Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/44

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN The negro feeder of the freight train was crushed under his engine almost against the fire box. He was singing hymns, delirious with pain. Harris begged the doctor to give the man something to end his hopeless suffering. The physician passed over a vial of chloroform.

"Don't give him all of it or you will kill him," he warned.

Harris turned his back and emptied the vial into a glass of whisky and I, holding my hat in front of my face to shield it from the blistering heat, held the glass out for the darky's groping hand. He downed it all, and died an easier death.

The tender of the freight engine remained on the rails. Its top was about level with the top of the cut. Fore and aft, the cut was blocked with wreckage, and it was a problem to get the recovered bodies away from the burning débris. The first car of the freight held lumber. Some of us wrenched three planks from the wrecked car and laid them from the top of the tender to the bank of the cut, a span of ten feet or so. When Harris essayed a gingerly trial trip the planks sagged ominously; so two volunteers stood beneath the center of the span and held the planks in the hollow of