It was pretty serious business. They caught him as he fell, and the boy lay on Blackburn's arm limp as a dead wire: nobody thought after they saw that hemorrhage that he would ever live to have another. I was scared sick, and I never saw a man so cut up as Doubleday. Blackburn was cool in a second, for he saw quicker than others and he knew there was danger of the little despatcher's dying right there in his tracks. Blackburn stood over him, as much at home facing death as he was in a fight or in a despatcher's chair. He appeared to know just how to handle the boy to check the gush, and to know just where the salt was and how to feed it, and he had Doubleday telephoning for Dr. Carhart and me running to a saloon after chopped ice in a jiffy. When anybody was knocked out, Blackburn was as regular a nurse as ever you saw; even switchmen, when they got pinched, kind of looked to Blackburn. That day the minute he got Fred into Carhart's hands there was Fred's trick to take care of, and nobody, of course, but Blackburn to do it. He sat in and picked up the threads and held them till noon; then Maxwell relieved him. Doubleday was waiting outside when Blackburn left the chair. I saw him put out his hand to the night despatcher. They spoke a minute, and went out and up Third Street toward Fred Norman's room. It was a gloomy day around the depot. Everybody was talking about the trouble, and the way it had begun and the way it had ended. They talked in undertones, little groups in corners and in rooms with the doors shut. There wasn't much of that in our day there, and it was depressing. I went home early to bed, for I was on nights. But the wind sung so, even in the afternoon, that I couldn't quiet down to sleep. II We were handling trains then on the old single-order system. I mention this because in no other way could this particular thing have happened; but there's no especial point in that, since other particular things do happen all the time, single order, double order, or no order system. The wind had dropped, and there was just a drizzle of rain falling through the mountains when I got down to the depot at seven o'clock that Sunday evening. I don't know how much sleep Blackburn had had during the day, but he had been at Fred Norman's bed most of the afternoon with Doubleday and Carhart, so he couldn't have had much. About half-past seven Maxwell sent me over there with a note and his storm-coat for him and the three men were in the room then. Boy-like, I hung around until it was time for Blackburn to take his trick, and then he and Doubleday and I walked over to the Wickiup together.