CHAPTER VIITHE WRECK
Jeff noticed that “Ol’ Ed” was proceeding to fulfill Tim’s predictions with a will. The wrecking train was gathering speed with every passing second. The clank of rail joints as the wheels passed over them developed from a measured beat to a steady hum. Jeff had never moved so fast in all his life. Up and down grades they roared, around curves they snapped with a vengeance that threatened to send the caboose off the tracks and whizzing through the air like the snapper of a whip. “Ol’ Eleven-o-seven’s” whistle seemed never to stop shrieking for grade crossings, and Jeff wondered what would happen to a luckless automobile or team of horses that might get caught on one of the crossings as the wrecking train plunged down upon them.
Mile after mile was clicked off with measured regularity and in twenty-two minutes by Jeff’s watch the thirty-five miles to the wreck were covered and the monster engine began to slow downas grinding, spark-flinging brake shoes were applied.
Jeff and big Tim and the rest knew that they were approaching the wreck long before the train began to come to its crunching stop, for far ahead on the tracks, far beyond the stabbing white ray of the engine’s searching headlight, they could make out a pink glow in the sky and a blotch of lurid red behind some trees.
“There it is and it’s caught fire, too,” said Tim, letting himself down from the cupola and slipping off his heavy coat again. “Come on, men. Tumble out. We got a job to do. The line must be open before the commutation trains start to come down to-morrow morning. Lively now. Snap to it.”
And snap to it they did. Jeff marveled at the enthusiasm with which they prepared to go out into the near zero weather and do battle with a stubborn wreck that was on fire in the bargain.
By the time the train had come to a halt and the wreckers had tumbled out, Jeff could see by the rays of the searching headlight, in all its stark unpleasantness, a huge mass of twisted iron and steel, up-ended cars, overturned trucks and splinteredties and débris through which licked red-tongued flames. Here was the wreck that was blocking the line, the wreck that these men must clear away before daylight. It was a sight almost horrible to behold. Part way down the embankment and turned on its side was the locomotive, steam and smoke still curling about it. It looked like some prehistoric giant wounded and dying. A smoke pall hung over the entire scene, into which the wreckers, armed with axes and crowbars plunged, looking more like gnomes than human beings in that weird setting.
Keyed up with the excitement of it all, Jeff, also armed with an ax that he had hastily seized from an open tool box on one of the flat cars, followed them, and soon he found himself in the thick of things. Piled up across the right of way and down the embankment on either side were what an hour ago had been ten big red and yellow freight cars. Now they were junk; just a mass of terribly twisted, splintered and crushed wood and iron, all mixed up with railroad ties and corkscrew-looking rails that had been torn from the roadbed by the force of the catastrophe.
Tim, the boss wrecker, stopped a moment andlooked the mess over. In particular he looked at the fire that was raging at the other end of the wreck.
“Looks like that fire was going to help us some in getting this thing clear. But we can’t wait for that. Hello, Tracy,” the last was said to a railroad man who came out of the smoke, followed by two others. He was the conductor of the luckless freight.
“Hello, Tim. Rotten mess, ain’t it?”
“You said it. Any one hurt? How’s the engineer and fireman?”
“Both back in our hack. Pretty well shaken up but outside of a slight burn that Norton got they are both all right. They’ll be out to lend a hand as soon as they get some of the cinders picked out o’ their hides.”
“Fine. All right, men. We clear the eastbound track first. You, Casey, take your men and get that No. 1 derrick up here. You, Saunders, start to cut away and move that stuff so we can get the derrick up to the first car. Come on, men, snap to it. Casey, tell that biscuit-shooter of ours to get that hot coffee and sandwiches on the job in a hurry. We want a snack before thecold gets into us. Shake a leg. Shake both of ’em.”
