On a Slide-Board

At three o’clock on an August morning the press in the little printing-office on the summit ceased its clatter, and Corey Green brought out a bundle of _Stars_, wrapped in enameled cloth, to Bart Collamore. “Here’s your five hundred,” said Corey, “hot from the types.” “All right,” replied Bart “They’ll be on the hotel counters twenty miles away by six.” They walked down the platform before the Summit House. A dim light illumined the office, but the rest of the long building was dark. Only two other persons were awake—Frank Simmons, busy over the printing-press, and Luke Martin, the hotel watchman. Overhead an occasional star glimmered through the driving wrack, and the low east disclosed the first faint tokens of a cloudy dawn; but in the west frowned a vaporous battlement, black and threatening, from which a strong wind was tearing detached masses and rolling them against the mountainside. Now and then a few flakes of snow flew by on the raw gale. Lifting his slide-board from the platform, Bart set it on the cog-rail midway of the track. This rail was bolted to a wooden centerpiece on the ties, and consisted of two parallel strips of wrought angle-iron, connected by steel pins three inches apart, on which the cogs of the engine worked. He turned the nut on the brake-rod until the iron plates by means of which the speed of the board was retarded were in position under the flanges of the rail. Then he pulled on his gloves, jammed his cap down hard, and buttoned his reefer up to his neck. Corey glanced at the black western sky. “You’re liable to hit the storm going down,” said he. “Guess I can beat it out,” returned Bart. Seating himself on the slide-board, with the bundle of papers between his knees, he gripped the brake-handles. Almost of itself the board began moving. “I’ll be at the Base House in ten minutes!” he called back, as he sped away down the slope toward the north, while behind him the drone of the wind almost drowned Corey’s shout. “Good luck!” The slide-board was the conveyance used by employés and trackmen in descending the mountain railroad. Although perilous for a novice, it was easy of management for an experienced hand. It was of seven-eighths-inch spruce, ten inches wide, and something over a yard long. Three cleats screwed across its top kept it from splitting. Underneath were two sets of “shoes,” the forward of wood, the rear of iron, parallel strips half an inch thick and four inches apart, just far enough for the top of the cog-rail to slide between them. As Bart slipped downward, the black buildings on the summit were blotted out by driving clouds. Little by little he swerved westward, turning his back to the dawn, hearing only the hoarse murmur of the rising gale and the rattle of his board. Guide-books say that the three and one-third miles from summit to base may be covered by slide-board in twenty minutes. Actually, the record is two minutes and forty-seven seconds. This can be appreciated when one remembers that there is a drop of four thousand feet, and that the average grade approximates one in four. Bart had made the trip some hundreds of times in his fourteen years on the road. Every morning that summer he had gone down before daybreak, in order that the little paper printed on the peak might have early distribution among the various hotels. Faster and faster sped the board. The top of the rack was abundantly lubricated with oil from the cogs of the engine, and the grade was growing steeper. On the left a dim shaft flitted by, memorial of a life lost by exposure on the mountain years before. Bart put a little more pressure on his brakes. The stout birch handles, somewhat smaller than baseball bats and about as long as the board itself, were connected forward with the brake-rod running across the front in a hollow wooden bar, and with an iron plate under each flange of the rail. To retard his course, the rider simply pulled up on the handles, which were directly under his arms, thus lifting the plates against the flanges and pressing the board down harder on the top of the rack. The track curved northwest for the next fifteen hundred feet to the Gulf Tank, a water cistern on the left. The grade varied from one in four to one in eight. The wind, keen, strong, and shot with hurrying snowflakes, stung even Bart’s seasoned face. He had worked on the mountain long enough to know what was coming out of that inky bank ahead. Gulf Tank swept past, a square gray shadow, and the track gradually swung west. And now he caught it in good earnest. The moan of the blast had risen to a furious howling. Bullets of sleet pelted his cheeks. Right before him rose a black wall, the edge of the real storm. It looked almost as if it were solid. Catching his breath, he ducked his head, and bolted straight into the heart of the tempest. In a second it enveloped him, rain, snow, sleet and hail. His board whizzed faster over the wet, slippery rail. The grade increased, and he knew he had reached Long Trestle. Beyond lay Jacob’s Ladder, the steepest place on the line, pitched considerably over one in three. He must not go too fast there. It was more than a mile and a half still to the bottom. If the board once got away from him— Bart stiffened himself against the fierce blast, gripped the brake-handles hard, and pulled up on them. A stream of sparks trailed out on each side, as the plates bit at the flanges. He was leaning well forward now, boring head foremost into the yelling gale. His eyes were closed; he could not keep them open. Now the Trestle was past, and the Ladder lay just ahead. He could tell where he was by the feel of the track. His head was clear, his nerves steady. All he needed to do was to keep a good hold on those handles, and the board would soon carry him safely to the base. Suddenly his speed increased. He had struck the Ladder. The grade at its head was not far from one in two. Down he shot, lifting hard on the birch bars. What was that? It could not be that