Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1882 — Wolves on a Railroad. [ARTICLE]

Wolves on a Railroad.

A Toledo man, formerly of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad, left a good position with a good salary "on the Northern Pacific, and returned to Toledo to take the chances of getting smashed up on one of the railroads here, for less money. When pressed for his reasons for coming back, he rather reluctantly told the following tale : He said that as soon as he got his train he started out on his run, and one night at a certain station was side-tracked for a train that was following him. He ordered a brakeman to go to the rear and flag the expected train. The brakeman turned pale and refused, but declined to give a reason. He tried to induce other train men to go, but all refused. He took a lantern and torpedoes himself and went back some hundred paces. He soon heard a pattering of feet around him in all directions, and thought he had got into a sheep pen, until suddenly his ears were assailed with a chorous of snarles and howls, and he concluded he must be near a farm house well supplied with dogs, but ou raising his lantern, he saw the snow almost black with savage forms whose eyes glared at him like balls of fire. For the first time he realized that he was surrounded by wolves. His hair stood erect ahd his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. He hastily placed the torpedoes on the track and began to beat a retreat. The howling pack circled round him and he yelled to the engineer to back the train down to him, but his voice was drowned amid the demoniac howling of the gaunt savages which were snapping at his coat tails.* He kept them off with his Iml tern, whirling round like a Dervish, till he reached the train. In a few minutes he heard the torpedoes explode and the howls grew more furious. He said the whole prairie seemed alive with the brutes. He conceived a brilliant idea. He began to toss torpedoes to them, and could hear them explode, and by the sounds judged they were doing good execution. He said he threw out about 2,000 torpedoes, when he got orders to run to the next station. "When No. 5, the train following, got to the station he had left, she was thrown off the track by an obstruction. When daylight had arrived about LOOO dead wolves were found in the cut, all frozen stiff, find it was this that throwed No. 5 from the track. “So,” said he, “I made my runback, and told the Superintendent I guessed I’d have to get him to excuse me.”