An engine house stood on the bank. It was the place where water was pumped from the river to the tank, at the depot buildings. It was a little brick building with a stone floor and a large boiler and engine occupying the middle of the room. Into this building, the wounded were taken, and were laid on the cold, damp floor,—a ghastly throng. As citizens came, they found them there, suffering from the cold as well as from the shock and wounds. The effort was made to take them to places of more comfort, but where to take them was the question. No one was there at the time to command. A few men were there to assist; some were there to plunder, and more had come not knowing for what they came. A long, weary flight of steps led from the gorge to the track above. Up this flight the wounded were taken. On the other side the access to the wreck was only through the deep snow and down the steep bank. A line of men was formed at last. Up both sides of the track the wounded are helped, passed from hand to hand where they are able to stand. Others were borne by the citizens, and so by degrees, with pains and groans and amid the wild excitement, the most of them were removed.

The nearest house to the scene was a place called the “Eagle Hotel,” kept by Patrick Mulligan. Into this, by some chance, eleven of the wounded were carried. It was a horrid place. A dirty bar-room. Rooms which had never known a carpet, but whose floors were soon covered with snow and water; little bed-rooms just large enough to hold a bed and wash-stand, without carpets or stove; beds that consisted of filthy sheets and miserable straw ticks. It was a house forbidding in every respect. Into this place the wounded were taken, bleeding and gashed, and laid two by two on the miserable pallets. There they lay in the clothes which they had on, covered with blood, cold and cheerless, while crowds of curious spectators trooped in and out through the weary hours of the long and dreadful night.

Others fortunately were taken to better quarters, but even some of these were robbed on the way of the money which they had in their pockets by the very persons who pretended to assist them in their helpless state.

Teams were secured. A road was broken. Into the gorge sleds are with difficulty taken down, and into these the badly wounded are placed. The two little children who had escaped are also taken in these, badly burned and insensible, and placed with their father in a private house. The mother is moved, and laid in another house, and lies in great agony. A young girl, timid and frightened, whose limbs are broken, is separated from her aunt, and placed among strangers. Amid great confusion those who are able, walk to the hotel, some of them pursued by those who would rob them. A father calls out from a stretcher for a daughter whom strangers are taking in another direction, and becomes almost frantic with excitement until the girl is brought back to him. The poor burned woman whose children are dead is borne to the “Culver House.”

The bruised, gashed and bleeding passengers are at last removed from the valley. They are distributed through the neighborhood. Upon couches and beds of the few hotels; upon the counters of stores; on the floors of private houses; and even in the saloons—they are scattered until the whole vicinity becomes a hospital. The surgeons are all at work. The wounds are hastily dressed. The blood is washed away. Many are wrapped in warm coverings. Comparative quiet and rest settle down. The spectators have left the smoking ruins, and in curious crowds have trooped through the houses and have gradually disappeared. Those on the abutment returned to their homes. The firemen themselves disperse. The last one in the engine house has gone. Only a very few are left to guard the dead.

A wild and lonely scene remains. The dead are left there alone. The snow drifts toward the smoking ruins. Nature weaves a white shroud. Night draws down a black pall. The silence of the grave settles upon the lonely spot. A flickering light from the funeral pyre sends up a glare through the darkness, and the dead stare from the blackened bars with eyeless sockets, and the bodies are left to burn.

It is a horrible, heart-sickening sight, the bodies still smoulder in the burning grave, and the smell of their flesh arises on the darkening air.