him through
the weeds and bushes down the rugged declivity. Dora watched him till he
had vanished among the trees and boulders. The sound of escaping steam
had ceased. Human cries were now audible, groans, prayers, and the
pounding of feet and hands against parched car-walls. Faint blows they
were and futile--hoarse prayers and unanswered. The highest car in the
heap was toppling over and settled down more snugly into the mass.
Between the upper coaches blue smoke was issuing, and from the under
ones fierce flames were bursting. Dora suddenly descried John. He was on
the slanting side of one of the cars, kicking in a wired window. The
heart of the child was in her mouth, for he was in the gravest peril.
Within twenty feet of him the flames were lapping the paint from the
thin woodwork on which he stood.
"That man that was with you is a fool!" a stylishly dressed woman said
to Dora. "He will be burned to death."
"He is a workman--a brick-mason," Dora said, "and able to--"
"I don't care what he is--he is crazy, simply crazy!"
What had become of John, Dora did not know, for in a cloud of swirling
smoke and flames she suddenly lost sight of him. Also the men who had
descended with him could not be seen, and the whole mass of cars were
now aflame. The blaze and heat drove the awed spectators back farther
from the edge of the fiery gorge. Some were moving away to look after
their belongings in the undestroyed cars. Dora wondered what she ought
to do. She began to fear the worst in regard to John. She wanted to cry,
but the tear-founts seemed to have dried up. The sun was down. The
thickening darkness made the flames in the ravine all the brighter.
Presently she felt some one grasp her arm. It was John. He was covered
with black as to his hands, face, and neck. His clothing was torn and
scorched; there was a bleeding scratch across his right cheek and chin
which had been made by a piece of flying glass. He was now mopping it
with a soiled handkerchief.
"It is hell!" she heard him say, more to himself than her. "It is
hell!"
Dora clung to him joyously.
"Think of it," he panted. "I got one woman out at a window and was
reaching down for a little boy. I could see him holding up his hands
from the burning seats, but he could not reach me. God! I'll never
forget that kid's eyes and his last scream as he fell back into the
fire!"
A locomotive drawing flat-cars loaded with people from a near-by town
had stopped just beyond the sleeping-cars, and the crowd sprang down and
gathered on the brink of the ravine up the side of which remains of the
trestle hung, slowly burning.
"Come," John said to Dora. "I'll get our things out of the car, and then
we'll get a place to spend the night. I'm sure we'll not get away till
morning. I saw a hotel down the track as we came along."
He left her and returned in a moment with the valises. Then they went
back along the railway to a crossing where stood a hotel of the very
crudest rural type. Going into the office, he secured a room for Dora;
but could get none for himself. Returning to her, he said:
"We'll have supper pretty soon. Go to your room and wash the dust off
your face and hands. You are a sight to behold."
She followed an attendant up the single flight of stairs, though it
looked as if she were averse to being separated from John even for so
short a while. Indeed, she was wondering if he did not intend to
undertake something else in which danger was involved. However, he did
not keep her waiting long. He came up to her room. He had washed his
face and hands in the barber shop, and had had his clothing and shoes
brushed. He led her down to the dining-room. It was packed with
passengers from the remaining coaches of the train who were bent on
getting something to eat, and as for the adjoining office, it was
literally jammed by an ever-growing throng of curious and horrified
spectators, who were arriving by train, by private conveyance, and on
foot from all directions.
They had secured seats at a table and given their order when an excited
man of middle age, without hat or coat on, rushed up to John, holding
out his hand.
"They tell me you are the man who saved my wife!" he cried. "My God!
sir, I want--"
"Not me." John smiled blandly. "Must have been some other chap."
"Oh, I beg your pardon," the man said, slightly taken aback. "I see I am
mistaken."
He disappeared in the office and Dora looked up at John inquiringly.
"Didn't you say back there that you got a woman out of--"
"'Sh!" John said, glancing furtively at the adjoining table and lowering
his voice to a whisper. "Yes, I said so, but we have to be careful. That
man would have wanted my name and address and I don't know what else.
You see, kid, you and I are trying to cover our tracks. If we got our
names in a paper the people in Ridgeville would know as much about our
business as we do ourselves. There are several reporters here jotting
down names and telegraphing them. I made a point of not registering just
now--paid in advance to get around it."
