"McWilSpl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spearman Frank H)
The McWilliams Special (1900) by Frank H. Spearman
The McWilliams Special
By
Frank H. Spearman
(From The Nerve of Foley, 1900)
|
IT belongs to the Stories That Never Were
Told, this of the McWilliams Special. But it happened years ago,
and for that matter McWilliams is dead. It wasn't grief that
killed him, either; though at one time his grief came uncommonly
near killing us.
It is an odd sort of a yarn, too; because one part
of it never got to headquarters, and another part of it never got
from headquarters.
How, for instance, the mysterious car was ever
started from Chicago on such a delirious schedule, how many men
in the service know that even yet? How, for another instance,
Sinclair and Francis took the ratty old car reeling into Denver
with the glass shrivelled, the paint blistered, the hose burned,
and a tire sprung on one of the Five-Nine's drivers — how
many headquarters slaves know that?
Our end of the story never went in at all.
Never went in because it was not deemed — well, essential to
the getting up of the annual report. We could have raised their
hair; they could have raised our salaries; but they didn't; we
didn't.
In telling this story I would not be
misunderstood; ours is not the only line between Chicago and
Denver: there are others, I admit it. But there is only one line
(all the same) that could have taken the McWilliams Special, as
we did, out of Chicago at four in the evening and put it in
Denver long before noon the next day. A communication came from a
great La Salle Street banker to the president of our road. Next,
the second vice-president heard of it; but in this way:
"Why have you turned down Peter McWilliams's
request for a special to Denver this afternoon?" asked the
president.
"He wants too much," came back over the
private wire. "We can't do it." After satisfying himself on this
point the president called up La Salle Street.
"Our folks say, Mr. McWilliams, we simply
can't do it."
"You must do it."
"When will the car be ready?"
"At three o'clock."
"When must it be in Denver?"
"Ten o'clock to-morrow morning."
The president nearly jumped the wire.
"McWilliams, you're crazy. What on earth do
you mean?"
The talk came back so low that the wires
hardly caught it. There were occasional outbursts such as,
"situation is extremely critical," "grave danger," "acute
distress," "must help me out."
But none of this would ever have moved the
president had not Peter McWilliams been a bigger man than most
corporations; and a personal request from Peter, if he stuck for
it, could hardly be refused; and for this he most decidedly
stuck.
"I tell you it will turn us upside-down,"
stormed the president.
"Do you recollect," asked Peter McWilliams,
"when your infernal old pot of a road was busted eight years ago
— you were turned inside out then, weren't you? and hung up
to dry, weren't you?"
The president did recollect; he could not
decently help recollecting. And he recollected how, about that
same time, Peter McWilliams had one week taken up for him a
matter of two millions floating, with a personal check; and
carried it eighteen months without security, when money could not
be had in Wall Street on government bonds.
Do you — that is, have you heretofore
supposed that a railroad belongs to the stockholders? Not so; it
belongs to men like Mr. McWilliams, who own it when they need it.
At other times they let the stockholders carry it — until
they want it again.
"We'll do what we can, Peter," replied the
president, desperately amiable. "Good-bye."
I am giving you only an inkling of how it
started. Not a word as to how countless orders were issued, and
countless schedules were cancelled. Not a paragraph about
numberless trains abandoned in toto, and numberless others
pulled and hauled and held and annulled. The McWilliams Special
in a twinkle tore a great system into great splinters.
It set master-mechanics by the ears and made
reckless falsifiers of previously conservative trainmen. It made
undying enemies of rival superintendents, and incipient paretics
of jolly train-dispatchers. It shivered us from end to end and
stem to stern, but it covered 1026 miles of the best steel in the
world in rather better than twenty hours and a blaze of glory. My
word is out," said the president in his message to all
superintendents, thirty minutes later. "You will get your
division schedule in a few moments. Send no reasons for inability
to make it; simply deliver the goods. With your time-report,
which comes by Ry. M. S., I want the names and records of every
member of every train-crew and every engine-crew that haul the
McWilliams car." Then followed particular injunctions of secrecy;
above all, the newspapers must not get it. But where newspapers
are, secrecy can only be hoped for — never attained. In
spite of the most elaborate precautions to preserve Peter
McWilliams's secret — would you believe it? — the
evening papers had half a column — practically the whole
thing. Of course they had to guess at some of it, but for a
newspaper-story it was pretty correct, just the same. They had,
to a minute, the time of the start from Chicago, and hinted
broadly that the schedule was a hair-raiser; something to make
previous very fast records previous very slow records. And —
here in a scoop was the secret — the train was to convey a
prominent Chicago capitalist to the bedside of his dying son,
Philip McWilliams, in Denver. Further, that hourly bulletins were
being, wired to the distressed father, and that every effort of
science would be put forth to keep the unhappy boy alive until
his father could reach Denver on the Special. Lastly, it was
hoped by all the evening papers (to fill out the half first
column scare) that sunrise would see the anxious parent well on
towards the gateway of the Rockies.
Of course the morning papers from the
Atlantic to the Pacific had the story repeated —
scare-headed, in fact — and the public were laughing
at our people's dogged refusal to confirm the report or to be
interviewed at all on the subject. The papers had the story,
anyway. What did they care for our efforts to screen a private
distress which insisted on so paralyzing a time-card for 1026
miles?
When our own, the West End of the schedule,
came over the wires there was a universal, a vociferous, kick.
Dispatchers, superintendent of motive-power, train-master,
everybody, protested. We were given about seven hours to cover
4oo miles-the fastest percentage, by-the-way, on the whole run.
"This may be grief for young McWilliams, and
for his dad," grumbled the chief dispatcher that evening, as he
cribbed the press dispatches going over the wires about the
Special, "but the grief is not theirs alone."
