A RAILROAD HERO

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 6, 11 February 1909, Page 207

A RAILROAD HERO

« When George W. Cook, Representative from Colorado/ took his seat in Congress last winter to play his part on that political stage of the nation, it was just twenty years'" since he played the star role in a thrilling drama in , real life that, but for him, would have been a tragedy with' a hundred victims. In the middle 80's he was appointed superintendent of the mountain division of the- Denver and . Rio Grande Railroad. It was a job that fitted him. The division headquarters were at Leadville, a mining _- camp lying high upon the eastern' slope of tho Rocky Moun- V * tains. Hore on a December midnight he sat. At an adjacent table a telegraph key nervously clicked the movements of the trains struggling through mountain and storm. A listless clerk recorded the monotonous instructions to the laboring trains. All was dull and commonplace. George Cook yawned, stretched his great limbs, and sighed for the days of snowslides and hold-ups. He bit the end off a cigar and struck a match. But that cigar was never lit. As he languidly lifted the match there came a hurried clicking from the telegraph key. The match halted in midair ; the clerk paused at his ~ work with listening ears while the little key danced out its tale. And this is what it told : The railway running west from Leadville skirts, the. flanks of the high Sierras for several miles, and then, clambering up a narrow cleft in the mountain mass, gains Tennessee Pass, the summit of the Great Divide of the Rockies, ten miles from the mining camp. To the left of-Jihe pass rises Homestake Peak, a mountain giant shouldering its - huge bulk into the blue thousands of feet above the littlo shanty- that did duty as a station- house on the summit of Tennessee. Up from this station, with its solitary telegraph operator, ran a trail half a mile above to where,, on the south face of the peak, clung tho Homestake mine, great in those days of silver. The workings of the mine honeycombed the peak. A long tunnol had been driven into the voin, and from it radiated drift and level, whence had been chamberei numberless tons of ore. On this wintry night, when George Cook sat listless in his office, the night shift of a hundred miners was delving in the mountain. It was just after midnight, when the lone operator at Tennessee Pass wa& roused by a tremor that ran like n shudder of an earthquake through the mountain. The next instant there smote on his ear a low, menacing rumble as of distant thunder. Rushing to the door of his cabin, his gaze swept the mountain, and he saw that a snow-field had slid from tho heights, and that the mine and miners were overwhelmed. He staggered to his key, and .with trembling fingers sent this message : ' Homestake mine swept away by snowslide. One hundred miners buried alive in the long tunnel.' George Cook sat frozen with horror as the telegraph key clicked out this message. But the instant it ceased ho was ablaze with white-hot energy. - In ten minutes every section boss on his division had been notified to rouse his crew, gather his tools, and stancl ready. In less than half _an hour, there swept out of Salida" one hundred miles to tho east, and Glonwood, orfb hundred miles to the west, double engine trains flying at express speed, tirelessly breasting the savage mountain grades and leaping along the rails in a flirtation with

death as they stormed toward the mountain top. Here and there the whirring wheels halted an instant to take on the waiting section crews, and then sped on, regardless of the sacred rights of mail or express lying sulkily on the sidings. George Cook had. given them" the track. \ „» In half an hour evory available shovel in Leadville — and there are. many in a mining camp — was aboard a train that steamed out of the town, carrying every man that drew pay from the railroad, saving a few left for imperative duty, and, with George Cook at the throttle, swiftly climbed the grade to the pass. " * ' As the tardy dawn of the winter day broke through the storm clouds it saw high upon the shoulder of the mountain peak two hundred eager- men boring away into the wall of snoAy that blocked the mouth of the . Homestake mine. Of course, it was> all hopeless ; not -a man but knew it as he bent to his shovel. But a cheery word from George "and he braced himself again to his task. And now as the shovels ate their way into the heart - of the fallen avalanche nature played a cruel trick upon the workers; on all sides the snow began to cave in upon them. But that didn't dishearten Cook. In the depths of the Wolft'one .and Morning Star and other great mines of Leadville were miners old and cunning in the art of - timbering and shoring up." great masses of rock and all manner of treacherous earth. If rock and earth, then why not snow? He leaped on an engine,- shot back to the mining camp, by turns threatened and implored the mine managers who were loath to let their best men go, and by night he had fifty of the most skilled miners in the west shouldering - up the great snow curtains that hung impending over his -men. Inch by inch and foot by "foot he crept into tho belly of the wrecked avalanche. -And now on the third day came a roar from Denver, in the valley where the magnates' of the railway sat in their oasy chairs. Competition with " the _ Union . Pacific and South Park Railroads was heartbreaking. They could not afford, they said, to jeopardise the intorests of their line by depleting its working forces to aid in a work that,' Itheir engineers agreed, was utterly hopeless. Cook was ordered to abandon the Homestake, send the men back to their places and keep the trains running. , "*" He obeyed one order and disregarded the other. The trains, though short of men, got through. From the little hut at the pass that had now become his headquarters ore hand directed the trains that came panting up the long .grades from east and west ,and the other was on the .pulse of every man fighting the snow wall that blocked in the _ Homestake miners. _ ■< . Then the poAvers at Denver roared again. Three times they fired George Cook, and three times he put the telegrams in his pocket, went up on the icy mountain and cheered tho boys to their task. On the fourth day doubt gave way to hope; on the fifth hope to certainty, and on the afternoon of the sixth the eager picks drove through the last of the barrier "and forth from the black mouth of the Homestake tunnel there .staggored a hundred haggard miners. Every man buried -beneath the five hundred feet of snow came forth alive. And George Cook? Next day he' -was back- ..at his desk in Leadville, pegging away at his routine work as . though it , were an eyery-day duty to snatch a hundred fellow-beings from a living tomb. " • It was heroism — and business, too. the powers in had time to denounce this flagrant breach of discipline and make him a horrible example, the tremendous increase of freight business that flowed into the Leadville office turned their thoughts into channels of peace and good-will, for Leadville shipped 1700 tons of ore a day at four dollars a ton freight, and -there were three other powerful roads fighting for it. The astonished eyes of the powers perceived that miner and merchant alike came crowding to ship over { George -Cook's road,' as^the Denver aud Rio Grande was henceforth known. / „ Tho mountain men of Colorado sent Ge_orge Cook to Congress. That is because he wanted to. go; - ' But if there is anything else on earth that he wants that these mountain men can roach, it is. his.