left brake-handle was buckling! Yes! Something had given way. Up came his hand, higher, higher, higher, yet there was no response of iron grinding against iron. For just a second Bart felt sick. The flange was only three-fourths of an inch wide. If that left plate once got out from under it, he knew very well what would happen. A single brake could never hold the board on the rail. On the next curve, if not before, it would bound from the track with tremendous velocity, and its rider would land somewhere on the rugged mountainside with a broken neck. Somehow, if he cared to live, that plate must never lose its grip on the flange. The Ladder was four hundred feet long and thirty feet above the rocks at its highest point. Bart was travelling forty miles an hour, so crossing the trestle took less than ten seconds. Before he left it, he saw what he must do. Instinctively easing up on his right bar, so as to bring an even pressure on both sides, he ran his left hand quickly forward down the birch stick, to locate the break. Not many inches from the socket his fingers found it, where a knurl, imperceptibly weakened by long use, had evidently yielded at last. Sitting where he did, he could just reach beyond the break by extending his arm full length, and he could exert only a slight upward pull. If he hoped to keep the board on the rail, he must immediately shift his position, so that he might put out his full strength. Several short curves were just ahead. To change one’s place on a narrow board flying down a mountainside at forty miles an hour through a pitch-black hurricane is no fool’s task. Very carefully Bart hitched straight forward, until his knees were upright, and he was able to lift strongly on the unbroken portion of the bar. His speed was now simply terrific. Round a curve he whisked, leaning far inward in the fear that he might ride the rail. Then, as his board settled down on a straightaway, he pulled up with all his might. To his horror, he found that with so short a leverage he could not press the plate against the flange hard enough to check his speed. The board was running away with him! Bart knew every yard of that track, every pitch and curve, from the engine-house at the summit to the Marshfield turntable; and he realized that this was the most critical minute in all his years of railroading. Two courses were open to him—he might stick to the board, or he might roll off. Which was the less dangerous? If he rolled off at that speed, the best he could hope for would be a fearful bruising, broken bones and insensibility. It would be hours before rescuers could find him; and hours in that storm meant death. If he stayed on, he took the chance of being hurled from the rail at some curve; besides, what would happen when he reached the bottom, if he ever did reach it? He decided to stay on. The slide-board took the curves at express speed. Time and again Bart thought it was flying off. He wondered to find himself still sitting hunched on the spruce, when Waumbek Tank slipped by. He knew it had passed, although he did not see it. But little more than a mile due west, and almost thirteen hundred feet lower, lay the terminus. Was this to be his last ride on the line? In a couple of minutes at the most the thing would be decided. Bart manned himself for the finish. On he shot, straining at the bars, head down through the pitch darkness. He was dashing against a forty-mile gale at an equal speed; that was equivalent to standing still in a hurricane blowing eighty miles. It shrieked round him with indescribable fury, striving to hurl him backward from his seat. His cap was torn away, and the sleet pattered like a sand-blast on his bare skull. Cold Spring Tank flitted past, and the last steep pitch was near, seventeen hundred to the mile. In a moment Bart was rushing madly down the descent. His head swam with the hideous speed. His board vibrated and trembled as it hurtled along the track. All seemed unreal, uncanny. But although dazed and buffeted, he never for an instant loosed his grip of the bars. A “green” man might have lost his head, and that could have had but one result. Almost sooner than he could think, he was at the bottom of the pitch, darting over the Ammonoosuc bridge. Only a few hundred feet more. The track, he knew, was clear to its end, for cars and engines were housed for the night. Now for one last, long, hard pull! Deaf, blind, numb, exhausted, bent almost double, he drained his strength to the dregs for a clutch on the handles; then he lifted, as if he would tear the flange from the centerpiece. There was a terrific shrieking as the iron surfaces ground together. Fire followed each brake. A building rushed by on the right—the carpenter-shop. Bart did not actually see it, but he knew it was gone. Then came the car-barn, the turntable, the engine-house and repair-shop, and the long wood-shed. Less than thirty yards more! His speed was slackening on the level grade, but it was still tremendous. And now the laundry was past—the last building. Twenty-five feet beyond it the cog-rail ended. Bart threw all that was left of himself into one final, mighty wrench. A second later he found himself rolling blindly along the ties, head over heels and heels over head, cuffed, punched, battered, as if a dozen flails were beating him at once on every part of his body. At last he came to a stop, a bruised, dizzy heap. After a little Bart sat up, tried his arms and legs, and found he could get on his feet. He felt himself all over. Luckily his bones were well padded with muscle, so none of them were broken. The storm was still blowing forty miles an hour, but by contrast it seemed to him to be almost over. He hunted until he found his bundle of papers; it had been tied tightly, and had not burst open. Then he limped up to the Base House. “Here are your ‘_Stars_,’” said he to the driver of the team, shivering outside. “I’ve done my part; now see if you can get ’em to Bethlehem before six o’clock.”