“So their hellish purpose was revealed at last. They were going to tie me to the track and let the train pass over me! I confess at that moment my limbs actually shook with fear. It was not only death within less than an hour that I was to suffer, but death in a most violent and horrible form.
“Certainly a revenge worthy of two such monsters as stood there gloating over my misery. For a moment I thought only of myself. Then I groaned aloud as I remembered Jennie and the little ones.
“I don’t know why I should be ashamed to tell it—I doubt if there are many men who would not have done the same in my place—but I just sank down on my knees then and there, and begged those heartless villains to forego their desperate purpose.
“I might as well have gone on my knees to the great iron monster that would be along in so short a time to crush me.
“They only laughed merrily over my despair, and began their work.
“You’ll acknowledge yourselves, gentlemen, that it’s rather a dismal look for a poor fellow to be gagged and bound, hand and foot, and then be tied fast across a railroad track with his neck across one rail and his feet over the other, and to know that in something like half an hour’s time a fast express train is coming down that very track without paying any attention to him whatever—and this in a dark, drizzly night, and in a lonely spot where no human being is at all likely to find him.
“And that’s the way those double-dyed scoundrels left me—they tied me there fast and firm—they mockingly bade me good-night and pleasant dreams—the leader, Parker, even stooped over me and kissed me with pretended tenderness, and I felt his hot, liquor-freighted breath on my cheek.
“And yet I could not cry out in my agony nor curse them in my desperation as they moved off.
“No words of mine, gentlemen, can describe the horror and agony I felt during the time I lay there.
“You can not half imagine it—I doubt if I can recall it now as it really was myself. I go over it again and again in my sleep to this day—fancy myself once more bound down to that fearful rack, powerless to stir hand or foot, yet striving with almost superhuman force to burst the ropes that bind me—till I finally seem to succeed and awake shrieking from the horrid nightmare, with the sweat standing out in great drops upon my brow.