HUMAN LIVES VS. THE DOLLAR.
Cattle and horses on the track are a continual source of annoyance to engineers, and have been the occasion of many serious accidents. On the W. & S. Railroad, not many years since, an accident occurred, with the circumstances of which I was familiar, and which I will relate.
George Dean was one of the most accomplished and thorough engineers that I ever knew. He was running the Night Express, a fast run; while I was running the through freight, and met him at C—— station. I arrived there one night "on time," but George was considerably behind; so I had to wait for him. Just before George arrived at the station, he had to cross a bridge of about 200 feet span; it was a covered bridge, and the rails were some 30 feet from the water below.
I had been there waiting for him to pass, for over half an hour, when I heard his whistle sound at a "blind crossing" about a mile distant; so I knew he was coming; and as George was a pretty fast runner, I thought I would stand out on the track and see him come, as the track was straight, there, for nearly a mile.
I saw the glimmer of his head-light when he first turned the curve and entered upon the straight track, and pulled out my watch to time him to the station, through which he was to pass without stopping. The light grew brighter and brighter as he advanced with the speed of the wind, and he was within sixty feet of the bridge, when I saw an animal of some kind, I then knew not what it was, but it proved to be a horse, dart out on the track, right in front of the engine. George saw it, I know, for he gave the whistle for brakes, and a series of short puffs to scare the horse from the track; but it was of no use; the horse kept right on and ran towards the bridge. Arrived there, instead of turning to one side, it gave a jump right on to the bridge, and fell down between the ties, and there, of course, he hung. On came George's ponderous engine, and striking the horse, was thrown from the track into the floor timbers of the bridge, which gave way beneath the weight and the tremendous concussion, and down went the engine standing upon its front, the tender dropped in behind it, and the baggage car and one passenger car were heaped together on top of them both. I saw them drop, heard the crash, and at once, with the other men of my train, started to relieve any that might be caught in the wreck. Leaping down the embankment forming the approach of the bridge, I waded through the stream to where the engine stood, my fireman following close behind me. Looking up, we saw George caught on the head of the boiler. He was able to speak to us, and told us that he was not much hurt, but his legs were caught so that he could not move, and from the heat of the boiler he was literally roasting to death. We climbed up to where he was caught, to see if we could move him or get him out; but alas! he could not be helped. His legs lay right across the front of the boiler, and on them were resting some timbers of the broken baggage car, while the passenger car was so wedged into the bridge that there was no prospect of lifting it so as to get George out for many hours. I went and got him some water, and with it bathed his forehead and cooled his parching lips; he talking to me all the time and sending word to his wife and children. For a few minutes, he bore up under the pain most manfully; but at last, it grew too intolerable for any human being to bear, and George, than whom a braver soul never existed, shrieked and screamed in his agony. He begged and prayed to die. He entreated us to kill him, and put an end to his sufferings—he even cursed us for not doing it, asking us how we could stand and see him roast to death, knowing, too, as we did and he did, that he could not be saved. He begged for a knife to kill himself with, as he would rather die by his own hand at once than to linger in such protracted, awful agony. Oh! it was terrible, to stand there and see the convulsive twitchings of his muscles, to hear him pray for death, to watch him as his eyes set with pain, and hear his agonized entreaties for death any way, no matter how, so it was quick. At last it was ended, the horrible drama closed, and he died; but his shrieks will never die out from the memory of those who heard them. The next day, when we got him out, we found his legs were literally jammed to pieces and then baked to a cinder. The fireman we found caught between the trucks of the tender and the driving-wheel of the engine, and apparently not a bone left whole in his body; he was utterly smashed to pieces. You could not have told, only from his clothing, which hung in bloody fragments to his corpse, that he had ever been a human being. We got them out at last and buried them. Sadly and solemnly we followed them to the grave, and thought, with much dread, of when it would be our turn. They lie together, a plain stone marking their resting-place, and no railroad man ever visits their graves without a tear in tribute to their memory.
Thus they died, and thus all that knew them still mourn them. But the noise of the accident had scarcely ceased echoing amidst the adjoining hills, ere the owner of the horse was on the ground wishing to know if any one was there who was authorized to pay for his horse; this, too, in the face of the fact, afterward proven, that he himself had turned the horse upon the track, there to filch the feed.
FORTY-TWO MILES PER HOUR.