“Heavens! the old crooked maple has been struck and fallen directly across the track!” he exclaimed.
He snatched a cheap watch from his pocket and glanced at it, his face growing white with a terrible fear.
“The New York limited express will be due here in exactly half an hour. Unless something is done, some warning given before it rounds the curve there will be a horrible accident,” he soliloquized with pale lips.
He rushed from the room, down the stairs, through the kitchen, and into the shed, where, seizing an ax, he darted out of a back door unmindful of the pouring rain, through a garden, and down a bank beyond, and, in another moment, was on the railroad beside the great tree, whose trunk was at least twelve inches in diameter, and whose branches spread out over the track for many feet.
This maple had stood there on the bank for many years, while storm after storm had gradually undermined it, until it was held only by the strength of its own roots. The roadmaster of that section had, for some time, contemplated having it removed, as he felt that it was unsafe to allow it to remain. But he had neglected it just a little too long, and the present tempest had wrenched it from its place, causing it to fall directly across both tracks.
With quick and vigorous strokes the young man trimmed away some of the branches, so that he could get at the trunk, and then he fell to work with his ax as he had seldom worked before, forgetting that he had already performed the labor of two men that day, and the tree was finally severed just outside the rails nearest the roots.
But another division must be made before it could be removed from its dangerous position, and he sprang between the two tracks and fell to work again, the elements still keeping high carnival around him. The chips flew right and left, while with every blow of the ax the youth’s breath was forced from him with a shrill, hissing sound, showing that he was putting forth his strength to the utmost. But he had hewn only about two-thirds of the log when the whistle of a locomotive fell upon his ear and warned him that the train was only a mile away, speeding on toward swift destruction.
What should he do? He knew there would not be time to complete his task and drag the tree from the track before the train would be upon him, while there was a bridge over the road not fifty feet behind him, and beneath it a foaming, rushing, thundering torrent, into which the engine and coaches, if derailed, would doubtless plunge headlong.
A wild look of fear shot into his eyes. An expression of horror was on his pallid face as these thoughts flashed through his mind. The next instant he snatched a red bandanna from his pocket and started on a swift run down the track, tying the handkerchief to a branch of the maple as he went. On, on, like a deer he ran. The curve was reached and rounded. The train was in sight. Nearer and nearer it came thundering on; then the short, sharp sound of the danger-whistle fell upon the boy’s ear, and his heart bounded into his throat with a sudden sense of relief as he realized that his signal had been seen and recognized.
Then he dashed it to the ground, and, turning, sped back to the maple, and fell to work again with his ax with all his might.