CHAPTER XIII. A NEW DANGER There is a superstition among railroad men which, strangely enough, is seemingly warranted by experience, that when one wreck occurs, two more are certain to follow. And, sure enough, two more did follow, though neither was so serious as the one at Vinton; which, indeed, still lives in the memories of those who helped clear it away as the worst that ever happened on the division. Not so serious, that is, in delaying the traffic of the road, but more serious in another way, since both entailed loss of life. The first one occurred just three days after the wreck at Vinton. A freight-train had taken a siding about five miles east of Wadsworth to allow the through east-bound express to pass, but the brakeman on the freight, who was a green hand, forgot to throw the switch back again after the freight-train had backed in upon the siding. He climbed up into the cab, and he and the engineer and fireman sat there chatting away, all unconscious of the impending disaster. In a moment, they heard the roar of the approaching train, and then it flashed into view far down the track. They turned to watch it, to admire the clean lines of the engine as it whirled toward them; then, as it reached the switch, they were horrified to see it turn in upon the siding. There was no time to move, to cry out, to attempt to save themselves. An instant of horrified suspense, and the crash came, and the two engines, together with the cars immediately behind them, were piled together into a torn and twisted mass of wreckage,—wreckage through which blistering steam hissed and about which in a moment hungry flames began to lap,—wreckage from which no man came forth alive. But, as the accident occurred upon a siding, the main track was not even blocked, and the wreckage was cleared away without the feverish haste which marked the wreck at Vinton. The third wreck occurred at Torch, a little station on the east end of the road, when both engineer and fireman of an east-bound freight-train forgot their orders to take the siding there, to make way for the west-bound flier, and continued on full speed past the station. The conductor recognized the error at once, but he was away back in the caboose at the other end of the train. He sent a brakeman flying forward over the cars to warn the engineer of his danger, but, before he had got forward half the length of the train, the express hurtled down upon them, and both engineer and fireman paid for their forgetfulness with their lives. This wreck was so far east that it was handled from Parkersburg, and the gang from Section Twenty-one was not called out.