Chapter 29

Dear Reader, he died.

Floyd Collins, that is. Floyd Collins died.

You remember poor Floyd, don't you? Don't you remember the cave explorer whose injuries Gilbert tended during the Four Winds Cave's collapse? Yes, that Floyd.

Owen depended on you readers to remember Floyd. Owen depended on the sales of his upcoming book about Floyd's cave exploits.

Floyd died as the result of a collapse during his exploration of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.

Owen was there when the collapse happened. Owen wasn't inside of the cave, thank goodness. Owen was there in Kentucky, outside of the cave. Owen was there when the rescue crews couldn't reach Floyd. Owen was there when Floyd passed away.

Let's start at the beginning. Owen inked a deal to write a "travel memoir" about Floyd's spelunking journeys. Owen travelled by rail from Toronto to Kentucky for Floyd's trek into Mammoth Cave. Owen booked himself a bed in a Pullman sleeping car.

Ah, yes, Pullman sleepers.

George Pullman of Chicago designed his cars for overnight travel in the 1860's. He provided such a car to the Lincoln family for Abraham Lincoln's funeral train in 1865. A brilliant move on Pullman's part. Pullman became an American household name. In another brilliant move, he hired freed black men - most of them newly freed slaves, and many of them former manservants for wealthy plantation owners - to work as valets in the Pullman cars. Pullman paid the men higher wages than they would be able to earn at any other employment prospect open to a black man in the United States in the 1860's. Pullman - as well as the men, as well as everyone else - knew that these same wages were far lower than the wages that Pullman would have had to pay a white man.

In a screwed-up nod to the past, white passengers addressed the black Pullman valets as "Pullman." You know, as in "Hey, Pullman, come here." It was a nod to the practice of addressing a slave by the name of his enslaver. George Pullman was their new enslaver.

Owen Ford's fans considered him the author of the Great Canadian Novel. He had Mark Twain for a publisher. He had a sweet new deal in his pocket for a travel memoir. His career necessitated that he travel a thousand miles south from the comforts of his home - and his marital bed with Leslie - in Toronto to a poverty-stricken backwater still traumatized by a civil war. Of course, Owen splurged for the Pullman sleeping car.

The American Civil War "ended" in 1865. Owen Ford arrived in Kentucky several decades later. Most Kentuckians were still poor. The Americans were still angry at each other.

Mammoth Cave and its branches sat under the surface of south Kentucky, near the border with Tennessee. Locals padded their incomes by selling tickets to tour the caves. In fact, in Tennessee, a certain cave had already been famous for decades - even before the War - for harboring a supernatural, undead "witch" that tormented a farmer's family. In 1894, a Kentucky-born man wrote a book about the "Bell Witch" who lived in this cave.

Owen chuckled at the superstitious tale. He also wished that he had thought to write about the Bell Witch first. Those silly locals!

Where were we, dear reader? Oh, yes. Owen travelled a thousand miles from Toronto to Kentucky. He slept in a Pullman sleeping car. He received the attentions of a Pullman valet. He intended to write about Floyd Collins' exploration of Mammoth Cave.

But then Floyd got stuck inside the cave. A rock collapse trapped Floyd during the rescue attempt. Floyd ended up completely trapped for over two weeks. He passed away several days before a cave shaft confirming his death reached him. Floyd's family recovered his body two months later.

The entire thing was terrible. It kept Owen in rural Kentucky for two mostly sleepless weeks. Owen didn't have the media contacts in Kentucky that he had in Canada. Although he reported a little bit on the collapse, he didn't have the resources to do much. Nobody wanted to offer him much use of their telegraph services. Besides, Owen could not represent himself as an "impartial journalist" since he was in Kentucky specifically to write his book about Floyd.

When the would-be rescuers confirmed that Floyd had passed away from hunger, thirst, and hypothermia, Owen collapsed on his hotel cot and sobbed.

By the time that Owen returned home to Leslie, the Toronto newspapers carried a story speculating that Floyd Collins rushed through his caving preparations - and put himself in "accelerated danger" - in order to meet a "media commitment."

"I cannot write this book, Leslie," Owen sobbed in her arms.