Then he made a protest to Chicago. What the
answer was none but himself ever knew. It came personal, and he
took it personally; but the manner in which he went to work
clearing track and making a card for the McWilliams Special
showed better speed than the train itself ever attempted —
and he kicked no more.
After all the row, it seems incredible, but
they never got ready to leave Chicago till four o'clock; and when
the McWilliams Special lit into our train system, it was like
dropping a mountain-lion into a bunch of steers.
Freights and extras, local passenger-trains
even, were used to being sidetracked; but when it came to laying
out the Flyers and (I whisper this) the White Mail, and the
Manila express, the oil began to sizzle in the journal-boxes. The
freight business, the passenger traffic — the mail-schedules
of a whole railway system were actually knocked by the McWilliams
Special into a cocked hat.
From the minute it cleared Western Avenue it
was the only thing talked of. Divisional headquarters and car
tink shanties alike were bursting with excitement.
On the West End we had all night to prepare,
and at five o'clock next morning every man in the operating
department was on edge. At precisely 3.58
A.M. the McWilliams Special stuck its
nose into our division, and Foley-pulled off No. 1 with the 466
— was heading her dizzy for McCloud. Already the McWilliams
had made up thirty-one minutes on the one hour delay in Chicago,
and Lincoln threw her into our hands with a sort of "There, now!
You fellows — are you any good at all on the West End?" And
we thought we were.
Sitting in the dispatcher's office, we
tagged her down the line like a swallow. Harvard, Oxford,
Zanesville, Ashton — and a thousand people at the McCloud
station waited for six o'clock and for Foley's muddy cap to pop
through the Blackwood bluffs; watched him stain the valley maples
with a stream of white and black, scream at the junction
switches, tear and crash through the yards, and slide hissing and
panting up under our nose, swing out of his cab, and look at
nobody at all but his watch.
We made it 5.59 A.M.
Central Time. The miles, 136; the minutes, 121. The schedule was
beaten — and that with the 136 miles the fastest on the
whole 1026. Everybody in town yelled except Foley; he asked for a
chew of tobacco, and not getting one handily, bit into his own
piece.
While Foley melted his weed George Sinclair
stepped out of the superintendent's office — he was done in
a black silk shirt, with a blue four-in-hand streaming over his
front — stepped out to shake hands with Foley, as one
hostler got the 466 out of the way, and another backed down with
a new Sky-Scraper, the 509.
But nobody paid much attention to all this.
The mob had swarmed around the ratty, old, blind-eyed baggage-car
which, with an ordinary way-car, constituted the McWilliams
Special.
"Now what does a man with McWilliams's money
want to travel special in an old photograph-gallery like that
for?" asked Andy Cameron, who was the least bit huffed because he
hadn't been marked up for the run himself. " You better take him
in a cup of hot coffee, Sinkers," suggested Andy to the
lunch-counter boy. "You might get a ten-dollar bill if the old man
isn't feeling too badly. What do you hear from Denver, Neighbor?"
he asked, turning to the superintendent of motive power. "Is the
boy holding out?"
"I'm not worrying about the boy holding out;
it's whether the Five-Nine will hold out."
"Aren't you going to change engines and
crews at Arickaree?"
"Not to-day," said Neighbor, grimly; "we
haven't time."
Just then Sinkers rushed at the baggage-car
with a cup of hot coffee for Mr. McWilliams. Everybody, hoping to
get a peep at the capitalist, made way. Sinkers climbed over the
train chests which were lashed to the platforms and pounded on
the door. He pounded hard, for he hoped and believed that there
was something in it. But he might have pounded till his coffee
froze for all the impression it made on the sleepy McWilliams.
"Hasn't the man trouble enough without
tackling your chiccory?" sang out Felix Kennedy, and the laugh so
discouraged Sinkers that he gave over and sneaked away.
At that moment the editor of the local paper
came around the depot corner on the run. He was out for an
interview, and, as usual, just a trifle late. However, he
insisted on boarding the baggage-car to tender his sympathy to
McWilliams.
The barricades bothered him, but he mounted
them all, and began an emergency pound on the forbidding blind
door. Imagine his feeling when the door was gently opened by a
sad-eyed man, who opened the ball by shoving a rifle as big as a
pinch-bar under the editorial nose.
"My grief, Mr. McWilliams," protested the
interviewer, in a trembling voice, "don't imagine I want to hold
you up. Our citizens are all peaceable ——"
"Get out!"
"Why, man, I'm not even asking for a
subscription; I simply want to ten ——"
"Get out!" snapped the man with the gun; and
in a foam the newsman climbed down. A curious crowd gathered
close to hear an editorial version of the ten commandments
revised on the spur of the moment. Felix Kennedy said it was
worth going miles to hear. "That's the coldest deal I ever struck
on the plains, boys," declared the editor. "Talk about your
bereaved parents. If the boy doesn't have a chill when that man
reaches him, I miss my guess. He acts to me as if he was afraid
his grief would get away before he got to Denver."
Meantime Georgie Sinclair was tying a silk
handkerchief around his neck, while Neighbor gave him parting
injunctions. As he put up his foot to swing into the cab the boy
looked for all the world like a jockey toe in stirrup. Neighbor
glanced at his watch.
"Can you make it by eleven o'clock?" he
growled.
"Make what?"
"Denver."
"Denver or the ditch, Neighbor," laughed
Georgie, testing the air. "Are you right back there, Pat?" be
called, as Conductor Francis strode forward to compare the
Mountain Time.
"Right and tight, and I call it
five-two-thirty now. What have you, Georgie?"
"Five-two-thirty-two," answered Sinclair,
leaning from the cab window. "And we're ready."
