Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1899 — A STARTLING OBJECT LESSON. [ARTICLE]

A STARTLING OBJECT LESSON.

How* Mexican JUcaJde Learned Ron. of the Difficnttie* of Railroading. The old Southwestern engineer was telling tales of by-gone days down in Mexico and dwelling upon the Mexican’s ignorance of railroading. “Once, near Victoria,” said he, “we were loaded heavily with Iron, and we bit the usual drunken Mexican asleep on the track. Thein folks used to think a roadbed better’n a wool mattress. It was down grade and around a curve, and we were going at a fair clip, and, though we had air brakes, we couldn't bold up In time. We ground him up, and at Victoria, ten miles further on, we didn’t have any better sense than to report It Of course, the train was sidetracked and we were put In jail. Next day we were hauled up before the alcalde. He was a little, dried up man, with mahogany skin and snow-white mustache. It bristled fiercely, but I noticed that his eye twinkled a good deal and I sorter cottoned to him right away. We told him that we couldn’t stop the train in the time allowed us, and it was the truth. He said, through an interpreter, of course: “ ’l’ve heard all this before, xrivo of my people have been killed by trains In six months and I have let the train crews go. They said they couldn't stop. I’m going to see about this. Your train is on the sidetrack, coupled and loaded. We’ll fire up and go back to the place where you killed Vicente. We’ll run down at the same speed. When you come near to the curve you must try hai-d to stop. I will go in the cab with you.’ “Well, we fired up and went back three miles beyond the death spot Then we started forward again. Of course it was not my business to run too slowly. I wanted to show the alcalde that stopping in the space described was an impossibility. Old 93 was a quick engine, and inside of two miles, it being a down grade, we were doing a two-minute clip. We struck the curve at forty miles an hour. The alcalde had never in his life been on • train, and he was leaning out of the cab window, waving his big straw hat and shouting ‘Viva! Viva! As we sighted the spot where Vicente had been pulverized the airbrakes went on like the clamp of death. 1 was thrown to the floor of the cab myself. As for the alcalde, he shot through the window like a rocket, turned six somersaults and lit on his back in the sand thirty feet away. The train ground to * standstill, yards beyond the bloods stained ties. He came limping up, brushing the sand out of his white hair. I remember that bis mustache was all bent down on one side. He looked up at me and said simply, ‘Valga me Dios!* which is about equivalent to ‘Dera my buttons!’ We went back to town; he discharged us all and invited us to dinner with him. We stayed and pulled out that evening. Everybody ran pretty much on his own schedule in them times.”