CHAPTER IV
BLIND FOR LIFE
Bart's first thought was of his father. He instantly leaped from theplatform.
As he did so there was a violent explosion in the storage room, thesashes were blown from place outright, and Bart dodged to escape ashower of glass.
He was fairly appalled at the suddenness with which the flames envelopedthe interior, for they shot up in every direction, and the partitiondividing the shed appeared blown from place.
Rockets were fizzing, giant crackers exploding by the pack, and coloredchemicals sending out a varied glow.
Bart dashed for the front--a muffled cry caused him to hurry his speed.His father had uttered the cry.
Dazed by the light, his eyes filled with smarting particles of burnedpowder, Bart suddenly came in violent contact with a human form just ashe turned the corner of the shed.
Both nearly upset in the collision. At first Bart fancied it might beone of the burglars, but peering closer he recognized the friendlyroustabout.
"Told you so!" gasped the latter in a desperate fluster. "Fire--I'llhelp you."
"Yes, quick! run," breathed Bart, rushing ahead, "My father's in thatburning building!"
Bart was thrilled. The main room of the express shed was one bright blurof brilliancy and colored smoke.
It rolled and whirled, obliterating all outlines within the room.
"Father! father!" shouted Bart, dashing recklessly in at the opendoorway.
He could not make out a single object in that chaos, but he knew thelocation of every familiar article in the place, and made for the chairin which his father usually sat.
"Father!" he screamed, as his hands touched the arms of the chair andfound it empty.
The sulphurous flames nearly choked him, the heat from the cracklingwooden partition singed his hair, but he could only grope about blindly.
"Here he is," sounded a suffocating voice.
"Where, oh! where?" panted Bart.
He threw out his arms wildly, groping to locate the speaker, whom heknew to be the roustabout. "Where is he--where is he?"
He had come in contact with the roustabout now, who with all histimidity was proving himself a hero in the present instance.
"Lying on the floor--stumbled over him--I'm on fire, too!"
Bart's feet touched a prostrate form. It was moved along as Bart stoopedand got hold of the shoulders.
The roustabout was helping him. They dragged together, stumbling to thedoorway on the very verge of fatal danger, and reeled across theplatform.
The roustabout jumped to the ground. Once there he gently but in amasterly way drew the inanimate form of Mr. Stirling from the platform,and carried him over to a pile of ties outside of the glow and scorch ofthe burning express shed.
Bart anxiously scanned his father's face. It was black and blistered buthe was breathing naturally.
"Overcome with the smoke--or tumbled and was stunned," declared theroustabout.
Excited approaching shouts caused the speaker to glare down the tracks.Half a dozen people were hurrying to the scene of the fire. Theroustabout with a nervous gasp vanished in the darkness.
Bart was hovering over his father in a solicitous way as a nightwatchman and a freight crew appeared on the scene. There was a volley ofexcited questions and quick responses.
No means of extinguishing the flames were at hand. The newcomerssuggested getting the insensible Mr. Stirling over to the street beyondthe tracks a few hundred yards distant, where there was a drug store.
Bart ran for the hand truck on the platform, saw two of the men startoff with his father on it, and hurried back to the burning express shed.
He had hoped to save something, but one effort drove him back, realizingthe foolhardiness of repeating the experiment. The building and itscontents were doomed.
The crowd began to gather and grew with the moments. A road officialappeared on the scene. Bart made a brief, hurried explanation and ranover to the drug store.
To his surprise his father was not there. Bart approached the druggistto ask an anxious question when the companion of the latter, aprofessional-looking man, spoke up.
"You are young Stirling, are you not?" he interrogated.
"Yes, sir," nodded Bart.
"Don't get frightened or worried, but I am Doctor Davis. We thought itbest to send your father to the hospital."
"To the hospital!" echoed Bart turning pale. "Then he is badlyinjured--"
"Not at all," dissented the physician reassuringly. "He was probablyovercome by the smoke or fell and was stunned, but that injury wastrifling. It is his eyes we are troubled about."
"Tell me the worst!" pleaded Bart in a choked tone, but trying toprepare himself for the shock.
"Why, one eye is pretty bad," said the doctor, "and the other got thefull force of some powder explosion. They have good people up at thehospital, though, and they will soon get him to rights."
"I must tell my mother at once," murmured Bart.
He left the place with a heart as heavy as lead. It seemed as if onefurious Fourth of July powder blast had disrupted the very foundationsof all the family hopes and happiness, leaving a blackened wreck wherethere had been unity, comfort and peace.
If his father was disabled seriously, their prospects became a verygrave problem. Bart, too, was worried about the loss to the expresscompany. The books were probably out on the desk when the firecommenced, the safe was open, and the loss in money and records meantconsiderable.
Bart felt that he was undertaking the hardest task of his life when hereached home and broke the news to his mother--it was like disturbingthe peace of some earthly Eden.
Mrs. Stirling went at once to the hospital with her eldest daughter,Bertha. Bart, very anxious and miserable, got the younger boys to bedand tried to cheer up his little sister Alice, who was in a transport ofgrief and suspense.
The strain was relieved when Bertha Stirling came home about eleveno'clock.
She was in tears, but subdued any active exhibition of emotion untilAlice, on the assurance that her father was resting comfortably at thehospital, was induced to retire.
Then she broke down utterly, and Bart had a hard time keeping her frombeing hysterical.
She said that her mother intended staying all night at the side of hersuffering husband and had tried to send some reassuring word to her son.
"You must tell me the worst, you know, Bertha," said Bart. "What dothey say at the hospital? Is father in serious danger? Will he die?"
"No," answered the sobbing girl, "he will not die, but oh! Bart--thedoctor says he may be blind for life!"
Bart Stirling's Road to Success; Or, The Young Express Agent Page 4