Quincy High School - Goldenrod Yearbook (Quincy, MA)

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THE GOLDEN-ROD 9 “Course I didn’t know anything about it at first until—well, just listen! “All of a sudden, I felt a mighty tug on iny left foot, and if I hadn’t (with great presence of mind) of pitched for- ward and grasped hold of one of the sleepers, I might have tumbled off for a few hundred feet to my death, or worse. I was startled, to say the least, and as soon as I had made secure my grip, I began to look solicitously about for Red. “I found him at last, his pale face peer- ing up out of the darkness below, where he was hanging by one hand to my foot. Imagine that! He had stumbled off the trestle, of course, and by a truly mar- velous piece of luck, had managed to cling to my pedal-extremity in falling. It saved him, too; but, well, it nearly fin- ished me, and so it was with very little ceremony and some degree of impatience that I hoisted him up and rolled him in a heap between the rails. He was some shaken, believe me, and it was quite a while before I could get him to stir an inch. I do believe that the shock had sobered him up a bit. Well, anyways, with some persuasion, he finally arrived at the conclusion that almost any place was more desirable than our present one, and so pretty scon he began to show signs of moving on. “Now, of course, we didn’t know for sure just how far we’d been going on this deuced trestle before the slip occurred; and so, naturally, the delicate question as to which direction we should take arose, and we argued it out as sich—as the poem goes. Now, Red was all for turning back (his retiring nature, I suppose), but I, being as you all know, more of a pro- gressive sort of a fellow, argued that in- asmuch as we didn’t know just where we were in the trestle—might be nearest the other side, for all we knew—we might just as well go ahead, as we’d probably encounter much the same dangers either way we should go. Sounds logic; now, wasn’t it? “Well, Red, he was obstinant, at first; but finally he gave way under the sheer force of my arguments, and we went on under; well, on; Red mumbling things eloquently under his breath in his own quaint fashion. “It was more risky than I had thought, too; and we soon found that about the only really safe way to progress at all, and that wasn’t entirely so, was by the now time-worn hand and knees method. We tried it, and, believe me, it was pain- fully slow. We went on like this for what seemed like hours, or years maybe, stopping now and then to rub our sore knees and extract a few splinters and then go on again. It was a hectic night, be- lieve me; and black as pitch, too. “Time went on, as usually, I suppose; although it did seem as though it was slowed up a bit. We hadn’t been saying much to each other—except maybe a cuss word or two—when, all of a sudden, Red had a bright, gleaming idea— his first, too, I think. He stopped short for a moment, overcome by the novelty of it, then blurted forth all at once in a gasp: “ ‘My Gawsh!’ he said. ‘Sav! W-what if a train should come along now we’re stuck out here!’ And he repeated weakly, ‘My Gawsh!’ “Well, you know, it did suggest possi- bilities of embarrassment, at that; and for a moment, even was slightly intimidated —but for a moment, you understand— my natural optimism, or whatever you may call it, asserted itself at once, and I immediately commenced to prove by con- structive argumentation that such a thing was but the merest possibility, might never happen, and probably never—but, er well, you know how it is when even the fates and elements are against you, for sure and certain the night breeze wafed to my well-shaped cars the faint, shrill shriek of a siren, and we saw the faint pin-point of a light far, far down the tracks. An engine was coming! We were shocked, to say the very least! “Red, he really acted scared—even looked as though he might get panicky and scramble off the trestle or something in his haste, but for my firm hand. You

