"Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rand Ayn)

Phoenix-Durango." He saw EddieтАЩs face tighten. "Nobody ever complained about
the Rio Norte Line, until the Phoenix-Durango came on the scene."
"The Phoenix-Durango is doing a brilliant job."
"Imagine a thing called the Phoenix-Durango competing with Taggart
Transcontinental! It was nothing but a local milk line ten years ago."
"ItтАЩs got most of the freight traffic of Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado
now." Taggart did not answer. "Jim, we canтАЩt lose Colorado. ItтАЩs our last
hope. ItтАЩs everybodyтАЩs last hope. If we donтАЩt pull ourselves together, weтАЩll
lose every big shipper in the state to the Phoenix-Durango. WeтАЩve lost the
Wyatt oil fields."
"I donтАЩt see why everybody keeps talking about the Wyatt oil fields."
"Because Ellis Wyatt is a prodigy who"
"Damn Ellis Wyatt!"
Those oil wells, Eddie thought suddenly, didnтАЩt they have something in common
with the blood vessels on the map? WasnтАЩt that the way the red stream of
Taggart Transcontinental had shot across the country, years ago, a feat that
seemed incredible now? He thought of the oil wells spouting a black stream
that ran over a continent almost faster than the trains of the
Phoenix-Durango could carry it. That oil field had been only a rocky patch in
the mountains of Colorado, given up as exhausted long ago. Ellis WyattтАЩs
father had managed to squeeze an obscure living to the end of his days, out
of the dying oil wells. Now it was as if somebody had given a shot of
adrenalin to the heart of the mountain, the heart had started pumping, the
black blood had burst through the rocksof course itтАЩs blood, thought Eddie
Willers, because blood is supposed to feed, to give life, and that is what
Wyatt Oil had done. It had shocked empty slopes of ground into sudden
existence, it had brought new towns, new power plants, new factories to a
region nobody had ever noticed on any map. New factories, thought Eddie
Willers, at a time when the freight revenues from all the great old
industries were dropping slowly year by year; a rich new oil field, at a time
when the pumps were stopping in one famous field after another; a new
industrial state where nobody had expected anything but cattle and beets. One
man had done it, and he had done it in eight years; this, thought Eddie
Willers, was like the stories he had read in school books and never quite
believed, the stories of men who had lived in the days of the countryтАЩs
youth. He wished he could meet Ellis Wyatt. There was a great deal of talk
about him, but few had ever met him; he seldom came to New York. They said he
was thirty-three years old and had a violent temper. He had discovered some
way to revive exhausted oil wells and he had proceeded to revive them.
"Ellis Wyatt is a greedy bastard whoтАЩs after nothing but money," said James
Taggart. "It seems to me that there are more important things in life than
making money."
"What are you talking about, Jim? What has that got to do with"
"Besides, heтАЩs double-crossed us. We served the Wyatt oil fields for years,
most adequately. In the days of old man Wyatt, we ran a tank train a week."
"These are not the days of old man Wyatt, Jim. The Phoenix-Durango runs two
tank trains a day down thereand it runs them on schedule."
"If he had given us time to grow along with him"
"He has no time to waste."
"What does he expect? That we drop all our other shippers, sacrifice the