The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling RuinWalker, James Herbert
History
The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling Ruin
Down the Cambria Road, past which the dead of the River Conemaugh swept
into Nineveh in awful numbers, was another scene to-day--that of a young
officer of the National Guard in full uniform and a poor deputy sheriff,
who had lost home, wife, children and all, clinched like madmen and
struggling for the former's revolver. If the officer of the Guard had
won, there might have been a tragedy, for he was drunk. The homeless
deputy sheriff with his wife and babies swept to death past the place
where they struggled was sober and in the right.
The officer of the National Guard came with his regiment into this
valley of distress to protect survivors from ruffianism and maintain the
peace and dignity of the State. The man with whom he fought for the
weapon was Peter Fitzpatrick, almost crazy in his own woe, but
singularly cool and self-possessed regarding the safety of those left
living.
A Man who had Suffered.
It was one o'clock this afternoon when I noticed on the Cambria road the
young officer with his long military coat cut open leaning heavily for
support upon two privates of Company G, Hawthorn and Stewart (boys). He
was crying in a maudlin way, "You just take me to a place and I'll drink
soft stuff." They entreated him to return at once to the regimental
quarters, even begged him, but he cast them aside and went staggering
down the road to the line, where he met the grave-faced deputy face to
face. The latter looked in the white of his eyes and said: "You can't
pass here, sir."
"Can't pass here?" he cried, waving his arms. "You challenge an officer?
Stand aside!"
"You can't pass here," this time quietly, but firmly; "not while you're
drunk."
"Stand aside," yelled the Lieutenant. "Do you you know who I am? You
talk to an officer of the National Guard."
"Yes; and listen," said the man in front of him so impatiently that it
hushed his antagonist's tirade; "I talk to an 'officer' of the National
Guard--I, who have lost my wife, my children and all in this flood no
man has yet described; we, who have seen our dead with their bodies
mutilated and their fingers cut from their hands by dirty foreigners for
a little gold, are not afraid to talk for what is right, even to an
officer of the National Guard."
A Big Man's Honest Rage.
While he spoke another great, dark, stout man, who looked as if he had
suffered, came up, and upon taking in the situation every vein in his
forehead swelled purple with rage.
"You dirty cur," he cried to the officer; "you dirty, drunken cur, if it
was not for the sake of peace I'd lay you out where you stand."
"Come on," yelled the Lieutenant, with an oath.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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