"Well," he snapped back, "there's a good chance for a fine smash-up this
night."

That scared me almost out of my wits, and I looked at my copy of the
order. But it read all right, and yet I felt mighty creepy. About thirty
minutes afterwards, I heard a heavy step on the platform and in a second
the hind brakeman came tramping in, and cheerfully saluted me with,
"Well, I reckon you've raised h--l to-night. 21 and 22 are up against
each other hard about a mile and a half east of here. They met on a
curve and engines, box-cars, livestock and freight are piled up in fine
shape."

"Any one killed?" I asked with a blanched face and sinking heart.

"Naw, no one is exactly killed, but one engineer and a fireman are
pretty badly scalded, and 'Shorty' Jones, our head man, has a broken leg
caused by jumping. You'd better tell the despatcher."

Visions of the penitentiary for criminal neglect danced before my
disordered brain; all my knowledge of telegraphy fled; I was weak in the
knees, sick at heart, and as near a complete wreck as a man could be.
But something had to be done, so I finally told the despatcher that Nos.
21 and 22 were in the ditch, and he snapped back, "D--n it, I've been
expecting it, and have ordered the wrecking outfit out from Watsego. You
turn your red-light and hold everything that comes along. In the
meantime go wake up the day man. I want an operator there, and not a
ham."

When the day man came in, half dressed, he said, "Well, what the devil
is the matter?"

Speech had entirely left me by this time, so I simply pointed to the
order, and the brakeman told him the rest. Never in all my life have I
spent such a night as that. The day man regaled me with charming little
incidents, about men he knew, who, for having been criminally negligent,
had been shot by infuriated engineers or had been sent up for ten years.
He seemed to take a fiendish delight in telling me these things and my
discomfiture was great. I would have run away if I hadn't been too weak.
About seven o'clock in the morning, after a night of misery, he
patronizingly told me, that it wasn't my fault at all; the despatcher
had given a "lap order," and that the blame was on him. Well! the
reaction was as bad, almost, as the first feeling of horror. I went home
and after a light breakfast, retired to bed, but not to sleep, for every
time I would close my eyes, visions of wrecks, penitentiaries, dead men
and ruined homes came crowding u