One, two, three, four cars pounded over the split rails in half as many seconds. Ben, running dizzily for life to the right, heard above the roar of the storm and screech of the sliding wheels a ripping, tearing crash, the harsh scrape of escaping steam, the hoarse cries of the wounded cattle. And through the dreadful dark and the fury of the babel the wind howled in a gale and the heavens poured a flood.
Trembling from excitement and exhaustion, Ben staggered down the main track. A man with a lantern ran against him; it was the brakeman who had been back with the torpedoes; he was crying hysterically.
They stumbled over a body. Seizing the lantern, Ben turned the prostrate man over and wiped the mud from his face. Then he held the lantern close, and gave a great cry. It was Andy Cameron—unconscious, true, but soon very much alive, and no worse than badly bruised. How the good God who watches over plucky engineers had thrown him out from the horrible wreckage only He knew. But there Andy lay; and with a lighter heart Ben headed a wrecking crew to begin the task of searching for any who might by fatal chance have been caught in the crash.
And while the trainmen of the freights worked at the wreck the passenger-train was backed slowly—so slowly and so smoothly—up over the switch and past, over the hill and past, and so to Turner Junction, and around by Oxford to Zanesville.
When the sun rose the earth glowed in the freshness of its June shower-bath. The flyer, now many miles from Beverly Hill, was speeding in towards Omaha, and mothers waking their little ones in the berths told them how close death had passed while they slept. The little girls did not quite understand it, though they tried very hard, and were very grateful to That Man, whom they never saw and whom they would never see. But the little boys—never mind the little boys—they understood it, to the youngest urchin on the train, and fifty times their papas had to tell them how far Ben ran and how fast to save their lives. And one little boy—I wish I knew his name—went with his papa to the depot-master at Omaha when the flyer stopped, and gave him his toy watch, and asked him please to give it to That Man who had saved his mamma's life by running so far in the rain, and please to tell him how much obliged he was—if he would be so kind.
So the little toy watch came to our superintendent, and so to me; and I, sitting at Cameron's bedside, talking the wreck over with Ben, gave it to him; and the big fellow looked as pleased as if it had been a jewelled chronometer; indeed, that was the only medal Ben got.
The truth is we had no gold medals to distribute out on the West End in those days. We gave Ben the best we had, and that was a passenger run. But he is a great fellow among the railroad men. And on stormy nights switchmen in the Zanesville yards, smoking in their shanties, still tell of that night, that storm, and how Ben Buckley threw Second Seventy-Seven at the foot of Beverly Hill.
The Kid Engineer
When the big strike caught us at Zanesville we had one hundred and eighty engineers and firemen on the pay-roll. One hundred and seventy-nine of these men walked out. One fireman—just one—stayed with the company; that was Dad Hamilton.