"Then go!" cried Pat Francis, raising two
fingers.
"Go!" echoed Sinclair, and waved a backward
smile to the crowd, as the pistons took the push and the escapes
wheezed.
A roar went up. The little engineer shook
his cap, and with a flirting, snaking slide, the McWilliams
Special drew slipping away between the shining rails for the
Rockies.
Just how McWilliams felt we had no means of
knowing; but we knew our hearts would not beat freely until his
infernal Special should slide safely over the last of the 266
miles which still lay between the distressed man and his
unfortunate child.
From McCloud to Ogalalla there is a good bit
of twisting and slewing; but looking east from Athens a marble
dropped between the rails might roll clear into the Ogalalla
yards. It is a sixty-mile grade, the ballast of slag, and the
sweetest, springiest bed under steel.
To cover those sixty miles in better than
fifty minutes was like picking them off the ponies; and the
Five-Nine breasted the Morgan divide, fretting for more
hills to climb.
The Five-Nine — for that matter any of
the Sky-Scrapers are built to balance ten or a dozen sleepers,
and when you run them light they have a fashion of rooting their
noses into the track. A modest upgrade just about counters this
tendency; but on a slump and a stiff clip and no tail to speak
of, you feel as if the drivers were going to buck up on the
ponies every once in a while. However, they never do, and Georgie
whistled for Scarboro' junction, and 180 miles and two waters, in
198 minutes out of McCloud; and, looking happy, cussed Mr.
McWilliams a little, and gave her another hatful of steam.
It is getting down a hill, like the hills of
the Mattaback Valley, at such a pace that pounds the track out of
shape. The Five-Nine lurched at the curves like a mad woman,
shook free with very fury, and if the baggage-car had not been
fairly loaded down with the grief of McWilliams, it must have
jumped the rails a dozen times in as many minutes.
Indeed, the fireman — it was Jerry
MacElroy — twisting and shifting between the tender and the
furnace, looked for the first time grave, and stole a questioning
glance from the steam-gauge towards Georgie.
But yet he didn't expect to see the boy, his
face set ahead and down the track, straighten so suddenly up,
sink in the lever, and close at the instant on the air. Jerry
felt her stumble under his feet — caught up like a girl in a
skipping-rope — and grabbing a brace looked, like a wise
stoker, for his answer out of his window. There far ahead it rose
in hot curling clouds of smoke down among the alfalfa meadows and
over the sweep of willows along the Mattaback River. The
Mattaback bridge was on fire, with the McWilliams Special on one
side and Denver on the other.
Jerry MacElroy yelled — the engineer
didn't even look around; only whistled an alarm back to Pat
Francis, eased her down the grade a bit, like a man reflecting,
and watched the smoke and flames that rose to bar the McWilliams
Special out of Denver.
The Five-Nine skimmed across the meadows
without a break, and pulled up a hundred feet from the burning
bridge. It was an old Howe truss, and snapped like popcorn as the
flames bit into the rotten shed. Pat Francis and his brakeman ran
forward. Across the river they could see half a dozen section-men
chasing wildly about throwing impotent buckets of water on the
burning truss.
"We're up against it Georgie," cried
Francis.
"Not if we can get across before the bridge
tumbles into the river," returned Sinclair.
"You don't mean you'd try it?"
"Would I? Wouldn't I? You know the orders.
That bridge is good for an hour yet. Pat, if you're game, I'll
run it."
"Holy smoke," mused Pat Francis, who would
have run the river without any bridge at all if so ordered. "They
told us to deliver the goods, didn't they?"
"We might as well be starting, Pat,"
suggested Jerry MacElroy, who deprecated losing good time."
There'll be plenty of time to talk after we get into Denver, or
the Mattaback."
"Think quick, Pat," urged Sinclair; his
safety was popping murder.
"Back her up, then, and let her go," cried
Francis; "I'd just as lief have that baggage-car at the bottom of
the river as on my hands any longer."
There was some sharp tooting, then the
McWilliams Special backed; backed away across the meadow, halted,
and screamed bard enough to wake the dead. Georgie was trying to
warn the section-men. At that instant the door of the baggage-car
opened and a sharp-featured young man peered out.
"What's the row — what's all this
screeching about, conductor?" he asked, as Francis passed.
"Bridge burning ahead there."
"Bridge burning!" he cried, looking
nervously forward. "Well, that's a deal. What you going to do
about it?"
"Run it. Are you McWilliams?"
"McWilliams? I wish I was for just one
minute. I'm one of his clerks."
"Where is he?"
"I left him on La Salle Street yesterday
afternoon."
"What's your name?"
"Just plain Ferguson."
"Well, Ferguson, it's none of my business,
but as long as we're going to put you into Denver or into the
river in about a minute, I'm curious to know what the blazes
you're hustling along this way for."
"Me? I've got twelve hundred thousand
dollars in gold coin in this car for the Sierra Leone National
Bank — that's all. Didn't you know that five big banks there
closed their doors yesterday? Worst panic in the United States.
That's what I'm here for, and five huskies with me eating and
sleeping in this car," continued Ferguson, looking ahead. "You're
not going to tackle that bridge, are you?"
"We are, and right off. If there's any of
your huskies want to drop out, now's their chance," said Pat
Francis, as Sinclair slowed up for his run.
Ferguson called his men. The five with their
rifles came cautiously forward.
"Boys," said Ferguson, briefly. "There's a
bridge afire ahead. These guys are going to try to run it. It's
not in your contract, that kind of a chance. Do you want to get
off? I stay with the specie, myself. You can do exactly as you
please. Murray, what do you say?" he asked, addressing the leader
of the force, who appeared to weigh about two hundred and sixty.