Young as she was, Dora understood what he meant. The supper came, was
eaten, and they gave their places to other applicants for seats at the
table. Dora looked tired and he sent her to her room. He had decided to
sit up all night, but he did not tell her so. He saw a stream of
sight-seers going toward the flaring gorge, and he joined them. More
than a thousand persons were now massed along the brink of the ravine,
in the depths of which lay a vast heap of coals, red-hot iron, twisted
steel rails, and the burly outlines of the unconsumed locomotive, over
which the ashes and coals had settled like a pall of scarlet.
In the light of a lantern held by a trainman a reporter on the steps of
the chair-car sat rapidly making notes on a pad with a pencil. Suddenly
he saw a man passing and called out to him:
"Hey, Timmons!" he cried. "Any more names?"
"Oh yes! I was looking for you," the man addressed answered, and he drew
a slip of paper from his pocket. "Here you are. Take 'em down quick. I
have to wire my own list in right away. T. B. Wrenshall, wife and child,
St. Louis. Got that? Begins with a W, not an R. They say he was a
traveling-man, but that doesn't matter. It is the list my people want.
Here is another: Mrs. Marie Dugan, Nashville, also Miss Satterlee,
Atlanta--a school-teacher, they say, but I'm not sure, so leave that
out."
"All right. Thank you, Timmons," and the two reporters parted.
John paused, leaned against the car near the man with the pad, and idly
watched his rapidly moving pencil. Something, he knew not what, seemed
to hold him there as for some occult purpose. A conductor of one of the
sleeping-cars approached. "Press?" he asked, hurriedly.
"Yes, here I am," muttered the reporter.
"Here is a complete list of all my passengers," the conductor said, "all
alive and checked up."
"All right, but it is the dead ones I'm after," the reporter said,
taking the paper and pinning it to his notes.
John moved a few feet away. Again he viewed the red ruins, peering over
the brink as into the heart of an active volcano. A thought had come to
him, but he was irresolute. He looked back at the reporter. The man was
still on the steps at work.
"It would be easy," John mused. "The simplest thing in the world, and I
ought to do it. That would settle it for good and all. It would free
Tilly completely, and give Dora her chance, too. Yes, I ought to do it--
I really ought."
He walked about on the edge of the throng for several moments
undecidedly. "What the hell is the matter with me?" he muttered. "Why
can't I decide on a thing as simple as that and be done with it? It is
for Tilly's lasting good. It would wipe the whole rotten thing out at
once, and stop the damned wagging tongues sooner than anything else. It
would sting sharply, like a doctor's knife, but it would cure the
trouble. If I don't do something it will hang over her as long as she
lives. I spoiled her chances by dropping into her life--here is a chance
to drop out of it. I'm leaving her for good and all, anyway, so why not
make a clean job of it?"
He felt that he had decided at last, and he went back to the reporter.
"Are you taking names?" he asked, in a voice the matter-of-fact tone of
which surprised himself.
"Yes. Got any?" The writer did not look up from his rapidly moving
pencil.
"Two friends of mine."
"All right, wait a minute."
The pencil was now rapidly producing shorthand dots, curves, and dashes.
The red sky above the gorge held John's eyes. As in a picture of
radiating flame he saw his little wife as he had seen her the morning he
had unknowingly kissed her farewell forever on the door-step of the
cottage as he stood, dinner-pail in hand, the sun just rising above the
hills. In spite of his self-control and a belief in his stolidness, a
lump swelled in his throat.
"She deserves a better deal out of the deck than to be tied to the
memory of a man like me," he thought. "When she reads my name in the
papers I'll be dead to her, dead and cremated. After all, it can't be
worse than the other."
"Well, well," the reporter said, looking up, "you say you have lost some
friends?"
"Yes, two--a man and a little girl, in the coach just ahead of this
one."
"Their names and addresses, please. I'm in a devil of a rush--using
railroad telegraph, and it is packed with official business. Got an
opening now, but may lose it any moment. Mention ages and business, if
you know them."
"John Trott, twenty years old, Ridgeville, Georgia, brick-mason."
"All right--two t's in Trott, eh? Well, and the other one?"
"Dora Boyles--B-o-y-l-e-s," slowly spelled John; "age about nine,
orphan, same town--Ridgeville, Georgia."
"Thanks. Is that all?" asked the reporter.
"That is all," and, afraid of being further questioned, John turned and
stalked away.