At last the long winter broke, spring came back, the grass grew green upon the graves of the old watchman and his son, school was out, and little Mary brought Tommy’s dinner, as she had done the summer before.
When seven o’clock came of a morning, Denis McGuire would limp home and Tommy would ride his mule down the track behind the White Mail.
It had been raining for nearly a week, the fields were flooded and the trains late.
Half of East St. Louis was under water, and the broad bottoms, seen from Collinsville, looked like a vast ocean. For twenty-four hours both East and West Silver Creek had been rising rapidly. An extra, taking water at the tank, told McGuire that the mail was an hour late at Effingham, and McGuire went home, leaving the bridge in Tommy’s care. Whilst he was walking home and the boy was riding down (the mule went fearfully slow to work), the water was rising fast. As Tommy came near the bridge he noticed that the water, in places, was almost up to the ends of the ties. Below the track it was two feet lower, and the boy sat watching the boiling flood of black water that was sucking under the bridge. Occasionally great logs would strike against the wooden piling and shake the whole structure. Tommy was thoroughly alarmed—not for himself—for he believed himself capable of swimming the widest river that ran, but for the White Mail that would soon come over the ridge and down the short hill like falling down a well. Suddenly, a great elm tree that stood near the bank above the bridge toppled over into the stream, drifted crosswise against the bridge and lodged.
The roots and branches of the huge tree choked the channel, other trees and logs drifted against it, and a great wall of water began to rise rapidly above the track. Finding the outlet clogged, the river ran swiftly along the railway, east and west, until it came to the bluffs. It backed up far into the forest over the flat bottoms, grew higher and heavier, and the old bridge began to tremble. Meanwhile the fresh engine that had taken the White Mail that morning at Effingham was quivering across the great prairies of Illinois. Pausing to quench her thirst at Highlands she dashed away again and was now whistling for St. Jacobs. A drunken little Dutch tailor, who had boarded the train at the last stop, insisted upon getting off at St. Jacobs.
“The next stop is East St. Louis,” said Conductor Wise, punching his ticket.
“Vell, eef you sthop or nit, I git off ust de same,” and, as the train whistled, a quarter of a mile above the station, the fool Dutchman stepped out into space and came down on the east end of the platform.
The agent, standing in front of the station (it was a sight to see the White Mail go by an hour late), saw a bundle of old clothes come rolling swiftly down the long platform, and finally fetch up with a bump against the end of the depot. The Dutchman was in that bundle. In all the history of the Vandalia Line the greatest marvel is that this man lived; that he actually got up and asked the agent to have a glass of beer. So, if there is ever a proper time for a man to become hopelessly and helplessly inebriated, it would seem to be just before getting off a mail train onto a hardwood platform at a mile a minute.
About the time the Dutchman hit the earth, the old bridge began to tremble and crack, like the breaking up of a hard winter. A moment later the great stringers parted, the river, laden with logs and trees, rushed into the opening, and the bridge was gone.
Even as Tommy turned his mule the water was running across the track between the ties. The mule, gladdened by the prospect of avoiding the pump and getting back to the stable, trotted briskly away, and finally, by dint of much kicking and thumping, broke into a run.