The Coolidge Examiner

THE COOLIDGE EXAMINER

Floyd Gibbons
ADVENTURERS' CLUB
HEADLINES FROM
THE LIVES
OF PEOPLE
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"Murder Machine"

HELLO, EVERYBODY:

George H. Dowd of the Bronx, N. Y., sends me a letter that starts out, This is the first time I have ever tried to put an experience of mine down on paper. Shall I stop

Well, the answer to that is: For Pete's sake, no, George.

Because George has turned in one hum-dinger of a yarn.

It's the story of a barrage of flying steel that was set off,

not by powder or any other sort of explosive, but by actual

horsepower--28 horses, galloping hell-bent for election,

drawing behind them a machine that spued death-dealing

projectiles right, left, front and center.

It's the only case I ever heard of where projectiles were

thrown by horses. Maybe some of those sword-rattling dic-

tators of Europe will pick up this idea and use horses when

their supply of powder runs low. I haven't done any experi-

menting with this idea, and I don't know how well it would

work. But I'll tell you George Dowd's story and you can

figure it out for yourself.

It happened along about the middle of July, 1913, on

the Idaho Falls Development company dry farm, a few miles

northwest of Idaho Falls. Idaho. That farm was a seven-thousand acre

wheat ranch. Out in that section they harvest their wheat in July, and

George, who was just a young fellow then, had a job working on one

of the big combine harvesters, sewing up sacks of grain.

There were three of those harvesters in the field-one drawn

by mules, a second drawn by a steam engine or tractor, and the

third, on which George was working, drawn by 28 head of horses.

Those combine harvesters have a group of cylinders in them,

hitched to the wheels and geared up to revolve at great speed

when the horses are walking. George was working on a wooden

platform on that harvester, directly over those revolving cylin-

ders. But the cylinders weren't revolving at the moment, for

the big machine was stopped for some minor repairs. The repair

man was putting a draper belt into the header, and the driver

and the header man got down to help him, leaving George alone

on the machine.

Steam Pressure Explodes Safety Valve.

And then the fun started-but it wasn't any fun for George Dowd!

It was the steam tractor hauling one of the other harvesters

that started all the trouble. There was too much steam in the

boiler and all of a sudden the safety valve popped off with a

bang. "And within the same second," says George, "off went the

28 horses with the machine I was on in what you would call a

real runaway!"

Well, sir, a 28 horse runaway is something to write home about,

but that was only the beginning.

The men who were putting in the draper belt were knocked clear of the machine at the first jump the

horses made. Then those animals were off down the field at a full gal-

lop with the great unwieldy machine careening along behind them! And

as they dashed along. the cylinders of the harvester. which revolved at

high speed when the horses were just walking, began revolving at a

speed greater than even steel can stand!

The horses hadn't gone a dozen feet when steel cylinders be-

gan bursting from centrifugal force and shooting out of the ma-

chine in all directions. The first one ripped up through the boards

on which George was standing-ripped up with a deafening crack

like the report of a cannon and shot past George's nose, straight

up in the air. Another one followed-and another. Cylinders,

gears and bits of broken metal came fiying out of that machine

in a veritable barrage.

He Clung to the Harvester's Reeling Platform.

"I was on the U. S. S. Leviathan for 22 months during the war,"

George says,

"and I have heard her guns bark a good many times.

And I would say that the reports these gears and hunks of metal made

when leaving the machine were about as loud as those made by a six-

inch cannon.'

And George, standing right in the midst of that hail of flying steel,

couldn't do anything about it. He was having all he could do to cling

to the swaying. reeling platform of that harvester while the horses gal-

loped along at breakneck speed. Piece by piece and board by board, the

fir flooring of the platform was shot away until it was even with the heels

of his shoes.

If he'd thought of it, he might have jumped, but for the first

few moments he was too bewildered. He could feel the wind of

those deadly metal projectiles as they whizzed by him. One of

them hit him in the calf of the leg. Others ripped great holes in

the canvas awning over his head.

"There were pieces of steel

weighing three or four pounds shot from that harvester," he says,

"that were picked up later more than a mile away."

Help Was Already on the Way.

But meanwhile, help was already on the way. The repair man had

a good saddle horse tied nearby and in less than half a minute he was

in the saddle, riding hard. The runaways had almost a quarter of a

mile head start, but gradually he closed up that distance. The barrage

of steel had stopped by then, and George was safe as long as he could

cling to his perch on the shattered platform.

He did cling to that platform. He clung to it for a full mile,

while the harvester reeled and swayed and threatened to tip over.

But at the end of that mile the repairman caught up with the

lead horses and brought them to a stop.

George says that harvester was nearly new when it started, but it

was a total wreck when it stopped. George, on the other hand, was

lucky. His only injury was where that one piece of flying steel had hit

his right leg.

"And that," he says, "wasn't serious."

Copyright-WNU Service.