The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-07-08

were at the wreck before the cries or
 fright and agony had broken out upon
 the awful stiffness following the crash.
 There was quick work and heart
 breaking to be done and, for the first
 few critical minutes, terrible lack of
 hands to do it. Cranford, the engineer,
 was still in his cab, pinned down by
 the coal which had shifted forward at
 the shock of the sudden stop. In the
 wreck of the tender, the ironwork of
 which was rammed into shapeless
 crumplings by the upreared trucks of the baggage car, lay the fireman, past
 human help, as a nasty side swing of
 BradfOrd's lantern showed
 The baggage car, riding high upon
 the crushed tender, was body whole,
 but the smoker, day coach and sleeper
 were all more or less shattered, with
 the smoking car already beginning to
 blaze from the broken lamps. It was
 a crisis to call out the best in any gift of leadership, and Lidgerwood's genius
 for swift and effective organization came out strong under the hammer
 blow of the occasion.
 "Stay here with Bradford and Jef- feris and get that engineer outv' he called to Van Lew. Then. with arms
 outspread. he charged down upon the
 trains company, escaping as it could
 through the broken windows Of the cars. "This way, every man of youy'
 he yelled. his shout. dominating the
 clamor of cries, crashing glass and
 hissing steam. ''The fires what we've
 got to fight! Line up down to the river
 and pass water in anything you can
 get hold of! Here, Groner"-to the
 train conductor, who was picking him.
 self up out of the ditch into which the
 shock had thrown him-"send some body to the Pullman for blankets.
 Jump for it, man, before this fire gets
 headwayw
 Luckily there were by this time
 plenty of willing hands to help. The Tfmaryoni is a mans country, and there were few women in the trains passenger list. Quickly a line was
 formed to the nearby margin of the river, and water, in hats, in buckets fmprovised out of pieces of tin torn
 from the. wrecked car roofs, in satu-
 rated coats, cushion covers and Pull
 man blankets, hissed upon the fire. beat it down and presently extin- guished it.
 Then the work of extricating the i'm prisoned ones began, light for it be- ing obtained by the backing Of Will
 Hams engine to the main line above the switch so that the headlight played upon the scene
 Lidgerwood WAS fairly in the thick of the rescue work when Miss Brew ster. walking down the track from the service car and bringing the two young women, who were afraid to be left be- hind, launched herself and her con- panions into the midst of the nerve raclzing horror.
 ''Give us something to do.'' she com manded when be would have sent them back, and he changed his mind and set them at work binding up wounds and caring for the injured quite as if they had been trained nurses sent from heaven at the oppor- tune moment.
 In very little time the length and breadth of the disaster were fully known and its consequences alleviated so far as they might be with the means at hand There were three killed outright in the smoker, two in the half filled day coach and none in the sleeper. six in all, including the fireman pinned beneath the wreck of the tender. Cranford, the engineer. was dug out of his coal covered grave by Van Lew and Jefferis badly burned
 and bruised, but still living, and there were score of other Woundings.
 more or less dreadful.
 Red Butte was the nearest point from which relief train could be
 sent,. and Lidgerwood promptly cut the telegraph wire, connected his pocket set of instruments and sent in the call for help. That done he trans ferred the pocket relay to the other end of the cut wire and called.up the
 night dispatcher at Angels. Fortu- nately McCfoskey and Dawson were just in with the two wrecking trains from the Crosswater hills, and the su-
 perintendent ordered Dawson to come out immediately with his train and a fresh crew if it could be obtained. cTo Be Continued-l z.