Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1907-01-16
MASTER MECHANICS STORY


they deliver their trains on time. Maze
Sampson left Medicine Bend with 20
at noon on his regular run and tried to
get west. But between the soldiers be-
hind him and the steers against him he
soon lost every visionary right he ever
did possess. They laid him out nearly
every mile of the way to the end of the
run At Sugar Buttes they held him
thirty minutes for the Moulton special
to pass, and, to crown his indignities,
kept him there fifteen minutes more
waiting for an eastbound sheep train.
Sampson afterward claimed that
Barnes Tracy, the dispatcher that did
it, was a gold Democrat, but this never
was proved.
1t was nearing dark when the crew
of the local freight 20 heard the dull
roar of the Moulton special speeding
through the canyon of the Rat. A pas
senger train running through the can
yon at night comes through with the
far roll of a thousand drums, deepen
ing into a rumble of thunder. Then out
and over all comes the threatening pur
of the straining engine breaking into
storm of exhausts until, like a rocket,
the headlight bursts streaming from
the black walls, and Moore ON the S11,
or Mullen with the SIS. or Hawksworth
in the lilo, tear with a fury of alkali
and a sweep of noise over the Butte
switch, past caboose and flats and
boxes and the 264 like fading light.
Just sweep of darkened glass and
dead varnish, a whirl of smoking
trucks beating madly at the fishplates,
and the fast train is up and out and
gonei
Twenty-nine, local, was used TO all
this. Used to the vanishing tail lights,
the measured sinking of the sullen dust,
the silence brooding again over the
desert with, this night, fifteen minutes
more to wait for the eastbound stock
train before they dared omen the switch.
Maize Sampson killed the time by going
back to the cabooSe to talk equities
with the conductor. 1t was no trick
for him to put away fifteen minutes
discussing the rights of man with him
self; and with an angel of a fireman
to watch the cab, why not? The 264
standing ON the siding was chewing her
cud as sweet as an old COW, with may
be 40 pounds of steam to the right of
the dial, maybe 1901 say maybe, be-
cause no one but Delaroo ever knew
when the sheep train whistled.
Sheep-nothing but sheep. Car after
car after car, rafting down from the
short line behind two spanking big
engines. They whistled, hoarse as pi-
o.. ct. ,,e.tt
the hill mile west of it, bore down the
grade throwing Dannah coal from both
stacks like hydraulic gravel.
No one knew or ever will know how
1t happened. They cat hauled men on
the carpet a week about that switch.
The crew of the Moulton special testi-
| fed, the crews or the stuck ttain 4v5t1s
fed, Maze Sampson testified, his con-
ductor and both brakemen testified.
the roadmaster and the section boss
each testified, and their men testified
but however or what it was, whether
the Moulton special fractured the
tongue, or whether the pony of the lead
engine flew the guard, or whether the
switch had been opened, or whether, in
closing, the slip rail had somehow fail
ed to follow the rod the double beaded
stocker went into that Butte switch,
into that Butte siding into the peace
able old 264 and the 20, local, like a
lyddite SHE'LL crashing, rearing, ripping,
scattering two whole trains into blood
and scrap. Destruction, madness.
throes, death, silence; then a pyre Of
dirty smoke, a wall of sicl1ening bleats
and a scream of kissing steam over
1000 sheep caught in the sudden sham
bles
There was frightened crawling out of
the shattered cabooses, hurrying up
of the stunned crews and a bewilder-
ing count of heads. Both engine crews
of the stock train had jumped as their
train split the switch. The train crews
were badly shaken. The head brake
man of the sheep train lay torn in the
barbed wire fencing the right of way,
], but only one man was missing, the fire.
( man of 20. Delaroo
Second 81 jumped west switch pass
ing track and went into train 20, en-
gine 264. Bad SPILL Delaroo, fireman
the 264, missing" wired Sugar Buttes
to Medicine Bend few minutes later
Neighbor got up there by 10 o'clock
with both roadmasters and the wreck
ing outfit 1t was dark as a canyon on
the desert that night. Benedict Nor
gan's men tore splintered car timber
from the debris and on the knolls back
of the siding lighted heaping bonfires
that threw light all night on the
dread pile smoking on the desert. They
dug by the flame of the fires at the
CHASTITY heap till midnight. Then the
moon rose, an extra crew arrived from
the Bend, and they got the derrick at
work. Yet with all the toll when day
broke the confusion looked worse con-
founded. The main line was so hope
lessly blocked that at daylight special
with ties and steel was run in to lay
temporary track around the wreck.