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8 THE GOLDEN-ROD SAD TALE OF THE ANCIENT PROSPECTOR Stuart Buck, F.’29 There were nine of us seated about the fire on that bleak November eve, back in the year 18—. The flames in the hearth were crackling merrily, as flames will; and the smoke from our various pipes was so thick that—to coin the expression —one could actually cut it with a knife. No one spoke. In fact, we were all silent —each man deeply engrossed in his own particular thoughts of days long gone by. Outside, the wind shrieked and whistled; and, ever and anon, the shutters of our lonely cabin crashed and banged with an ominous thud against the thick wooden sides. This dull, but insistent pounding, seemingly at our very door, suggested to my imaginative mind the weak and futile knockings of some pitiful creature, ex- hausted of all his resources — weakly imploring our attention with his faltering fist. At the threshold of our shelter I could vividly picture a white, drawn face with hopeless, staring eyes; and for a moment could barely restrain myself from leaping across the room with a bound to fling wide the door and reveal what horror might be crouching outside. Suddenly someone stirred uneasily— thereby breaking the tension somewhat— and, after what seemed to be a moment of hesitation, asked in the harsh, cracked voice of someone who has not spoken for some time, “If somebody couldn’t tell us a story or something to pass the time away ?” Through the blue-gray haze of tobacco smoke I seemed to sec every figure in the little room stiffen toward him at once, as though he had committed some great sacrilege in breaking in upon our reveries so abruptly; and no one obliged at first; but finally, after what seemed to be many minutes of deadly silence, the angular figure of the eldest of our band unwound itself slowly, and, with an introductory “Ahem,” he began to speak in a reminis- cent sort of a tone, stroking his thick, stubby growth of a beard all the while and puffing dreamily at his corn-cob pipe. “Boys,” he said, “do you know, this night with the wind, and storm, and everything, makes me think, somehow or other, of another night like it that I spent (under somewhat different circumstances, however), many, many miles from here. As some of you know, I was, at one time in my career, a prospector for that elusive mineral, gold; and, in the quest of it, have hiked and tramped many a long, weary mile over deserts and val- leys, and sometimes along the rails like an ordinary tramp. At one time, I was connected in a professional sort of a way with another would-be goldcr, an- swering, as a rule, to the name of ‘Red Pete,’ not a bad sort, you know, al- though addicted, in his weak-willed sort of a way, to frequent intercourses with a gurgling flask which he carried about in his hip-pocket. “Well, on the night I was speaking of, Red and I were hiking along the rails in a great flurry or hurry or something, for some reason or other that I don’t seem to remember, to reach the next turn before morning. It was an exceptionally dark, black night, too; not a star in sight and the moon was well, among the missing. And to cap the climax, Red had to pick this occasion to become incapacitated to such an extent that it was by dint of main strength that I maintained by good influ- ence in keeping him in the straight and narrow path, and it was all of that. In fact, to tell the pure and unadulterated truth, we couldn’t see a blamed thing for two feet ahead of us—couldn’t, at least; Red wasn’t caring very much just then whether he saw anything or not. “Well, anyways, we were stumbling along like this, when all of a sudden we came to one of those big railroad bridges or trestles that they have out West over the canyons—some of ’em hundreds of feet deep, too.

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10 THE GOLDEN-ROD know, although I freely admit that even I felt certain queer sensations wandering from the small of my back to up and around my ears—queer, shivery feelings —not necessarily fear, you understand, of course. Well, I suppose my clear head and firm nerves saved the day for us at that awful moment, for Red was all set fora wild monkey scramble up the rails into the witchy darkness beyond, probably to tumble off into the bottomless pit below. With really amazing insight and keen precision (if you understand what I mean), I saw clearly mapped out in my trained brain the one and only course possible under the circumstances. It was, of course, to await calmly and patiently the inevitable by securing a firm hold on the rail running along below the tracks, and to hang on this until the train would pass over. Really a master-stroke of thought now, wasn’t it? No panic, no uncertain scrambling (along the rails, no well, eh nothing, as they say); really the only sane course, as I had it. Of course, all this passed like lightning through my trained mind; the only difficulty being, of course, to persuade Red, who, after all, was only a common sort of a fellow, sub- ject to his passions primarily. 0 well, it was quite a feat, but my personality won out in the end, and in due time we were both hanging under the rails; I, patiently and philosophically; Red, fretfully. It was cold, too, hanging there—and it got colder—much colder. “We hung there for quite a time before the train came; in fact, we hung there for a very long time. It wasn’t pleasant, either, to endure Red’s biting remarks, but, O, well I suppose every Napoleon has his Waterloo, as they say—although this might not fit the case here. It was quite a night. In fact, I really believe that that train was twenty miles away when we first saw its light and heard the whistle. You know yourself how a light will show up on a dark night, and how sound will travel out in the desert. Now that I think of it, it probably was more than twenty miles at that. Well, any- ways, I’m sure of one thing; my arms were mighty sore by the time that train arrived. It was a freight train, too, and about five miles long, or so it seemed. It rattled, and banged, and shook the trestle until I really wonder now how we managed to hang on through it all. Matter of life and death, I guess. Well, when it was all over we hung there, limp and weak as a pair of wet dish-rags—too exhausted to move. It really was a har- rowing experience! I was the first to recover, and, naturally, concluded that the next step would be to pull myself up over the rails and resume the—er delight- ful little excursion. Easily said—but, well, I couldn’t get over that rail. Now that’s a fact, whether you may believe it or not; but that long, cold wait had sapped even my mighty strength. I wiggled, twisted, squirmed, kicked, and made several other kinds of contortions, but, alack, ’twas of no avail. I simply could not rise to that occasion. A rather embarrassing moment, to say the very least. And behold, Red was in the same difficulty. We kicked and squirmed sep- arately, together, alternately, and several other different kinds of ways—but no use. “What cannot be done, cannot, as some philosopher said, I believe; and we cer- tainly couldn’t get over that rail. I re- laxed for a moment to think things over in my own quiet way, somewhat ham- pered, however, by Red’s scathing criti- cisms concerning what he termed my pricelss judgment. “Suddenly he gasped: ‘Say! My bag o’ nuggets is slipping off. What’ll I do? I can’t let go for one second even. I’m nearly done for as it is!’ “Just like him to be thinking of his gold at a time like this—the miser! It seems he was in the habit of carrying around a belt with pockets for his nuggets, and it was probably slipping off. O well, I wasn’t below offering a helpful sugges- tion : “ ‘Say,’ I said, ‘why can’t you let it slip down to your foot and then pass it