A Lost Hero

NOW, while Donny stood holding Ben Bow by the bridle, the old horse reared, plunged violently, snapped his halter, and broke away. The boy, at the same instant, was hurled to the ground. The ringing of hoofs and whir of wheels made strange sensations in his ears. He thought what a fool he was to be knocked down by old Ben Bow.

Then he tottered to his feet. Complete darkness had come. There was an unearthly silence. Then a moan, then a howl and a shriek arose which reached from group to group, from house to house, from square to forest. Human and animal cries blended in one piteous appeal for mercy.

Again the unknown power smote the lad to the earth, which had become a raging sea. It rocked--it rolled. Terrified, the child no longer attempted to stand. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled.

The trees whistled overhead. Flocks of birds seemed to sing through the air, striking against the telegraph wires. The atmosphere, which but a few moments ago reeked with heat, took on a grave-like chill. Again the earth heaved and swayed beneath the frightened youngster, who fell upon his face, vainly clawing the ground for the support which it denied him.

The station was only twenty yards away. There, all the people were in a turmoil. While endeavoring to regain their feet, some were violently thrown upon the wooden platform. Others, holding to the side of the building, felt with stupefaction the boards totter beneath their touch. Was judgment at hand? Had the end of the world come? The terror of a nameless danger unmanned the stoutest heart. Women shrieked and prayed. Men cursed and groaned.

Donny had now joined the stricken group. They huddled together until another shock threw them one upon another. Delicate women became nauseated as if in mid-ocean. Sturdy men who had faced bullets in the Civil War without wincing, lost self-control. They surged; they fought; they comforted each other; they cried aloud.

At this moment a frightful tremor shook the earth. The station building gave sickening creaks; then it toppled with a crash.

Yell now followed yell. The crowd, that but now waited the joyous greetings of friends, was battered by the bruises of the earth and hurried by fright into a contagious state of mania. The bodies and faces of the people changed almost beyond recognition. Maddened with fear, stunned by the last concussion, they stampeded.

The cry rang from mouth to mouth: "To the woods! To the hill! Home! Home!! Home!!!" They swayed; they rushed; they parted; they ran. Struck as by an invisible enemy, they fell prostrate in the powdery dust. They picked themselves up again and panted in their flight. A voice close to Donny's side rang above the uproar: "Good Lord! It is an earthquake!"

Like birds before a tornado, the people scattered to the right, to the left,--this way, that, and were gone. Donny found himself, dazed and alone, upon the cross-ties, groping toward the oncoming train. He thrust out his hands and stood a moment piteously crying, "Papae! Papae!" the most bewildered little fellow in all that frightened town.

To crawl up the track, to meet the train, to board her, to shriek at her, to get to his father, to cling to the cow-catcher, perhaps, till the engineer stopped for sheer mercy,--this was the nearest approach to a purpose that the child had, as he beat along the track, stumbling, falling, up again, down again, shaken by the rolling earth, and blinded by darkness more awful than he had ever seen or thought of.

A strange, thin dog, without a collar, whined at his feet as he pushed on, and licked his hand and followed him like his own. Huge, dim forms rushed alongside the embankment, making unearthly sounds. Dragons could not have seemed more dreadful; but they were only cows. Huge pine-trees bent to the earth with rapid, vibratory motion as if a giant's hand clutched and shook them by the roots.

All the time the awful rumbling of the earth went on; it sounded as if the world were turning herself over, and thrashing to and fro in a fit of anger; before every convulsion she uttered a roar which seemed as if it came from a metal ball bowled along a giant alley beneath. It reached its climax by trilling the letter =R-r-r-r-r!= in a mighty voice. Then came the shock.

Suddenly, as the child was making his way through the horror and desolation of this scene, he felt himself clasped in the outstretched arms of a figure hurrying from the opposite direction. The two came together in the dark with a jolt, and recoiled.

"Goramercy!" said a quavering voice. It was the speech of the old Negro track-walker, taking two days to get to his dying daughter because he could not afford the railroad ticket that would have brought him to her in two hours. Donny recognized the high, cracked, pathetic tones which had addressed him at the station.

"De track's busted!" panted the Negro. "De rails is done gone twist wid de shakes. Dey lays like er heap ob corn-shuck in de win' up yander. Dat ar train don' know hit, an' she'll go to Day ob Jedgment, an' ebery soul aboard ob her! I'se run like de nation fer to warn de town!"

"Oh, there isn't any town to warn!" cried Donny. "It's all run off! There isn't anything left but the earthquake and me--and this pup--and nobody to do anything--and my papae's aboard that train! Oh, what shall we do? What shall we do?"

