Katie

  She roused herself and climbed onto the side of the car, and through the unbroken windows peered down into the shattered interior of the coach.

  Henry looked up at her. “Philo!” he called, in a calm sad voice. “Mother is dead.”

  The moon shone ghastly pale over Philo’s shoulder and through the windows of the coach. At the bottom, against the shattered doors, lay Nedda Maitland, white and rigid.

  Henry stood over her, his feet braced against the broken doors, leaning against the upended cushions. The timber that had fallen from the ceiling had mashed her head to jelly.

  “Henry,” Philo cried, beating upon the windows with her fist, “come out! come out!”

  Henry turned aside and sought out the hole in the roof of the coach. When he put his arms through, Philo took them and quickly pulled him out.

  She scrambled up the embankment before him, lay on its lip, and helped to draw him up to firm ground.

  The affianced couple’s first embrace was on the edge of that ditch, and the cries of the injured and the wailings of the bereaved all about them, with Nedda Maitland crushed to death ten feet away and the fitful fire of the first English coach lighting their faces.

  “My poor Philo,” said Henry, with his eyes tight shut, “ours will be a melancholy honeymoon. . . .”

  Chapter 46

  AFTER THE WRECK

  In the first six cars of the train at least twenty-seven persons were dead, twice that many grievously hurt. In the last cars, the injuries were of a minor nature, with the exception of a ten-year-old girl who, standing in the aisle at the time of the crash, had fallen against the stove and suffered severe burns.

  The employees of the railroad and the male passengers who were uninjured did what they could to rescue the wounded and extract the dead. The casualties lay moaning on cushions re­moved from the cars, and many fashionable doctors who had va­cationed with their families in Saratoga and hadn’t in a long while attended to such unfashionable injuries as these, were busy with improvised anaesthetics and bandages. The dead were placed on planks from the smashed baggage car. Lifted stark and white into the moonlight, they were carried away from the train and laid in rows beneath a vast elm. Their hands had been folded across their bosoms and their serious injuries covered with cloth pulled from broken trunks – but there was no disguising the vio­lence of their deaths. Lanterns were hung from the lower branches, and by that light the survivors made a mournful in­spec­tion of their friends and families.

  In the latter cars many persons moved about and talked in a dazed manner and seemed unable to comprehend the nature of the accident. They asked continually, “When will this train start . . . ?” Others, who thought themselves too shaken to be of material assistance, looked on in terrible fascination, gripping one another’s hands and weeping.

  Within an hour, carriages and farm vehicles began to arrive from Highland. A farmer living nearby had heard the noise of the accident, hurried to the scene, and immediately sent his eldest boy off on a fast horse to alert the town. The farmer remained, and it was through his efforts that the engineer of the train was dug from beneath the wreck of his machine, both legs shattered and his arms burned with steam but still alive and conscious.

  In the second English coach, four men were at work extri­cating a man buried under the timbers of the wreck. He was in imminent danger of being crushed to death, but his cries – which could be heard from one end of the train to the other – were not from pain, but from his grief to be thus embedded atop the corpse of his wife.

  Even on a train populated by the most prosperous families of New York – perhaps especially on such a train – there would be sharpers and those who prey upon society, the dangerous ele­ment who could dress as well as their neighbors but possessed not a penny that had not been taken from someone else’s pocket. These men – and these women too – took advantage of the wreck, the darkness and confusion, to steal what they could from the wounded and the dead under pretense of helping them.

  Thieves smiled into the faces of those they robbed, who, con­scious but severely injured, could make neither articulate protest nor give resistance. By the morning, not a single object of value would be found on any of the dead.

  However, when tolerable order was restored to the scene, this outright theft subsided. The ring of spectators, all eagerly watching, made detection probable, and besides, by that time almost everything of any worth had already been seized.

  Two brakemen, when it seemed that the wounded were being sufficiently attended to, went ahead of the train a few feet and, by the light of the lantern still burning on the dying loco­motive, examined the track. They discovered that the spikes had been drawn from the ties and the bolts from the fish joints. The train had been wrecked deliberately, and the perpetrator of that crime was responsible for some untold – and probably untellable – quantity of misery. This news quickly circulated among the pas­sengers and added horror to a scene already possessed of a sufficiency of that quality.

  Philo and Henry, as soon as they had recovered themselves a little, sought help to remove Nedda Maitland from the wreckage of the car, but no one could be found who would assist. People were distracted, or concerned only with their own families, or pro­tested that the wounded were of greater moment than those who were past help. Philo and Henry removed Nedda them­selves.

  They found a lantern and reentered the compartment. They were dry-eyed, silent, and efficient. The timber that had crushed Nedda Maitland’s head had fallen from the roof in the over­turn­ing of the car, but once this had been removed, Nedda’s body slipped aside and slumped against the door. Her head was little more than a misshapen lump of bone and bloody flesh. Her limbs were already stiffened, and with her contorted hands she appeared to be supplicating them.

  Philo shuddered, and Henry took off his jacket and draped it over his mother’s head.

