: "What will all of you people up
there on the haystack settle for in a lump, for I am in a hurry?"

The fat woman caught on at once, and said: "We will all settle for
$10,000." Then she yelled, and the agent thought her back was broke, and
he offered $7,500, and she cried and said: "Make it $10,000," and the
agent said: "I will go you," and he made out a check, and the fat woman
had some more hysterics.

I had watched the settling all around, and I told pa to be deaf and dumb
when they came to him, and just point to the seat of his pants in front
and buttoned up behind, and look as though he was suffering the tortures
of the inquisition, and let me do the talking, and I would make the old
railroad go into a receiver's hands.

So pa said: "You are the boss," and he looked so pitiful that I almost
cried.

When the near-sighted claim agent came to pa, I told him that pa's last
words were to beg to be shot, and the man looked at pa's pants, and then
at his face, and said: "What hit him? That's the worst case I ever saw
in a railroad wreck."

[Illustration: "What Hit Him? That's the Worst Case I Ever Saw!"]

I put my handkerchief to my eyes and said: "Well, when the shock came,
pa was all right, as handsome a man as you would often see. I think
there must have been a pile driver on the train that struck him, and
changed sides with him, knocking his stomach around on the back side of
him, and placing his spinal column around in front of him, where his
stomach was, and causing him to lose the sense of speech. Think of a
middle-aged man going through life mixed up in that manner, having to
sit down on his stomach, and having his backbone staring him in the
face. How does he know when he takes food in his mouth that it can
corkscrew around under his arm and eventually find his stomach? How a
man can be ground and twisted, and mauled, and stamped on by a reckless
locomotive with a crazy engineer and a drunken fireman, rolled over by
box cars, and walked on by elephants, and still live, is beyond me. As
he told me before he lost the power of speech, not to be too hard on the
railroad company, though some railroads would be glad to pay him
$20,000, and no questions asked, he begged me, as heir to his estate, to
let you off for a paltry $10,000."

Pa made up the darndest face, and groaned. The agent called another
agent, and they whispered together, and finally the first one came to me
and asked pa's full name, and then the