"What do I say?" echoed Murray, with
decision, as he looked for a soft place to alight alongside the
track. "I say I'll drop out right here. I don't mind train
robber, but I don't tackle a burning, bridge — not if I know
it," and he jumped off.
"Well, Peaters," asked Ferguson, of the
second man, coolly, "do you want to stay?"
"Me?" echoed Peaters, looking ahead at the
mass of flame leaping upward — "me stay? Well, not in a
thousand years. You can have my gun, Mr. Ferguson, and send my
check to 439 Milwaukee Avenue, if you please. Gentlemen, good-
day." And off went Peaters.
And off went every last man of the valorous
detectives except one lame fellow, who said he would just as lief
be dead as alive anyway, and declared he would stay with Ferguson
and die rich!
Sinclair, thinking he might never get
another chance, was whistling sharply for orders. Francis,
breathless with the news, ran forward.
"Coin? How much? Twelve hundred thousand.
Whew!" cried Sinclair. "Swing up, Pat. We're off."
The Five-Nine gathered herself with a
spring. Even the engineer's heart quailed as they got headway. He
knew his business, and he knew that if only the rails hadn't
buckled they were perfectly safe, for the heavy truss would stand
a lot of burning before giving way under a swiftly moving train.
Only, as they flew nearer, the blaze rolling up in dense volume
looked horribly threatening After all it was foolhardy, and be
felt it; but he was past the stopping now, and he pulled the
choker to the limit. It seemed as if she never covered steel so
fast. Under the head she now had the crackling bridge was less
than five hundred — four hundred — three hundred —
two hundred feet, and there was no longer time to think. With a
stare, Sinclair shut off. He wanted no push or pull on the track.
The McWilliams Special was just a tremendous arrow, shooting
through a truss of fire, and half a dozen speechless men on
either side of the river waiting for the catastrophe.
Jerry MacElroy crouched low under the
gauges. Sinclair jumped from his box and stood with a band on the
throttle and a hand on the air, the glass crashing around his
head like hail. A blast of fiery air and flying cinders burned
and choked him. The engine, alive with danger, flew like a great
monkey along the writhing steel. So quick, so black, so hot the
blast, and so terrific the leap, she stuck her nose into clean
air before the men in the cab could rise to it.
There was a heave in the middle like the
lurch of a sea-sick steamer, and with it the Five-Nine got her
paws on cool iron and solid ground, and the Mattaback and the
blaze — all except a dozen tongues which licked the cab and
the roof of the baggage-car a minute — were behind. Georgie
Sinclair, shaking the hot glass out of his hair, looked ahead
through his frizzled eyelids and gave her a full head for the
western bluffs of the valley; then looked at his watch.
It was the hundred and ninetieth mile-post
just at her nose, and the dial read eight o'clock and fifty-five
minutes to a second. There was an hour to the good and
seventy-six miles and a water to cover; but they were
seventy-six of the prettiest miles under ballast anywhere, and
the Five-Nine reeled them off like a cylinder-press. Seventy-nine
minutes later Sinclair whistled for the Denver yards.
There was a tremendous commotion among the
waiting engines. If there was one there were fifty big
locomotives waiting to charivari the McWilliams Special. The
wires had told the story in Denver long before, and as the
Five-Nine sailed ponderously up the gridiron every
mogul, every consolidated, every ten-wheeler, every hog, every
switch-bumper, every air-hose screamed an uproarious welcome to
Georgie Sinclair and the Sky-Scraper.
They had broken every record from McCloud to
Denver, and all knew it; but as the McWilliams Special drew
swiftly past, every last man in the yards stared at her cracked,
peeled, blistered, haggard looks.
"What the deuce have you bit into?" cried
the depot-master, as the Five-Nine swept splendidly up and
stopped with her battered eye hard on the depot clock.
"Mattaback bridge is burned; had to crawl
over on the stringers," answered Sinclair, couching up a cinder.
"Where's McWilliams?"
"Back there sitting on his grief, I reckon."
While the crew went up to register, two big
four-horse trucks backed up to the baggage-car, and in a minute a
dozen men were rolling specie-keg's out of the door, which was
smashed in, as being quicker than to tear open the barricades.
Sinclair, MacElroy, and Francis with his
brakeman were surrounded by a crowd of railroad men. As they
stood answering questions, a big prosperous-looking banker, with
black rings under his eyes, pushed in towards them, accompanied
by the lame fellow, who had missed the chance of a lifetime to
die rich, and by Ferguson, who had told the story.
The banker shook hands with each one of the
crews. "You've saved us, boys. We needed it. There's a mob of
five thousand of the worst-scared people in America clamoring at
the doors; and, by the eternal, now we're fixed for every one of
them. Come up to the bank. I want you to ride right up with the
coin, all of you."
It was an uncommonly queer occasion, but an
uncommonly enthusiastic one. Fifty policemen made the escort and
cleared the way for the trucks to pull up across the sidewalk, so
the porters could lug the kegs of gold into the bank before the
very eyes of the rattled depositors.
In an hour the run was broken. But when the
four railroad men left the bank, after all sorts of hugging by
excited directors, they carried not only the blessings of the
officials, but each in his vest pocket a check, every one of
which discounted the biggest voucher ever drawn on the West End
for a month's pay; though I violate no confidence in stating,
that Georgie Sinclair's was bigger than any two of the others.
And this is how it happens that there hangs, in the directors'
room of the Sierra Leone National a very creditable portrait of
the kid engineer.
Besides paying tariff on the specie, the
bank paid for a new coat of paint for the McWilliams Special from
caboose to pilot. She was the last train across the Mattaback for
two weeks.
|
(End.)