  It was difficult to maneuver themselves in the overturned com­partment, but Henry managed to lift his mother’s body away from the door so that Philo could take her feet. Henry scram­bled round behind Nedda’s corpse, cutting himself several times on broken glass, and took his dead mother beneath her arms. Philo carefully backed out through the hole in the roof of the compartment.

  They laid her out with the rest of the dead, stood before her for a few minutes, grasping one another’s hands and weeping. Then they turned themselves to the succor of those who still lived, but the incessant labor of the next hour did nothing to alleviate their grief.

  Henry worked with a shovel and his hands to free passengers still trapped in the overturned coaches. Philo went to the rear cars of the train and begged liquor for the relief of the injured, but very few were disposed to give up their flasks and bottles. Philo was shocked and indignant over this display of inhumanity.

  Finally, when the carriages and wagons had arrived from High­land and the most seriously wounded had been taken away, Philo and Henry stood aside to rest for a few moments. Out of the way of the majority of the spectators, they stood silent, grim, and exhausted near the embankment where their own car had been wrecked.

  They were startled by a noise within the overturned carriage.

  “Someone is still inside,” cried Henry, and began to slip down the bank.

  Philo tried to hold him back. “Henry,” she whispered, “that noise was from our compartment.”

  Just as Henry was sliding down the bank with the lantern in his hand, a black-sleeved arm emerged from the hole in the roof of the car. It carried the white bag in which Nedda Maitland had kept the diamonds that were Philo’s wedding gift.

  “Henry!” Philo cried in alarm.

  Henry looked back, but because he did so he lost his footing and fell painfully against the wreckage of the car.

  The man holding Nedda Maitland’s bag emerged from the hole in the compartment roof. By the light of Henry’s lantern Philo could see his face.

  The man was John Slape.

  Chapter 47

  OL
D BEN

  “Stop him!” cried Philo, even in her first surprise at John Slape’s presence, wondering if Katie and Hannah were nearby.

  Henry, still dazed six feet below her, shook his head to clear it, then raised the lantern high. The lamp shone in the angered, frightened face of John Slape.

  As he struggled to disengage his foot, which was caught be­neath a spar of the roof, Henry said evenly, “Sir, I think you have mistaken a piece of my baggage for your own.”

  John Slape growled inarticulately and looked quickly around. Seeing no one but a young woman in the darkness at the top of the embankment, he put down the case and from the roof of the car pried up a board full of twisted nails.

  Henry saw his intent and worked even more diligently to extricate himself, but John Slape was quicker. The board he held was about a yard in length; he carefully judged which side had more nails, turned that toward Henry, and then swung it with all the force he could muster at the young man’s head.

  When he was hit, Henry had just managed to free himself from the spar. He was knocked unconscious and slid down into the narrow space between the roof of the car and the embank­ment. He lay there wedged, unmoving.

  John Slape threw the board down on the man he had assailed, picked up the bag, and began to climb the embankment.

  Philo searched for a weapon. But at that place no wreckage of the train had been thrown, and the underbrush was not of suf­ficient size or weight. John Slape’s arm appeared over the edge of the embankment. He set down the case and began to pull himself up.

  Philo ran forward, and as soon as he had raised himself farther she kicked him, hard as she could, in the side of his head.

  Yelling in pain, John Slape tumbled down into the embank­ment again.

  Philo called out “Thief!” and help was not long in coming. The dead were laid out not far away, and the farmer who lived nearby and several of the employees of the train, uninjured, were keeping watch over them.

  By the time they got there John Slape had recovered himself and, growling his anticipated revenge, was crawling back up toward Philo.

  The farmer and the railroad employees had brought lanterns, and at Philo’s direction they held them over the embankment. The light shone on John Slape’s upturned face. His ear was bloody and all his hair matted with mud and blood.

  “That man,” said Philo, “was stealing the baggage from the com­partment in which we were riding. This case is very val­u­able. He attacked my fiancé, who is still unconscious.”

  Philo had anticipated that she must say no more than this against John Slape. It was best not to confuse the matter by protesting that his evil nature and criminal deeds were already known to her.

  John Slape, when he saw that he was to deal not with a single woman but with five or six men, hesitated. He slid down the embankment, landing against the inert form of Henry Mait­land.

  One of the conductors said, “I seen him hanging about the dead. I seen him with his hand in their pockets. I chased him off, but lost him in the dark. . . .”

  John Slape looked right and left, but the wreck itself blocked his escape. He might as well have been at the bottom of a well.

  The ticket-taker of the Saratoga Springs train said, “I don’t recall him from the train. I don’t recall you, Mister!” he called out to John Slape.

  “I do,” said the farmer. “This man has been hanging about the neighborhood for two, three days. Asking my boy questions about the cars.”

  John Slape’s eyes grew red in the light of the lantern.

  “I was on the train,” he said.

  “No, you wasn’t,” the ticket-taker declared again.

  One of the conductors concluded, “This is the man who wrecked the track.”

  “No!” protested John Slape.

  “My girl, out to pick berries, seen him down here this very evening,” said the farmer. “My girl said he was carrying a hammer and a bar.”

  “No!” protested John Slape, filled with terror.

  “You was the one,” said the head conductor grimly.

