| Show SHE THOUGHT OF SOMETHING A mountain girls bright idea that saved the lives lires of Pasie ogen speaking of experiences on the railroad said a new kew york traveling man 1 1 bad a slight scrape ono one tune time on a mountain road in tennessee that may bedworth be worth hearing we were coming down a long grade of ten miles in a mixed train that is we had a gondola loaded with ties as the end car with our two passenger coaches and baggage car and I 1 should say we were making about 20 miles an hour on a track that would be treatise us very kindly if it sling us into eternity if we dared to add five fie miles tn rn t n hour to our speed when I 1 happened to lc look out ot of th the e rear door and saw a wild tram train of loaded coal cars swin swinging down after us they had evidently started at a tipple which we had passed only a few minutes before and when I 1 saw them they were vere going so BO fast that they distanced the men on the ground who w ho made a run to get on and stop then thell further flight I 1 made a wild abild rush for the conductor but before i reached him h had ordered the engineer to let out bis en engine ine for all she w as and in this way keep ahead of our chasers fortunately tuna tely we had no women aboard and ana the men could be kept in better control though it was all we could do to keep them from jumping off it was only a bhart time until we began to see that our salvation lay in tho the pursuing tram train flying the track because we had reach reached edour our limit and our train was swaying and tossing so that everybody was seared scared out of his w wits its I 1 know I 1 v was aa and I 1 just sat in my seat and held on waiting and listening Ji to the thunder of the train behind us M b bich ich was not yards away and gaming gaining every cery second secord it was far heavier than ours and I 1 knew that if a any body ent off the track it gasn wasn t going to lie be the coal tram train I 1 said a moment ago vv c had no women aboard I 1 meant w we e had none to speak of there M ivas as one but she was a homely mountain girl who seem to know anything an thing and because she sat quiet in in the corner and scream we thought she amount to enough to count I 1 was as looking at her in a dazed kind of ci a nay ay when hen au all of a sudden she lit out of her sent seat as if she had been shot out of it and knocking everybody ever body out of the way wa she dashed out of the rear door before anybody could touch her and me e thought she hud had jumped off but she she jumped for the open car on like a cat until she got to the far end of it and in in a second she was tumbling those ties off at the rate of a dozen a second they would hit the track and bounce aery which way but she kept piling them off the coal train getti getting n g closer cry second and at last art a couple of them stuck up in a cattle guard and i he next nest thing we e knew there was w as a teri crash rails and ties and tracks and coal new flew and the coal tram train r rolled lied over iti stielf elf and went down the hill hil I 1 in in a heap by george as that girl stood there in ler plain calico dress and her old sunbonnet and watched matched that tram train pile up a her feet I 1 thought thit that joan of are arc Cl cleata cleopatra Pata Q elizabeth grace darling and the lot of them a patching to her and as far as we were H ere concerned they she had saved our train and our lives and we tool took her on with us in triumph then we made up a purse for her big enough to buy a farm nith and ill bet eliea got more good clothes and jewelry and books and trinkets and things than any girl in in the mountains for we e never neer forget her she doesn doean t quite appreciate preci ate some of the fine things she las but what do we ve care for that ye we appreciate her just the same washington star |