The wreckers went into action. The engine’s big headlight illuminated the scene and made the night as light as day. Men with crowbars and axes fell to clearing the wreckage that might obstruct the movement of the derrick. Another crew attended to the laying of temporary tracks by means of which the engine could be shunted from the front to the rear of the wrecking train so that the first of the big derricks could be moved slowly up into place close to the wreck.
All this was accomplished in a remarkably short time considering the work involved, and while Jeff worked and sweated with the rest of the men and gulped down innumerable cups of steaming coffee and ate all the sandwiches he could consume as they were brought up by the grinning negro cook of the wrecking train, the first big derrick was moved up into place and like a giant elephant began to slowly nose its way into the wreck.
Then didn’t the men work! With this giant helper the task of clearing one track seemed to simplify. The men burrowed into the wreckagelike so many field mice, carrying the chains of the derrick with them. These they snapped around heavy trucks, backed away and gave the signal, and the derrick would slowly lift the obstruction out of the way and swing it around onto one of the flat cars or off onto the embankment where it was deposited for the time being. Whole sections of freight cars were lifted by this mastodontic machine, as slowly it crept further and further into the heart of the wreckage foot by foot, clearing one track so that the line would be partially opened as soon as possible.
Jeff left off toiling when this big thing came into action, for it was the first time that he had ever seen one of the machines at work and he could not do other than stand and marvel at its power. But the wreckers kept right on working. They had all stripped themselves of their heavy coats and now worked in sweaters, and many of them even in shirt sleeves, despite the zero weather. And Jeff could see that most of them were sweating with the terrific exertion that the work called for. Indeed he could hardly believe that human beings could keep right on laboring the way they did and not drop from exhaustion.Already he was so tired that he could scarcely swing the ax he had been wielding and yet he realized that he had not done one-tenth part of the work any one of the wreckers had. The realization made him feel almost ashamed of himself, and gritting his teeth, he spat on his hands and prepared once more to wade into the wreckage with the rest of them.
But before he bent to his task, Big Tim Crowley, who had been climbing over the wreckage, jumped down from the slanting roof of a partly crushed car almost alongside of him. Jeff noticed that there was a strange look on the face of the big boss, as he spoke to Tracy, the conductor, who was prying at a stubborn mass with a crowbar.
“Tracy, you sure none o’ your crew was caught in this?”
“Yep, they’re all accounted for. Why?”
“Well, there’s some poor devil pinned down in under that mass toward the other end and the fire’s movin’ up on him fast. I heard him groaning and I located him. He’s pinned down under an up-ended truck with almost a whole freight car piled on top of him. And t’ fire’s creepin’ inthere, too. T’ worst of it is he’s too far into the wreck for us to reach him with t’ derrick, before t’ fire gets to him, and if we go digging for him we’ll bring a whole pile of wreckage down on top of him.”
“Great Scott, you don’t say so,” said Tracy, standing up and looking troubled. “I know he ain’t one of my train crew but he might be a hobo. Kahalan said he thought there was a ’bo tryin’ t’ hop aboard when we left t’ yard at New City, but he said it was too danged cold to go out and drive him off t’ bumpers if he did get aboard. Poor devil. I’ll bet that’s who it is an’ he got nipped.”
Others, including Jeff, had stopped working now and were listening. Jeff looked off toward the other end of the wreck where the fire, undiminished in its fury, was eating into the mass of splintered woodwork that had been perfectly good freight cars a few hours since, and shuddered as he realized the horrible position the man was in; as he realized the horrible death that he was facing, pinned in there waiting for the flames to reach him.
“Well, hobo or not, we got to get him out ifwe can,” snapped Tim. “But t’ worst of it is he’s in about the nastiest place in t’ whole wreck. We can’t cut our way down to him because there’s a truck and twisted brake beams and like of that in the way, an’ if we go pryin’ around tryin’ to clear things out to get at him we’re liable to bring the whole mass slidin’ down on top o’ him and crush him to death. Anyhow, come on, fellows, we’ll see what we can do.”