  Philo cried, “Please get Henry up! He’s badly hurt.”

  “We’ll get ’em both up,” said the farmer. He lay down on the edge of the embankment and reached down a hand. “Take it, Mister, come on up.”

  John Slape hesitated. The men on the edge of the embankment all smiled at him. Philo was frightened. She looked about her uneasily for Katie or Hannah.

  John Slape took the proffered hand and was pulled up.

  When at last he stood erect, one of the conductors hit him so hard in the stomach that he doubled over in pain. Jewels fell from the pockets of his coat onto the ground.

  A grinning brakeman took a pistol from his pocket and aimed it at John Slape’s head. “Move back a little, Mister, we’ve got an injured man here.”

  Two men went down into the embankment and lifted Henry from the wreckage. From above two more men grabbed him tenderly and set off immediately toward the place where the wounded were being loaded into wagons and carriages. “Come with us, Miss,” said one of the men.

  Philo followed immediately.

  “Don’t forget your case neither,” said the other.

  Philo ran back for the case of jewels, but she had to step within the circle of light afforded by the trainmen’s lanterns to do so. She looked up once more at John Slape.

  There was sudden recognition in his eyes.

  “You!” he cried.

  Philo took the case and ran off after Henry.

  The two men carrying Henry called out after a wagon that had just started off toward Highland, crying, “Another one!”

  The wagon stopped and, there being sufficient space for Henry, he was handed inside. A surgeon began immediately to exam­ine his wounds.

  Philo watched after the wagon as it moved down the moonlit road toward the north. There were only a few wounded remain­ing, and these were not serious cases. A number of the uninjured had decided to walk to Highland, and others had returned to the coaches. A number of men were beginning to clear the track of wreckage, and news was that another engine was on its way up from Marlboro. Yet the misery was not yet done. The wrecked engine still smouldered, and the dead were still laid out in orderly lines beneath two vast elms. The mourners were on their knees among the dead, sobbing. Around a fire built well to the side, a dozen drunken men were singing songs they remembered from the War.

  The two trainmen conferred for a time, and one went off toward the train. The other remained with Philo.

  “Are you certain that man was the one who wrecked the train?” Philo asked.

  The trainman nodded.

  “Wasn’t on the train,” he said. “Seen by the farmer’s children loitering about the tracks, seen with a hammer, found with jewels in his pockets.”

  Philo shuddered. It appeared that there were degrees of hein­ousness even when the crime was murder. To conspire to kill an old man when you knew he had thirty thousand dollars hid in his mattress was one thing; to wreck a train filled with strangers and families on holiday in order to loot the wounded and dead was altogether another.

  “What will become of him?” she asked. “Will he be taken to New York with us? Or will he go back up to Highland? Or Albany?”

  “That’s a man,” her companion replied with a contraction of his brows, “who don’t have much of a future.”

  At this moment he was rejoined by his companion, who carried in his left hand a long coil of rope. Philo stared at it.

  The two men started off again toward the embankment. Philo made to follow, but they signalled her away.

  “Sit and rest, Miss. And if you have any dead, weep over ’em.”

  Philo remained as she was, and the darkness swallowed up the two men.

  She looked around her once more and then, taking a round­about way, sneaked up toward the embankment from another direction.

  She nearly fell into the party of trainmen again, for they, with the farmer and John Slape, were moving
in a group away from the wreck and into the forest. Philo hid behind a tree until they were past, then followed at a discreet distance.

  They stopped at a vast oak – in the dark night all that could be seen of it was the massive trunk and the underside of the lowest branches. But these created a black tent that was more than fifty feet wide.

  The farmer said, “This is Old Ben. He won’t be the first man that’s been hanged from Old Ben’s branches.”

  “Hanged!” cried John Slape.

  The lanterns were ranged in a circle about twenty feet across beneath one of the greatest and lowest limbs of the tree. John Slape, with his hands tied behind him, was set in the middle of the circle. The trainman who had fetched the rope stood a few feet before him, and John Slape stared in fascination as a noose was fashioned at one end of the rope.

  Philo watched from a little distance, and she moved so that she could see John Slape’s face full.

  She knew that what these trainmen intended to do was wrong, that John Slape ought to be tried in court, that he ought to have benefit of counsel and clergy, that he ought to have opportunity to declare himself penitent. It even crossed her mind that if he were taken before justice, he might even be forced to tell where the money was that he had stolen from her.

  Yet Philo did not interfere. And she did not want to interfere. John Slape’s daughter, under his connivance and abetting, had murdered Philo’s grandfather and mother. He himself had been the cause of Nedda Maitland’s death, and Philo had watched him attempt to kill Henry.

  Now she found herself at the foot of his gallows, and she had no intention of looking away.

  John Slape began to plead. He claimed he hadn’t wrecked the train, that he had boarded the cars at Saratoga; but the ticket-taker again denied this, and the farmer testified, before God, that he had seen the man near the tracks that very morning.

  “And in your pockets,” said the ticket-taker, “we found watches and rings, and rolls of bills, all kinds of jewelry, and even stock certificates.”

  “They was mine!”