“Yes, but look what’s ahead of us,” sighed Speed.
As it developed, that fire sign had nothing to do with Erie proper but was stuck off on some windy beach or marsh, no doubt, miles from the city. To the west of it, a considerable distance, was a faint glow in the sky, a light that looked like anything save the reflection of a city, but so it was. And this road grew worse and worse. The car lurched so at times that I thought we might be thrown out. Speed was constantly stopping it and examining the nature of certain ruts and pools farther on. He would stop and climb down and walk say four or five hundred feet and then come back, and bump on a little further. Finally, having gone a considerable distance on this course, we seemed to be mired. We would dash into a muddy slough and there the wheels would just spin without making any progress. The way out of this was to trample earth behind the wheels and then back up. I began to think we were good for a night in the open. Franklin and I walked back blocks and blocks to see whether by chance we hadn’t gotten on the wrong road. Having decided that we were doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances, we returned and sat in the car. After much time wasted we struck a better portion of the road, coming to where it turned at right angles over the maze of unguarded tracks which we had been paralleling all this while. It was a treacherous place, with neither gates nor watchmen, but just a great welter of dark tracks with freight cars standing here and there, signal lights glimmering in the distance, and engines and trains switching up and down.
“Shall we risk it?” asked Speed cautiously.
“Sure, we’ll have to,” replied Franklin. “It’s dangerous but it’s the only way.”
We raced over it at breakneck speed and into more unfriendly marshy country beyond. We reached a street, a far-out one, but nevertheless a street, without a house on it and only a few gas lamps flickering in the warm night air. In a region of small wooden cottages, so small as to be pathetic, we suddenly encountered one of those mounted police for which Pennsylvania is famous, sitting by the curbing of a street corner, his gun in his hand and a saddle horse standing near.
“Which way into Erie?” we called.
“Straight on.”
“Is this where the storm was?” we asked.
“Where the washout was,” he replied.
We could see where houses had been torn down or broken into or flung askew by some turbulent element much superior to these little shells in which people dwelt.