The Newtown bee., 1909-12-10
HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH
 KEY. Stories That 0utrival Any In Fiction.

Stories That Outrival Any In Fiction.
 Three years ago as the Overland Limited dashed through the night, in the bad lands 45 miles west of Cheyenne, Wy, a rail broke in two and came up through the bottom of the baggage car. In an instant the train of nine cars was piled 30 feet high, while about and beneath the wreckage were more than 150 dead or injured human beings. A fright ful sleet storm with biting cold was raging, and to this the hurt and dy- ing lay exposed. The locomotive was wrecked so that it was impossible to cut loose and race ahead to the near est settlement with news of the dis aster. and it seemed as if nothing could be done to save the sufferers except to flag the next train, due in five hours, when, from under the wreck, on hands and knee stumps, came an apparition leaving a red trail behind. It proved to be Frank Shaley, telegraph lineman who had been sent up the road to locate c wire trouble, and who, with his sat cnel of instruments strapped across his shoulder, had been in the baggage car when the crash came. Clutching the precious satehel, he dragged him self forward, but his legs had been smashed off at the knees and he WAS bleeding frightfulIy "1'he telegraph! Cut in OF the telegraph" he shoEt- ed, but not a nan there knew which one of the score of wires to cut and Shaley could net tell without test ing. They threw rope across an arm of che of the lCles, passed a sling about the dying man and holsted
 him I'D. Then he cut and grounded
 tue wire and connected lis telegraph key. Tenderly propped by anxious hands. he began to send the call for
 the Cheyenne operator, meanwhile
 gazing stoically at the pool where his
 life blood ebbed away. At that un-
 usual hour of the right he found
 trouble in raising his' man, and he
 pounded his key for 70 minutes be-
 fore he got. an answering click. No
 Y terribly wrecked 4G miles west or
 Cheyenne. Send hospital train" he
 said. Then they pillowed his head on ! the satchel and an armful Of waste,
 while 40 miles away whistle
 shrieked through the night and
 brought engineer, fireman, and 200
 Japanese tumbled on to the Wrecking
 train, followed by the hospital train with doctors and nurses. But Shaley
 was gone when they came. Not a line on the ashen face betrayed the
 inhuman torture he must have un-
 dergone, nor the strain of turning l his mind from his own agony and im-
 pending doom to the little brass in
 strument with which he had saved
 scores of lives.
 Lee Fairchild was night telegraph
 operator in a signal tower on sin gle-track railroad running through
 Weldon, N. c. He had let a north
 bound berry train train into his
 block, and while it was burning up
 the track at the rate of 45 miles an
 hour, he was mortified to see a sOuth-
 bound excursion train,> laden with
 400 men, women and children, whiz
 by the signal he had set against it,
 250 yards up the track. One chance
 in a 1000 Fairchild saw to prevent
 head-on collision and a frightful slaughter-and he took it. As the locomotive of the excursion roared
 by, he stood for an instant on the sill of the window in the tower, then he dived flat, six feet forward and downward, landing on his hands and knees upon the roof of a passenger car. The impetus of the train was so enormous that it slid from under him almost the entire length of the car, and the impact all but snapped his back in two. But he clutched blindly, fetching up against a venti- lator, and there he lay for some sec onds, hardly able to stir hand or foot the breath knocked out of him. With in three feet was the bell rope, but he could not reach it by a foot, and to try to squeeze down between the ends of the cars would have meant being cut in two by the roof edges One thing only was left. With the last strength in him he crawled ovel the roof of the car to the engine poised a moment, leaped onto the coal in the swaying tender, ant
 scrambled forward to the engineer ir the cab. Stop! Stop! For God!
 sake, back up!" he shouted above tht racket. Not a second to spare. Dowr went the brakes, and the fireman ran ahead with a torch to check thu
 oncoming freighter, while the en
 gineer of the excursion train backed frantically, and on the floor of thu cab lay the senseless form of the mar who had saved a trainload of human J beings from hideous death.-[A. w