Twice-a-week plain dealer. (Cresco, Howard County, Iowa) 1895-1913, 1897-01-12

1t was sun-up and swapping cold when
the brakeman shouted "Tugaloo," and
gratefully Lambert stepped from the
train and felt free air. Mr.. Potts was
sleeping soundly, doubled up in one of
the seats. The only wakeful bipeds in
sight We're the conductor and his train
nan Unseen hands forward had
showed the trunk out upon the frosty
boards. The sun was just peeping over
q low wooded ridge before them. Tho
track wound away among some d~esolate
fields where tiny flakes of cotton still
chung to the brown and withered stalks.
tnacloudofsteamth the train pulled away,
leaving Lambert and his trunk to look
after each other as best they might, and
as the cloud lifted the young officer
looked c%uriously around him.
He was standing on a rude wooden
platform whose shrunlicn planks left
black, gaping seams between their up
per faces, now, at least, beautiful in
their thick coat of sparkling white. EN-
cept where the footmarks of the train
men marred the smooth expanse, and
where in two or three places the planks
were gone entirely, this cleaning sheet
stretched the length of the platform to
where the white bulk of his trunk stood
on end ct, the eastern edge. The charred
and blackened relic of u fight Of stairs
led from the platform 10 the sloping
ground some five feet below, but not
ev,s. a hand-rail warned the unwaIy
against a breakneck plunge into space.
Part of the platform itself had been
burned away, and some charred and
blackened posts, sticking bolt upright
from the ground in the shape of q mar.
building of some kind had formerly
stood along the rear of the rickety
staging. Midway along it's length, OIL
the southern side, a shed with a sloping
roof had been loosely thrown together
and the ends nearest him, boarded in
and pierced for a door and a couple Of
windows, bore over the threshold il
black stencil the legend "Ticket Office
Under the shed were a couple Of
plows and some boxes. Out OIL the
bare slope, midway between the tract
and u "snake" fence that paralleled j
some twenty yards to the south, adozer
bales of cotton were huddled, three o.
them partially covered by old war-worl
'paulins and ponchos, the others en-
tirely exposed to the rain of sparks tt
be expected from any passing engin'
when the wind happened to blow from
the track; and all of them, evidently
d%efenseless against the predator.
hands of pilferers, for jagged rents werv
torn in the coarse sacking of each, an
huge fstfuls of the white staple ha'
been dragged from a dozen gaping
wounds in every bale.
The red soil, showing here and Their
through the scant and withered herE
age. was scanned with mule and whee
tracks, and a few rods away a broker
down farm wagon lay with a spoke
bristling hub close byits shattered axle
while the tire, rolling away from tn
general wreck, seemed to have crawle
off to die by itself, and leaned rustin
against one Of the charred timber'
The southwark view was limited to
long, low ridge of ugly, white-fecke
Y cotton stalks. Eastward the sun wa
breaking q pathway through the firing
of trees along another ridge, and a fair
line of mist, rising sluggishly in the il
tervening low ground. with the hollo'
, rumble of the train crossing an invisibl
bridge, told Of the presence Of soM