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Show ADVENTURERS' CLUB ' HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES V JJ OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELF! "Murder Machine" HELLO, EVERYBODY: George H. Dowd of the Bronx, N. Y., sends me a letter that starts out, "This is the first time I have ever tried to put an experience of mine down on paper. Shall I stop?" Well, the answer to that is: For Pete's sake, no, George. Because George has turned in one hum-dinger of a yarn. It's the story of a barrage of flying steel that was set off, not by powder or any other sort of explosive, but by actual horsepower 28 horses, galloping hell-bent for election, drawing behind them a machine that spued death-dealing projectiles right, .left, front and center. It's the only case I ever heard of where projectiles were thrown by horses. Maybe some of those sword-rattling dictators dic-tators of Europe will pick up this idea and use horses when their supply of powder runs low. I haven't done any experimenting experi-menting with this idea, and I don't know how well it would work. But I'll tell you George Dowd's story and you can figure it out for yourself. It happened along about the middle of July, 1913, on the Idaho Falls Development company dry farm, a few miles northwest of Idaho Falls, Idaho. That farm was a seven-thousand acre wheat ranch. Out in that section they harvest their wheat in July, and George, who was just a young fellow then, had a job working on one of the big combine harvesters, sewing up sacks of grain. There were three of those harvesters in the field one drawn by mules, a second drawn by a steam engine or tractor, and the third, on which George was working, drawn by 28 head of horses. Those combine harvesters have a group of cylinders in them, hitched to the wheels and geared up to revolve at great speed when the horses are walking. George was working on a wooden platform on that harvester, directly over those revolving cylinders. cylin-ders. But the cylinders weren't revolving at the moment, for the big machine was stopped for some minor repairs. The repair Piece by piece the platform was being shot away. man was putting a draper belt into the header, and the driver and' the header man got down to help him, leaving George alone on the machine. Steam Pressure Explodes Safety Valve. And then the fun started but it wasn't any fun for George Dowd! It was the steam tractor hauling one of the other harvesters that started all the trouble. There was too much steam in the boiler and all of a sudden the safety valve popped off with a bang. "And within the same second," says George, "off went the 28 horses with the machine I was on in what you would call a real runaway!" Well, sir, a 28 horse runaway is something to write home about, but that was only the beginning. The men who were putting in the draper belt were knocked clear of the machine at the first jump the horses made. Then those animals were off down the field at a full gallop gal-lop with the great unwieldy machine careening along behind them! And as they dashed along, the cylinders of the harvester, which revolved at high speed when the horses were just walking, began revolving at a speed greater than even steel can stand! The horses hadn't gone a dozen feet when steel cylinders began be-gan bursting from centrifugal force and shooting out of the machine ma-chine in all directions. The first one ripped up through the boards on which George was standing ripped up with a deafening crack like the report of a cannon and shot past George's nose, straight up in the air. Another one followed and another. Cylinders, gears and bits of broken metal came flying out of that machine in a veritable barrage. lie Clung to the Harvester's Reeling Platform. "I was on the U. S. S. Leviathan for 22 months during the war," George says, "and I have heard her guns bark a good many times. And I would say that the reports these gears and hunks of metal made when leaving the machine were about as loud as those made by a six-inch six-inch cannon." And George, standing right in the midst of that hail of flying steel, couldn't do anything about it. He was having all he could do to cling to the swaying, reeling platform of that harvester while the horses galloped gal-loped along at breakneck speed. Piece by piece and board by board, the fir flooring of the platform was shot away until it was even with the heels of his shoes. If he'd thought of it, he might have jumped, but for the first few moments he was too bewildered. He could feel the wind of those deadly metal projectiles as they whizzed by him. One of them hit him in the calf of the leg. Others ripped great holes in the canvas awning over his head. "There were pieces of steel weighing three or four pounds shot from that harvester," he says, "that were picked up later more than a mile away." Help Was Already on the Way. But meanwhile, help was already on the way. The repair man had a good saddle horse tied nearby and in less than half a minute he was in the saddle, riding hard. The runaways had almost a quarter of a mile head start, but gradually he closed up that distance. The barrage of steel had stopped by then, and George was safe as long as he could cling to his perch on the shattered platform. He did cling to that platform. He clnng to it for a full mile, while the harvester reeled and swayed and threatened to tip over. But at the end of that mile the repairman caught up with the lead horses and brought them to a slop. George says that harvester was nearly new when It started, but it was a total wreck when it stopped. George, on the other hand, was lucky. His only injury was where that one piece of flying steel had hit bis right leg. "And that," he says, "wasn't serious." Copyright WNU Service. |