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Updated: July 14, 2025
We left Richmond June 16th, but our train could not cross the Appomattox River. The high water had careened the new trestle bridge. We walked over and on to another station, and a train from Burkville came after us. We stayed at Burkville until dark, and when we were ordered to board some box-cars, I found the door full, and they said not another could get in.
After the locomotive came the closed and mysterious box-cars, important with big numbers and initials in cabalistic sequence, indicating a wide and exciting range of travels.
But he knew that he would eventually go away from there from the untidy town, the railroad, the string of box-cars on the siding, and seek the new, the unexpected, an experience to be had only by kicking loose from convention and stepping out for himself. He thought of writing a Western story. He realized that all he knew of the West was from hearsay, and a brief contact with actual Westerners.
Elder invented a clip-spring to be attached to the cot and the side of the coach. It held the bed, and had sufficient "give" to make it steady. In lieu of the box-cars, there are now coaches of the American type, with windows and great sliding doors which permit of easy ingress or egress.
Not for nothing, in box-cars, by water-tanks, and in prison-cells, have I listened to bloody tales of man-handling. What if these three men are about to man-handle me? Heaven knows I have given them provocation enough. I think quickly. We are drawing nearer and nearer to the other two trainmen.
At the most pretentious shanty on the street Bryce turned in. He had never seen it before, but he knew it to be the woods-boss's home, for unlike its neighbours the house was painted with the coarse red paint that is used on box-cars, while a fence, made of fancy pointed pickets painted white, inclosed a tiny garden in front of the house.
Then there was nothing left but to pick my way through the night out along the P.R.R. tracks to shout in at the yard-master's window, "How soon y' got anything goin' up the line?" and, according to the answer, return to read an hour or two in Cristobal Y.M.C.A. or push on at once into the forest of box-cars to hunt out the lighted caboose.
The engine passed us, and we were all running with the train, some boarding on the side-ladders, others "springing" the side-doors of empty box-cars and climbing in. I caught a flat-car loaded with mixed lumber and crawled away into a comfortable nook. I lay on my back with a newspaper under my head for a pillow.
Kurt saw the glowing ruins of the elevators and a long, fiery line of box-cars burned to the wheels. Men were running and shouting round in front of the little railroad station, and several were on the roof with brooms and buckets. The freight-house had burned, and evidently the station itself had been on fire. Across the wide street of the little village the roof of a cottage was burning.
Knight reversed the engine, and they cleared the track for the freight. Andrews swung aboard. The station agent came running toward them. "What's this?" he demanded. "What's this train? Who are you?" "I'm running this train on government authority," answered Andrews calmly. "I'm rushing ammunition to Beauregard." He waved toward the box-cars.
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