Thus the days and weeks of Black Bruin's second year in the circus passed and they concluded the season at Nashville, Tennessee. Then all the paraphernalia was loaded with even more care than usual, for they were off for the long trip northward, to their winter quarters.
That night when they loaded the elephants and the trick-ponies, some of them hung back and refused to board the train, a tendency most unusual on their part; but they finally obeyed the goad and lash and all were stowed away in their customary places.
It was about midnight when the train bearing Black Bruin's van pulled out. One by one the cars bumped over the switch and the long train got under way. At first the locomotive puffed and panted as though the load were too great for it, but finally the train got up momentum and the car-wheels sang their old song of rat-a-clat-rat-a-clat-rat-a-tat-tat, while the engine assumed its familiar song of
"Rushing, pulling, snatch the train along,
Tugging, pulling, locomotive strong."
This is the song that a locomotive always sings when it is off for a long, hard pull.
On, on through the darkness the train sped, the engine sending forth showers of sparks that twinkled in the gloom like fireflies, and then went out.
But the most conspicuous thing about the train was the headlight, which threw its long cylindrical shaft of light far ahead, like a mighty auger of fire boring into the darkness. No matter how hard the engine puffed and panted or how fast the drivers thundered over the rails, this bright cylinder of light was always just so far ahead, illuminating the gleaming rails, flashing into deep cuts, lighting up cliffs and forest, and long stretches of open fields.
Black Bruin was not asleep in his cage, as he usually was on long journeys like this. Somehow, he felt restless and ill at ease. He sniffed his bars often, but the heavy shutters were down and no sign of freedom was at hand. Yet in some unaccountable manner, the wind sucking through the cracks between the shutters blew fresher and sweeter than usual. It tasted of pine-woods and deep tangles of swamp-land, where all the roots that a bear likes grow.
The train had left the low-lying lands far behind and was coming into the foothills—those friendly steps by which tired feet climb to the mountains above. It was rushing down a steep grade, traveling by its own momentum, upon a rather precipitous pathway cut in a side hill, when something happened. Perhaps it was a broken rail, or maybe a great boulder had toppled down the mountainside and lay upon the track; but the important thing was that suddenly, without a second's warning, the engine bucked like a balky broncho, and after one or two mad plunges along the roadbed, toppled over the bank and rolled into the gulley below. At the first impact of the locomotive with the long train behind it, the freight arched its back and writhed and twisted like a mighty serpent. Three of the cars went over the bank still attached to the engine and the rest piled up on one another or rolled down into the gulley, as fate willed. There was crash upon crash and thunder upon thunder as the heavy cars piled in a frightful heap. There was the groan of iron and steel being bent and broken, and the crash and creak and crackle of breaking, grinding car-floors.
When we add to this the roar of lions, the shrieking of horses, the trumpeting of elephants, the snarling and snapping of wolves, jaguars, hyenas and a chorus of other cries from the circus bedlam, the roar of steam as it escaped through an open valve in the locomotive, and the shriek of the whistle which blew continually, we can get some idea of the wreck, as the gorgeous splendor of the barbaric show was piled in ruins.