The herald-advance. (Milbank, S.D.) 1890-1922, 1904-08-12

lips OF the doomed man, the bridge
gave way as If it had been a stack OF
kindling wood and
The Locomotive Dropped
with the Kissing of steam thirty feet
to the bottom of the arroyo, cross
wise to the track.
The baggage car, smoking car and
chair car followed the locomotive into
the stream and were swept away. All
the occupants of these cars ave three
men, persisted. and had not the roof Of
the chair car burst asunder, none
would have escaped. The fireman, as
the locomotive went over, was thrown
out, and, managing to grasp a piece
Of wreckage from the bridge, floated
with that to a curve made by the
caving bank and crept out of the
water. He ran toward Eden, meeting
on the way Operator F. M. Jones and
his wife, who had already started up
the track.
Notify Pueblo" came the voice of
the running man, "the ain gone
down and everybody is killed.
Heard Cries for Help.
HNSA dS liz opohC, ICidtCo tAC opC-
rator, there were cries coming from
the distance. The two men ran to
where the bridge had been to search
for victims of the disaster. When
they reached the spot all cries for
help had ceased.
Relief trains with physicians, wreck
and pile-driving outfits and scores Of
uyOrkpono unrn h,,rrinH from, fhn nifv
The end of the Pullman sleeper
Wyuta extended four feet over the
brink, while broken timbers and twist
ed rails hung still further over. The
arroyo had been widened to over a
hundred feet at the point where the
pridge had been. The water tore a
zigzag course across the trairie to a
depth Of thirty feet in several places.
There
Was But Little Left
OF the baggage car, a few rods, a truck
or so. dimly seen in the muddy water,
and a half-buried iron safe.
The great locomotive, the boiler
free Of the trucks, the cab and tank
gone, lies where it fell.
"A quarter Ol Il ulllc W LuS cast lay
the chair car, windows gone, three
fourths filled with mud and sand. A
hundred feet farther on was the
smoker, bottom up against a sand bar.
Five hundred men scanned every
inch of the river and it's surroundings
a few hours after daylight. They
waded in the stream and carried out
r,,,l hor,ip,nI hnliaC which ware
found at widely separated points,
some Of them miles from the scene OF
the accident. And since the sun rose
Over the Drenched Land,
stretchers with s~and-covered, dripping
bodies were carried every feW min
utes to the railroad tracks where the
death train awaited them. Many OF
the bodies were almost naked, the
clothing having been torn completely
off. Many of them were slightly
bruised, probably from the first shock
Of the wreck, but there was little
blood visible when they were re-
moved from the stream. Without
doubt the great majority were
drowned like rats in a trap when the
cars were plunged without a mo-
ment's notice into the whirling water
thirty-five feet deep, 100 feet wide and
with a current strong enough to carry
thousands of pounds of weight nearly
a mile before subsiding.
Some searchers worked all night
and all day and never once thought Of
eating or resting.
Identified Very Slowly.
Bodies recovered were identified
very slowly because many of them
were strangers here, who had been to
the fair at ST. Louis and other East
ern points.
The mountain river still PUSHES
with the impetus Of the flood and the
arroyo has a clear, tiny stream trick
ling along where the fatal mass of
water rushed a few hours before. The
earth on either side is swept clean by
the food.
The walls Of the so-called Dry creek
are rugged, irregular, caving and
widened, but still SO narrow that it is
almost impossible to understand how
the great coaches, the baggage car
and tender could have been swept SO
far without becoming lodged against
the sides. Most of the bed of the
creek is now visible with little streams
weaving about the strips of sand,
forming islands of mud and sand
which are being searched for bodies
that may lie buried in them.