The Elbert County tribune., 1908-10-01

door Of the car. and we were alone !
in the dark. hungry and thirsty.
We found a part of bale Of hay.
and scattered some on the fioor and
went to sleep. and / never slept bet
ter on a spring mattress. but dreamed
OF home. and all the fun l had ever
had. making 1t hot for other people,
playing tricks on them, but now all
was changed, and 1 felt that l was on
my own resources. making my own
way in the world. handicapped by al
ways having an easy life.
Along towards daylight in the morn
ing some horses began to paw and
WINNER and collie dog began to
bark in the car, and some sheep bleat-
ed in tn ecar. and as morning came.
and little light came in the car,
which was hitting the high places,
running at high speed. so It shook
us out of our hay bed, we looked
around starved and stiff, and sick at
heart.
When the train stopped l walked
through the car. over bags OF oats.
and looked at the horses. and wished
! was horse. The dog was watch
dog, and when L got near him he
snarled and grabbed mouthful of my
new pants and held on and shook me.
and l yelled and got away
AS it grew lighter / saw a box near
the dog. and in it were some square
things that my practiced eye, as the
son of an old hunter. told me were
dog biscuit. sort of petrified dough
and meat scraps made for high class
dogs that are not allowed to eat
scraps from the table, and / told my
chum we would have breakfast. 1t
took me half an hour to steal few
dog biscuit away from that dog, and
all the time he was trying to make
his breakfast off of me, but / finally
poked out enough for breakfast, and
called my chum to partake of the re-
past. He said he always had to have
some kind of breakfast food before
he ate meat, so l cut into bag of
oats. and gave him a handful, and
there we sat and chewed away, trying
to imagine that we were happy. and
thinking of coffee and pancakes and
sausage, and wafiies, and biscuit and
honey
1t was probably the worst breakfast
ever eaten by anybody. The dog bis
cults were so hard we had to pound
them on the floor with curry comb,
and that did not help the flavor much.
After breakfast we laid down on
the hay with horse blanket over us.
and slept till noon, when we heard
water being poured into the tin trough
for the horses, and we quenched our
thirst, and ate more dog biscuit, and
| hoped that other boys would hear OF
our distress, and that no boys would
ever run away from a happy home
again.
My chum and talked over the de-
preston in the money market, and the
panic in Wall street, and tried to
think we were better off than million
aires who did not know where the
| next meal was coming from, and with
our stomachs full, and no care on
our minds. we wished we could give
some of our dog biscuit to the hun
CRY rich.
While we were thinking OF the good
one can do with few dog biscuit,
there was a terrible crash, the car
jumped on the ties Ind reared up,
and finally rolled over and down a
bank and all was still as death. ex-
cept that the boiler of the engine was
blowing off steam. and the horses
were groaning. and the confounded
dog that chewed me was dead
Men ran over the cars, and chopped
with axes. and finally fire engine
began to throw water on the burning
cars, my chum and were wedged un-
der bales of hay, one of my legs was
asleep, and we both yelled murder,
and finally the fire was out, the side
was chopped out of the car and they
took us out and put us in an ambu-
lance and the brakeman who had let
us into the car said: Tickets, please, .
and the ambulance was driven to a
hospital at East st. Louis, and they
wanted to amputate us, Just for prac-
tice. One of the hospital attendants
asked me who / was, and when / told
him l was "Peck's Bad Boy" travelling
for my health, he said: We'll, you
are certainly getting what is coming
to YOU" and l guess that is no lie.