"Run, honey, run!" said the old man, more hopefully. "Mebbe we'll head her off some ways or 'nuther. Run for 't! Run!"

The dirty old black hand clasped the tender little white one, which nestled into it gratefully. What it meant at that awful time not to be alone,--to feel a human touch, to know that a human heart beat beside you,--one would have to be in the child's place to understand.

II.

THE two ran, plunging up the distorted track which swelled and shook beneath them, toward the coming train. As they came abreast of the second little station, known as the West End station of Summerville, an idea shot like hope itself through the confused brain of the hurrying boy.

"I know where the torpedoes are!" he cried, shrilly. "The torpedoes they put down to stop trains! I've seen 'em. I play with the superintendent's boys sometimes. If I was bigger I could bu'st open the doors and windows and find 'em."

"I'se an ole man," shouted the Negro, "but I'se been a tough one befo' Freedom. I sole for two thousand dollars onct. I kin smash 'most anythin' yer give me, honey, if hi'm put to 't. If der's anythin' wantin' to be bu'sted to stop dat ar train, I reckon I kin bu'st."

Whirling along, in the dark and the uproar, the two panting figures rushed against the little station. It was very dark. In a lull of the raging earth the distant whistle of the train could be distinctly heard.

"In there!" cried the boy. "There! There! Oh, don't you think perhaps my papae took some other train? Oh, she's coming! I'll help. I can help. Oh, the door's too big for me!"

But not too big for the ragged old arm that felled it down as an axe fells the last rings of a stricken tree. Not too big for the remnant of strength in the once muscular slave. Not too big for the fiery old heart that trouble and toil and hunger and loneliness had never quenched.

The door went down--glass crashed--another door yielded--two wild figures fell into the superintendent's private office. The little one climbed like a monkey upon a shelf he knew of, and then the two rushed out of the rocking building into the resounding air, on which human shrieks smote steadily, as it was said they did all that awful night. Again, the whistle of the train--near now--nearer--

As the pathetic couple ran up the torn and twisted track, Donny began to sob aloud; but all he said was, "Papae! Papae! Papae!"

"Gib 'em to me, sonny," said the Negro, with the authority of age and danger. "I kin run faster'n you, honey! Goramercy, dar she am!"

The old man seized the torpedoes, and rushing away with them, vanished in the darkness. The unknown, collarless dog followed him. Donny, sobbing and calling his father's name, pushed on as well as he could by himself. As he ran he tried to say his prayers, but all he could remember was, "Our Father who art in heaven."

Then he thought, how soon might his father on earth be father in heaven, too? He could not say that prayer. The boy, like many an older and wiser than Donny, only cried instead of praying. As he ran along in this sad fashion, something hit against him, whinnying in the dark. It was Ben Bow, the horse he had ridden ever since he was a baby. Now, this comforted the lad incredibly, to have one of the family with him.

III.

THE old man and the train were now face to face. The locomotive came cautiously, for the shocks had penetrated far up the road, but too fast--far too fast. Where the track had gone to pieces, a mass of twisted rails and tossing sleepers and furrowed earth, a bank--what is called a high bank in Southern topography--raised itself just in the turn of time to have sent the derailed train plunging down.

The old Negro watched the approaching flare of the head-light as he ran on, with a grim, defiant eye.

"I stump ye!" he said aloud. He shook his trembling, black fist at the locomotive. Stumbling along, his old bundle over one shoulder, and the torpedoes clutched in the other arm, being thus encumbered--for it did not occur to him that he could throw away his bundle, he was so poor--he tripped and fell. His foot caught; it is unknown in what,--in a twisted tie, or perhaps in a crevice of the cracking earth.

When he tried to rise, something held the hero down. He reached his whole length forward flat upon the road-bed, and with great precision and with a coolness that one cannot think of now without emotion, he laid one torpedo on each rail, exactly where it needs must lie to give the warning through the crushing wheel.

Now for the second time the old man and the locomotive regarded each other. Her fiery breath was close upon him. Above the uproar of the reeling earth the shriek of the train sounded in his deafened ears. Once again, the strong, black fist was clinched in the approaching monster's face.

"I dare ye!" he cried. "Come on! I dare ye!" He pulled himself up with a mighty wrench. But the unknown power held him. He felt the claws of the cow-catcher. He gave one low cry:

"Lord, I'd like to got dar an' seen Juno Soo afore she died--"

Then he closed his eyes, that he might not see what would happen, clasped his hands above his gray head, and gave his manly soul to God.