(Prepared by Jesse Knight)
The McWilliams Special (1900) by Frank H. Spearman
The McWilliams Special
By
Frank H. Spearman
(From The Nerve of Foley, 1900)
|
IT belongs to the Stories That Never Were
Told, this of the McWilliams Special. But it happened years ago,
and for that matter McWilliams is dead. It wasn't grief that
killed him, either; though at one time his grief came uncommonly
near killing us.
It is an odd sort of a yarn, too; because one part
of it never got to headquarters, and another part of it never got
from headquarters.
How, for instance, the mysterious car was ever
started from Chicago on such a delirious schedule, how many men
in the service know that even yet? How, for another instance,
Sinclair and Francis took the ratty old car reeling into Denver
with the glass shrivelled, the paint blistered, the hose burned,
and a tire sprung on one of the Five-Nine's drivers — how
many headquarters slaves know that?
Our end of the story never went in at all.
Never went in because it was not deemed — well, essential to
the getting up of the annual report. We could have raised their
hair; they could have raised our salaries; but they didn't; we
didn't.
In telling this story I would not be
misunderstood; ours is not the only line between Chicago and
Denver: there are others, I admit it. But there is only one line
(all the same) that could have taken the McWilliams Special, as
we did, out of Chicago at four in the evening and put it in
Denver long before noon the next day. A communication came from a
great La Salle Street banker to the president of our road. Next,
the second vice-president heard of it; but in this way:
"Why have you turned down Peter McWilliams's
request for a special to Denver this afternoon?" asked the
president.
"He wants too much," came back over the
private wire. "We can't do it." After satisfying himself on this
point the president called up La Salle Street.
"Our folks say, Mr. McWilliams, we simply
can't do it."
"You must do it."
"When will the car be ready?"
"At three o'clock."
"When must it be in Denver?"
"Ten o'clock to-morrow morning."
The president nearly jumped the wire.
"McWilliams, you're crazy. What on earth do
you mean?"
The talk came back so low that the wires
hardly caught it. There were occasional outbursts such as,
"situation is extremely critical," "grave danger," "acute
distress," "must help me out."
But none of this would ever have moved the
president had not Peter McWilliams been a bigger man than most
corporations; and a personal request from Peter, if he stuck for
it, could hardly be refused; and for this he most decidedly
stuck.
"I tell you it will turn us upside-down,"
stormed the president.
"Do you recollect," asked Peter McWilliams,
"when your infernal old pot of a road was busted eight years ago
— you were turned inside out then, weren't you? and hung up
to dry, weren't you?"
The president did recollect; he could not
decently help recollecting. And he recollected how, about that
same time, Peter McWilliams had one week taken up for him a
matter of two millions floating, with a personal check; and
carried it eighteen months without security, when money could not
be had in Wall Street on government bonds.
Do you — that is, have you heretofore
supposed that a railroad belongs to the stockholders? Not so; it
belongs to men like Mr. McWilliams, who own it when they need it.
At other times they let the stockholders carry it — until
they want it again.
"We'll do what we can, Peter," replied the
president, desperately amiable. "Good-bye."
I am giving you only an inkling of how it
started. Not a word as to how countless orders were issued, and
countless schedules were cancelled. Not a paragraph about
numberless trains abandoned in toto, and numberless others
pulled and hauled and held and annulled. The McWilliams Special
in a twinkle tore a great system into great splinters.
It set master-mechanics by the ears and made
reckless falsifiers of previously conservative trainmen. It made
undying enemies of rival superintendents, and incipient paretics
of jolly train-dispatchers. It shivered us from end to end and
stem to stern, but it covered 1026 miles of the best steel in the
world in rather better than twenty hours and a blaze of glory. My
word is out," said the president in his message to all
superintendents, thirty minutes later. "You will get your
division schedule in a few moments. Send no reasons for inability
to make it; simply deliver the goods. With your time-report,
which comes by Ry. M. S., I want the names and records of every
member of every train-crew and every engine-crew that haul the
McWilliams car." Then followed particular injunctions of secrecy;
above all, the newspapers must not get it. But where newspapers
are, secrecy can only be hoped for — never attained. In
spite of the most elaborate precautions to preserve Peter
McWilliams's secret — would you believe it? — the
evening papers had half a column — practically the whole
thing. Of course they had to guess at some of it, but for a
newspaper-story it was pretty correct, just the same. They had,
to a minute, the time of the start from Chicago, and hinted
broadly that the schedule was a hair-raiser; something to make
previous very fast records previous very slow records. And —
here in a scoop was the secret — the train was to convey a
prominent Chicago capitalist to the bedside of his dying son,
Philip McWilliams, in Denver. Further, that hourly bulletins were
being, wired to the distressed father, and that every effort of
science would be put forth to keep the unhappy boy alive until
his father could reach Denver on the Special. Lastly, it was
hoped by all the evening papers (to fill out the half first
column scare) that sunrise would see the anxious parent well on
towards the gateway of the Rockies.
Of course the morning papers from the
Atlantic to the Pacific had the story repeated —
scare-headed, in fact — and the public were laughing
at our people's dogged refusal to confirm the report or to be
interviewed at all on the subject. The papers had the story,
anyway. What did they care for our efforts to screen a private
distress which insisted on so paralyzing a time-card for 1026
miles?
When our own, the West End of the schedule,
came over the wires there was a universal, a vociferous, kick.
Dispatchers, superintendent of motive-power, train-master,
everybody, protested. We were given about seven hours to cover
4oo miles-the fastest percentage, by-the-way, on the whole run.
"This may be grief for young McWilliams, and
for his dad," grumbled the chief dispatcher that evening, as he
cribbed the press dispatches going over the wires about the
Special, "but the grief is not theirs alone."
