(New York Press, March 12, 1899)
Encounter with a ‘Snakehead’ at Paddleford’s
“Yes, sir-e-e-e, that red barn must be close on to a hundred years old, leastways that’s what I’ve been told,” said Moss Moseley, the mail man. “It was pretty well along then, and he said that he remembered it when he was a boy, when it was a schoolhouse instead of a barn.”
“I noticed the other day as I was coming up the Auburn branch from Geneva, that they’re tearing down the old shack. First off, the folks who settled down around Victor built it for a schoolhouse. Then they sold it, after twenty-five or thirty years, to old Eli Burgess, and he moved it over to Paddleford’s and stood it up close to the railroad, where the pike crosses the track, and turned it into a barn.”
“It’s been afire six or eight times; sparks from the engines did it, but somehow they couldn’t seem to burn it down.”
“If it hadn’t been for that barn, Jim Harrell, who died last fall in Syracuse, would have come nigh to going to Auburn Prison for a spell. As it was, he lost his job as express messenger on the Canandaigua run but the old barn got it back for him, as well as saving him from jail.”
“Jim told me about it when he was up here to the Red Men’s convention a couple of years ago. He was a younger, almost, when it happened, but he couldn’t have been so very young, because he was old enough to be express messenger between Canandaigua and Rochester.”
“That was before they had anything like solid steel rails, or newfangled fish plates, or anything like that. When the Auburn branch was first laid there wasn’t a pound of solid steel or iron rail used on the whole line, either, for that matter.”
“First off, they’d smooth off the right of way a bit, just enough to keep the cars from pitching over sideways and then they’s slap down chestnut ties, twice as big as the ties they cut now, about three feet apart, fill in between with gravel, if it was handy, and if it wasn’t they’d have the firemen dump the ash pans where filling was needed until the track was ballasted with clinkers up to the level of the ties.”
“After the ties were down, solid oak strips about three by three would be spiked to the ties, and then on top of the oak strips they’d lay long strips of three-eighths iron, with holes punched in them for smaller spikes. These strips of iron would be tacked into the oak, and there you are, with a roadbed rough enough to pound the buttons off your vest.”
“Those rails weren’t durable, of course. The iron strips would wear out in a year or two with the pounding of the engines and cars. The worst fault with them was they had a pleasant little habit of working loose at the ends. When a rail worked loose it would rattle around until finally along comes a train, wheel catches under the loose end and up curls thirty or forty feet of iron like a big meat skewer.”
“The rails weren’t particular about where they curled up, either. Sometimes they’d run up through the cab and pin the engineer or fireman to the top, maybe through their clothes, but oftener right through good, solid flesh. More usually, though, the snake-heads, as they used to call them, would pick out a coach and rip up the passengers. The bulk of the damage suits against the railroads then came from snake-heads getting too gay with the traveling public that had paid its fare and expected reasonable protection. Come to think of it, now, you never hear of anyone who’s riding on a pass being killed in a railroad accident, do you? Nit. It’s always the come-on who pays that gets right in the middle of the mix-up.”
“Now, the Auburn branch didn’t used to be immune from snake-heads any more than the rest of the railroads that had that kind of rails. It happened that one night as Jim Harrell was coming up from Canandaigua, he had with him an envelope with something like $2,500 in which he was bringing to Rochester here to Power’s Bank.”
“From Canandaigua to Rochester was a short run and the express company didn’t think it was worthwhile to give Jim a safe to keep the valuables in. Consequence was that Jim had the $2,500 in the envelope stuffed in his starboard hip pocket with a Colt’s to balance in the port pocket. They were running behind that night, dark and stormy it was, and coming down the grade through Paddleford’s the outfit was making as much as fifteen or 16 miles an hour, which was fierce going at that particular epoch in the development of railroad enterprise.”
“Right abreast of Eli Burgess’s red barn, a nice little snake-head was a-laying for the train. The engine and tender missed it all right, but when the express car came along the snake-head got right into the game. Up she curls with a rush, rips through the car floor and come whooping slantwise between Jim’s legs - he was standing up - and pokes a big hole through the roof.”
“Jim was scared stiff. He knew what happened, and when the engineer had heard the rumpus and stopped the train - they found him in a heap in the corner, mixed up with a lot of trunks and boxes. When Jim came to take account of the damage, the first thing he thought of - owing to the close proximity that the snake head had come to the pocket with the $2,500 in it - was the money. He didn’t find it and when he came to look himself over he found why he didn’t find it. That snake head had tore the top part of his breeches clean off, and the two hip pockets and the money and the revolver wee plumb gone.”
“Well, Jim and the crew hunted the car from top to bottom, climbing on to the roof and looked underneath, but not a sign of the gun and the money could they find. It was tough work, so they finally gave up until daylight.”
“Jim reported the loss, and the next day, bright and early, he went down to Paddleford’s on a handcar and commenced another hunt. He found the revolver in the bushes by the side of the track, opposite Burgess’s barn. He searched and searched, and Eli and his hired man helped him, but the money didn’t turn up. Jim figured it out that it had landed in the road, maybe and, and that someone had happened along earlier in the morning than he did and scooped it in.”
“Naturally, the company blamed Jim and insisted that he make good. Insinuated, the officers did, that he had put up a job with that snake-head to raise Cain with the car and help him get away with the dough. Finally, it came to a point where Jim either had to make good or quit the job, and not having the cash handy, he pulled out. They commenced to talk about prosecuting him. Jim worried like sin over it and lost flesh, until one day, three or four months after the thing happened, he got a letter from Eli Burgess, telling him to come down to Paddleford’s quick.”
“Jim didn’t let hay make under his feet in getting down there, you bet. Eli invited him into the house and grinned when he saw him. Then he fetched out a jug of peach brandy and a couple of glasses and made some fool remark about the weather they were having. Jim was so nervous that he couldn’t enjoy the brandy, which was a sure sign he didn’t feel right, and finally he blurts out:
“What’s up, Eli; is it anything about the money?”
“With that Eli dives down in his pocket and pulls out what looked like a wad of paper. ‘Count it,’ says he.”
“Jim looked at the wad and gave a whoop. It was not more than the envelope that the snake-head had lifted from him and the seal wasn’t broken. He tore it open, and there was the whole roll, all in one-hundred-dollar bills.”
“Then Eli told him where he had found it. It seems that they were shingling the old red barn. Eli put up a ladder on the side toward the railroad track and begins to climb up. When he got up to the eaves he happened to glance under, and he sees an old phoebe bird’s nest. Instead of that it was Jim’s envelope, all brown and dusty, but just as good as new, except for looks.”
“Jim and Eli, Jim told me, came to the conclusion that the snake-head had come up through the car with such force as to carry the envelope on the point through the roof of the car, and gave it a final jerk soon enough to send it with a slam under the eaves. It landed in such a way as to stick, and being sheltered from the wind by the overhanging room, it would probably have stayed here until it rotted before it fell down.”
“Anyway, Jim was so glad to get the money back that he didn’t care much how it got there. The company climbed down from its perch when they heard the story and saw the money and gave Jim his old job back, with more money than he’d been getting before. Jim had a photograph made of the red barn, and it hung in his dining room when I was down to Syracuse to see him just before he died.”
