him that very afternoon, although I didn't hear of it until the next day, and never saw him at all, which was just as well, I guess; for if I had known of it at the time, I dare say I should have lost some of the nerve I felt so proud of.
He was a car-repairer, and was at work between two cars on the "dead-head." The car-repairers' signal was a piece of sheet iron, about a foot square, painted blue, and riveted to a four-foot iron rod, sharpened on the bottom so that it could be stuck in a tie vertically.
There was a most rigid order that none but a car-repairer should handle that signal in any manner, and no one but the man that put it up must take it down. All cars needing repairs were run in on this track, and when the men were working on them, they stuck their signal in a tie ahead of the last car put in and in plain sight of all the men working about the yard.
This was a notice to the train men not to touch any car on that track, or to put any more in there, until the repair gang were notified, so that they might look out for themselves, take down their signal, and put it up again outside the outer car, as before.
In this instance, the signal, carelessly put up, had fallen down, and a conductor, having a crippled car to go in there, glanced down the track, saw no signal up, opened the switch, pulled the coupling pin on the crippled car, and gave his engineer a signal to kick it in, which of course he did.
As the unfortunate man was stooping over the drawhead of a car further back when the kicked car fetched up, the drawhead, link, and all were driven clear through his body.
They said he let one agonizing scream out of him and died. Of course, as soon as they heard him yell, they ran from all directions, but we, being in a distant part of the yard, knew nothing of it. A switch-rope was hooked on to the car on whose drawhead he was impaled, and the same engine that did the deed pulled it back.
He was a poor man, with the usual poor man's blessing, a large family, so we made up a purse to bury him, and the company gave his wife and two oldest children employment in the car-cleaning gang.
my first day's work.
I reported to the yardmaster ten minutes ahead of time. Sticking his head out of the door, he called out:
"Hey, Simmons!"
A fine, large, sunburned, black-bearded man appeared in answer to the summons.
"Here's a green man I want you to break in," said the yardmaster; "put him on top, and let him pass the signal for a day or two until he can handle himself."
"All right," said Simmons, who I soon found was the conductor of a "drill," a switch-engine crew. He took me out to the engine, and said to the engineer, a grimy, greasy individual:
"Bill, here's a fresh fish Dawson wants to break in. I'll put him on the head car and let him pass the signal."
"All right," said Bill, sourly.
I was then told to mount the car next the engine and repeat the signals of the man in the middle of the train to the engineer.
That seemed simple enough, but I hadn't been doing it more than ten minutes when the engine stopped and Bill called out:
"Hey! Hey! you there, dominie, parson!"
Seeing that he was addressing his remarks to me and not liking the impertinence of such a disreputable-looking individual, I said:
"Well, what is it? Are you talking to me?"
"Yes, I'm talkin' to you; an' ye better keep a civil tongue in yer head, I tell ye. What kind of a signal is that ye're givin' me? Wha' d'ye want me ter do, anyway?"
"I don't want you to do anything, and I don't care what you do. I'm giving you the signal just as I get it."
"No, ye hain't nuther, an' don't ye give me no back talk. Say, where do you come from?"
"I am from Walton," said I.
"Sho! I thought so—another Walton punkin husker. Say, Simmons, take this blamed ornament o' yours down off o' here, an' give me a man that knows one signal from another, or I'll smash all the cars in the yard before night."
Then he gave the engine a jerk back that nearly threw me off the car.
"Oh, he's all right," said Simmons, "He's a little green, but he'll get over that." Then to me, "Be careful how you pass the signals, bub, or the engineer can't tell what he's doing."
I told him I was giving them just exactly as the other man did.
"Well, that's all right; Bill is kinder cranky, but you mustn't mind that."