Then he made a protest to Chicago. What the
answer was none but himself ever knew. It came personal, and he
took it personally; but the manner in which he went to work
clearing track and making a card for the McWilliams Special
showed better speed than the train itself ever attempted —
and he kicked no more.
After all the row, it seems incredible, but
they never got ready to leave Chicago till four o'clock; and when
the McWilliams Special lit into our train system, it was like
dropping a mountain-lion into a bunch of steers.
Freights and extras, local passenger-trains
even, were used to being sidetracked; but when it came to laying
out the Flyers and (I whisper this) the White Mail, and the
Manila express, the oil began to sizzle in the journal-boxes. The
freight business, the passenger traffic — the mail-schedules
of a whole railway system were actually knocked by the McWilliams
Special into a cocked hat.
From the minute it cleared Western Avenue it
was the only thing talked of. Divisional headquarters and car
tink shanties alike were bursting with excitement.
On the West End we had all night to prepare,
and at five o'clock next morning every man in the operating
department was on edge. At precisely 3.58
A.M. the McWilliams Special stuck its
nose into our division, and Foley-pulled off No. 1 with the 466
— was heading her dizzy for McCloud. Already the McWilliams
had made up thirty-one minutes on the one hour delay in Chicago,
and Lincoln threw her into our hands with a sort of "There, now!
You fellows — are you any good at all on the West End?" And
we thought we were.
Sitting in the dispatcher's office, we
tagged her down the line like a swallow. Harvard, Oxford,
Zanesville, Ashton — and a thousand people at the McCloud
station waited for six o'clock and for Foley's muddy cap to pop
through the Blackwood bluffs; watched him stain the valley maples
with a stream of white and black, scream at the junction
switches, tear and crash through the yards, and slide hissing and
panting up under our nose, swing out of his cab, and look at
nobody at all but his watch.
We made it 5.59 A.M.
Central Time. The miles, 136; the minutes, 121. The schedule was
beaten — and that with the 136 miles the fastest on the
whole 1026. Everybody in town yelled except Foley; he asked for a
chew of tobacco, and not getting one handily, bit into his own
piece.
While Foley melted his weed George Sinclair
stepped out of the superintendent's office — he was done in
a black silk shirt, with a blue four-in-hand streaming over his
front — stepped out to shake hands with Foley, as one
hostler got the 466 out of the way, and another backed down with
a new Sky-Scraper, the 509.
But nobody paid much attention to all this.
The mob had swarmed around the ratty, old, blind-eyed baggage-car
which, with an ordinary way-car, constituted the McWilliams
Special.
"Now what does a man with McWilliams's money
want to travel special in an old photograph-gallery like that
for?" asked Andy Cameron, who was the least bit huffed because he
hadn't been marked up for the run himself. " You better take him
in a cup of hot coffee, Sinkers," suggested Andy to the
lunch-counter boy. "You might get a ten-dollar bill if the old man
isn't feeling too badly. What do you hear from Denver, Neighbor?"
he asked, turning to the superintendent of motive power. "Is the
boy holding out?"
"I'm not worrying about the boy holding out;
it's whether the Five-Nine will hold out."
"Aren't you going to change engines and
crews at Arickaree?"
"Not to-day," said Neighbor, grimly; "we
haven't time."
Just then Sinkers rushed at the baggage-car
with a cup of hot coffee for Mr. McWilliams. Everybody, hoping to
get a peep at the capitalist, made way. Sinkers climbed over the
train chests which were lashed to the platforms and pounded on
the door. He pounded hard, for he hoped and believed that there
was something in it. But he might have pounded till his coffee
froze for all the impression it made on the sleepy McWilliams.
"Hasn't the man trouble enough without
tackling your chiccory?" sang out Felix Kennedy, and the laugh so
discouraged Sinkers that he gave over and sneaked away.
At that moment the editor of the local paper
came around the depot corner on the run. He was out for an
interview, and, as usual, just a trifle late. However, he
insisted on boarding the baggage-car to tender his sympathy to
McWilliams.
The barricades bothered him, but he mounted
them all, and began an emergency pound on the forbidding blind
door. Imagine his feeling when the door was gently opened by a
sad-eyed man, who opened the ball by shoving a rifle as big as a
pinch-bar under the editorial nose.
"My grief, Mr. McWilliams," protested the
interviewer, in a trembling voice, "don't imagine I want to hold
you up. Our citizens are all peaceable ——"
"Get out!"
"Why, man, I'm not even asking for a
subscription; I simply want to ten ——"
"Get out!" snapped the man with the gun; and
in a foam the newsman climbed down. A curious crowd gathered
close to hear an editorial version of the ten commandments
revised on the spur of the moment. Felix Kennedy said it was
worth going miles to hear. "That's the coldest deal I ever struck
on the plains, boys," declared the editor. "Talk about your
bereaved parents. If the boy doesn't have a chill when that man
reaches him, I miss my guess. He acts to me as if he was afraid
his grief would get away before he got to Denver."
Meantime Georgie Sinclair was tying a silk
handkerchief around his neck, while Neighbor gave him parting
injunctions. As he put up his foot to swing into the cab the boy
looked for all the world like a jockey toe in stirrup. Neighbor
glanced at his watch.
"Can you make it by eleven o'clock?" he
growled.
"Make what?"
"Denver."
"Denver or the ditch, Neighbor," laughed
Georgie, testing the air. "Are you right back there, Pat?" be
called, as Conductor Francis strode forward to compare the
Mountain Time.
"Right and tight, and I call it
five-two-thirty now. What have you, Georgie?"
"Five-two-thirty-two," answered Sinclair,
leaning from the cab window. "And we're ready."
