Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/28

214 frog. Hearing the racket behind me, I sprang to one side; but my toe touching the top of the rail prevented me from getting quite clear. I was caught between the corners of the cars as they came together, and heard my ribs cave in, like smashing an old box with an axe.

The car stopped just right to hold me as in a vice. I nearly fainted with pain and from inability to breathe. Fortunately, Mr. Simmons was watching me, and with the rare presence of mind due to long service, he called at once for the switch-rope. He wouldn't allow the engine to come back and couple to the car again, as it would be almost sure to crush out my little remaining life. It seemed to me that I should surely suffocate before they got that switch-rope hooked on to the side of the car, though I knew the boys were hustling for dear life; but I tell you, when your breath is shut off, seconds are hours. My head was bursting, and I became blind; there was a terrible roaring in my ears, and then as the engine settled back on the switch-rope, I felt a life-giving relief as I fell fainting, but thankful, into the arms of the boys.

I was carried to the yardmaster's office, every step of the way the jagged ends of my broken ribs pricking and grating as though they would punch holes in me, and my breath coming in short, suffocating gasps. The company's doctor was summoned, a young fellow fresh from college whose necessities compelled him to accept the twenty-five dollars a month which they paid for medical attendance for damaged employees. He cut my clothes off, and after half murdering me by punching and squeezing, asking all the time what I was "hollering" about, finally remarked:

"There's nothing much the matter with him; few of his slats stove in, that's all." He then bandaged me, and a couple of the boys half carried and half led me to the boarding-house, where I was mighty glad to be, for I was pretty well exhausted.

There I lay, unable to move without help, for six weeks, visited by the doctor daily for a while, and then at less frequent intervals; but some of the boys were with me nearly all the time. They kept me posted as to what was going on in the yard, and cheered me up greatly by telling of their own various mishaps in the past. I found, to my surprise, that few of them had escaped broken bones and smashed fingers, and I was assured that broken ribs were nothing, absolutely nothing; I ought to have a broken leg or dislocated shoulder pulled into place; then I would know something about it.

Their talk restored my spirits wonderfully; for whereas I had been disconsolate at the thought that I was now a physical wreck, fit only for a job of flagging on some road crossing at twenty dollars a month, I now found that the boys whom I had seen racing about the yard all day,

shouting, giving signals, and climbing on and off cars, had nearly all of them been much worse broken up than I was, and some of them several times, yet they were apparently as sound as ever. Even Simmons, who appeared to be a particularly fine specimen of physical manhood, told me that he once fell while running ahead of a car, just as I had been doing, and twelve cars and the engine passed over him, rolling him over and over, breaking both his legs, and, as he said, mixing up his insides in such a way that his victuals didn't do him much good for a year after.

Shortly after my return to work Simmons got one side of a new freight train, and,