"Then go!" cried Pat Francis, raising two
fingers.
"Go!" echoed Sinclair, and waved a backward
smile to the crowd, as the pistons took the push and the escapes
wheezed.
A roar went up. The little engineer shook
his cap, and with a flirting, snaking slide, the McWilliams
Special drew slipping away between the shining rails for the
Rockies.
Just how McWilliams felt we had no means of
knowing; but we knew our hearts would not beat freely until his
infernal Special should slide safely over the last of the 266
miles which still lay between the distressed man and his
unfortunate child.
From McCloud to Ogalalla there is a good bit
of twisting and slewing; but looking east from Athens a marble
dropped between the rails might roll clear into the Ogalalla
yards. It is a sixty-mile grade, the ballast of slag, and the
sweetest, springiest bed under steel.
To cover those sixty miles in better than
fifty minutes was like picking them off the ponies; and the
Five-Nine breasted the Morgan divide, fretting for more
hills to climb.
The Five-Nine — for that matter any of
the Sky-Scrapers are built to balance ten or a dozen sleepers,
and when you run them light they have a fashion of rooting their
noses into the track. A modest upgrade just about counters this
tendency; but on a slump and a stiff clip and no tail to speak
of, you feel as if the drivers were going to buck up on the
ponies every once in a while. However, they never do, and Georgie
whistled for Scarboro' junction, and 180 miles and two waters, in
198 minutes out of McCloud; and, looking happy, cussed Mr.
McWilliams a little, and gave her another hatful of steam.
It is getting down a hill, like the hills of
the Mattaback Valley, at such a pace that pounds the track out of
shape. The Five-Nine lurched at the curves like a mad woman,
shook free with very fury, and if the baggage-car had not been
fairly loaded down with the grief of McWilliams, it must have
jumped the rails a dozen times in as many minutes.
Indeed, the fireman — it was Jerry
MacElroy — twisting and shifting between the tender and the
furnace, looked for the first time grave, and stole a questioning
glance from the steam-gauge towards Georgie.
But yet he didn't expect to see the boy, his
face set ahead and down the track, straighten so suddenly up,
sink in the lever, and close at the instant on the air. Jerry
felt her stumble under his feet — caught up like a girl in a
skipping-rope — and grabbing a brace looked, like a wise
stoker, for his answer out of his window. There far ahead it rose
in hot curling clouds of smoke down among the alfalfa meadows and
over the sweep of willows along the Mattaback River. The
Mattaback bridge was on fire, with the McWilliams Special on one
side and Denver on the other.
Jerry MacElroy yelled — the engineer
didn't even look around; only whistled an alarm back to Pat
Francis, eased her down the grade a bit, like a man reflecting,
and watched the smoke and flames that rose to bar the McWilliams
Special out of Denver.
The Five-Nine skimmed across the meadows
without a break, and pulled up a hundred feet from the burning
bridge. It was an old Howe truss, and snapped like popcorn as the
flames bit into the rotten shed. Pat Francis and his brakeman ran
forward. Across the river they could see half a dozen section-men
chasing wildly about throwing impotent buckets of water on the
burning truss.
"We're up against it Georgie," cried
Francis.
"Not if we can get across before the bridge
tumbles into the river," returned Sinclair.
"You don't mean you'd try it?"
"Would I? Wouldn't I? You know the orders.
That bridge is good for an hour yet. Pat, if you're game, I'll
run it."
"Holy smoke," mused Pat Francis, who would
have run the river without any bridge at all if so ordered. "They
told us to deliver the goods, didn't they?"
"We might as well be starting, Pat,"
suggested Jerry MacElroy, who deprecated losing good time."
There'll be plenty of time to talk after we get into Denver, or
the Mattaback."
"Think quick, Pat," urged Sinclair; his
safety was popping murder.
"Back her up, then, and let her go," cried
Francis; "I'd just as lief have that baggage-car at the bottom of
the river as on my hands any longer."
There was some sharp tooting, then the
McWilliams Special backed; backed away across the meadow, halted,
and screamed bard enough to wake the dead. Georgie was trying to
warn the section-men. At that instant the door of the baggage-car
opened and a sharp-featured young man peered out.
"What's the row — what's all this
screeching about, conductor?" he asked, as Francis passed.
"Bridge burning ahead there."
"Bridge burning!" he cried, looking
nervously forward. "Well, that's a deal. What you going to do
about it?"
"Run it. Are you McWilliams?"
"McWilliams? I wish I was for just one
minute. I'm one of his clerks."
"Where is he?"
"I left him on La Salle Street yesterday
afternoon."
"What's your name?"
"Just plain Ferguson."
"Well, Ferguson, it's none of my business,
but as long as we're going to put you into Denver or into the
river in about a minute, I'm curious to know what the blazes
you're hustling along this way for."
"Me? I've got twelve hundred thousand
dollars in gold coin in this car for the Sierra Leone National
Bank — that's all. Didn't you know that five big banks there
closed their doors yesterday? Worst panic in the United States.
That's what I'm here for, and five huskies with me eating and
sleeping in this car," continued Ferguson, looking ahead. "You're
not going to tackle that bridge, are you?"
"We are, and right off. If there's any of
your huskies want to drop out, now's their chance," said Pat
Francis, as Sinclair slowed up for his run.
Ferguson called his men. The five with their
rifles came cautiously forward.
"Boys," said Ferguson, briefly. "There's a
bridge afire ahead. These guys are going to try to run it. It's
not in your contract, that kind of a chance. Do you want to get
off? I stay with the specie, myself. You can do exactly as you
please. Murray, what do you say?" he asked, addressing the leader
of the force, who appeared to weigh about two hundred and sixty.
"What do I say?" echoed Murray, with
decision, as he looked for a soft place to alight alongside the
track. "I say I'll drop out right here. I don't mind train
robber, but I don't tackle a burning, bridge — not if I know
it," and he jumped off.
"Well, Peaters," asked Ferguson, of the
second man, coolly, "do you want to stay?"
"Me?" echoed Peaters, looking ahead at the
mass of flame leaping upward — "me stay? Well, not in a
thousand years. You can have my gun, Mr. Ferguson, and send my
check to 439 Milwaukee Avenue, if you please. Gentlemen, good-
day." And off went Peaters.
And off went every last man of the valorous
detectives except one lame fellow, who said he would just as lief
be dead as alive anyway, and declared he would stay with Ferguson
and die rich!
Sinclair, thinking he might never get
another chance, was whistling sharply for orders. Francis,
breathless with the news, ran forward.
"Coin? How much? Twelve hundred thousand.
Whew!" cried Sinclair. "Swing up, Pat. We're off."
The Five-Nine gathered herself with a
spring. Even the engineer's heart quailed as they got headway. He
knew his business, and he knew that if only the rails hadn't
buckled they were perfectly safe, for the heavy truss would stand
a lot of burning before giving way under a swiftly moving train.
Only, as they flew nearer, the blaze rolling up in dense volume
looked horribly threatening After all it was foolhardy, and be
felt it; but he was past the stopping now, and he pulled the
choker to the limit. It seemed as if she never covered steel so
fast. Under the head she now had the crackling bridge was less
than five hundred — four hundred — three hundred —
two hundred feet, and there was no longer time to think. With a
stare, Sinclair shut off. He wanted no push or pull on the track.
The McWilliams Special was just a tremendous arrow, shooting
through a truss of fire, and half a dozen speechless men on
either side of the river waiting for the catastrophe.
Jerry MacElroy crouched low under the
gauges. Sinclair jumped from his box and stood with a band on the
throttle and a hand on the air, the glass crashing around his
head like hail. A blast of fiery air and flying cinders burned
and choked him. The engine, alive with danger, flew like a great
monkey along the writhing steel. So quick, so black, so hot the
blast, and so terrific the leap, she stuck her nose into clean
air before the men in the cab could rise to it.
There was a heave in the middle like the
lurch of a sea-sick steamer, and with it the Five-Nine got her
paws on cool iron and solid ground, and the Mattaback and the
blaze — all except a dozen tongues which licked the cab and
the roof of the baggage-car a minute — were behind. Georgie
Sinclair, shaking the hot glass out of his hair, looked ahead
through his frizzled eyelids and gave her a full head for the
western bluffs of the valley; then looked at his watch.
It was the hundred and ninetieth mile-post
just at her nose, and the dial read eight o'clock and fifty-five
minutes to a second. There was an hour to the good and
seventy-six miles and a water to cover; but they were
seventy-six of the prettiest miles under ballast anywhere, and
the Five-Nine reeled them off like a cylinder-press. Seventy-nine
minutes later Sinclair whistled for the Denver yards.
There was a tremendous commotion among the
waiting engines. If there was one there were fifty big
locomotives waiting to charivari the McWilliams Special. The
wires had told the story in Denver long before, and as the
Five-Nine sailed ponderously up the gridiron every
mogul, every consolidated, every ten-wheeler, every hog, every
switch-bumper, every air-hose screamed an uproarious welcome to
Georgie Sinclair and the Sky-Scraper.
They had broken every record from McCloud to
Denver, and all knew it; but as the McWilliams Special drew
swiftly past, every last man in the yards stared at her cracked,
peeled, blistered, haggard looks.
"What the deuce have you bit into?" cried
the depot-master, as the Five-Nine swept splendidly up and
stopped with her battered eye hard on the depot clock.
"Mattaback bridge is burned; had to crawl
over on the stringers," answered Sinclair, couching up a cinder.
"Where's McWilliams?"
"Back there sitting on his grief, I reckon."
While the crew went up to register, two big
four-horse trucks backed up to the baggage-car, and in a minute a
dozen men were rolling specie-keg's out of the door, which was
smashed in, as being quicker than to tear open the barricades.
Sinclair, MacElroy, and Francis with his
brakeman were surrounded by a crowd of railroad men. As they
stood answering questions, a big prosperous-looking banker, with
black rings under his eyes, pushed in towards them, accompanied
by the lame fellow, who had missed the chance of a lifetime to
die rich, and by Ferguson, who had told the story.
The banker shook hands with each one of the
crews. "You've saved us, boys. We needed it. There's a mob of
five thousand of the worst-scared people in America clamoring at
the doors; and, by the eternal, now we're fixed for every one of
them. Come up to the bank. I want you to ride right up with the
coin, all of you."
It was an uncommonly queer occasion, but an
uncommonly enthusiastic one. Fifty policemen made the escort and
cleared the way for the trucks to pull up across the sidewalk, so
the porters could lug the kegs of gold into the bank before the
very eyes of the rattled depositors.
In an hour the run was broken. But when the
four railroad men left the bank, after all sorts of hugging by
excited directors, they carried not only the blessings of the
officials, but each in his vest pocket a check, every one of
which discounted the biggest voucher ever drawn on the West End
for a month's pay; though I violate no confidence in stating,
that Georgie Sinclair's was bigger than any two of the others.
And this is how it happens that there hangs, in the directors'
room of the Sierra Leone National a very creditable portrait of
the kid engineer.
Besides paying tariff on the specie, the
bank paid for a new coat of paint for the McWilliams Special from
caboose to pilot. She was the last train across the Mattaback for
two weeks.
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(End.)
(Prepared by Jesse Knight)
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