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The Run of the Yellow Mail, by Frank H. Spearman

The Naked Word electronic
edition of....
The Run of the Yellow Mail
by Frank H. Spearman, 1901



THERE wasn't another engineer on the division who dared talk to Doubleday the
way Jimmie Bradshaw did.
But Jimmie had a grievance, and every time he thought about it, it made him
nervous.
Ninety-six years. It seemed a good while to wait; yet in the regular course of
events on the mountain division there appeared no earlier prospect of Jimmie's
getting a passenger run.
"Got your rights, ain't you?" said Doubleday, when Jimmie complained.
"I have and I haven't," grumbled Jimmie, winking hard; "there's younger men than
I am on the fast runs."
"They got in on the strike; you've been told that a hundred times. We can't get
up another strike just to fix you out on a fast run. Hang on to your freight.
There's better men than you in Ireland up to their belt in the bog, Jimmie."
"It's a pity they didn't leave you there, Doubleday."
"You'd have been a good while hunting for a freight run if they had."
Then Jimmie would get mad and shake his finger and talk fast: "Just the same,
I'll have a fast run here when you're dead."
"Maybe; but I'll be alive a good while yet, my son," the master mechanic would
laugh. Then Jimmie would walk off very warm, and when he got into private with
himself he would wink furiously and say friction things about Doubleday which
needn't now be printed, because it is different. However, the talk always ended
that way, and Jimmie Bradshaw knew it always would end that way.
The trouble was, no one on the division would take Jimmie seriously, and he felt
that the ambition of his life would never be fulfilled; that he would go
plugging to gray hairs and the grave on an old freight train; and that even when
he got to the right side of the Jordan there would still be something like half
a century between him and a fast run. It was funny to hear him complaining about
it, for everything, even his troubles, came funny to him,and in talking he had
an odd way of stuttering with his eyes, which were red. In fact, Jimmie was
nearly all red; hair, face, hands--they said his teeth were freckled.
When the first rumors about the proposed Yellow Mail reached the mountains
Jimmie was running a new ten-wheeler; breaking her in on a freight "for some
fellow without a lick o' sense to use on a limited passenger run," as Jimmie
observed bitterly. The rumors about the mail came at first like stray
mallards--opening signs of winter--and as the season advanced flew thicker and
faster. Washington never was very progressive in the matter of improving the
transcontinental service, but they once put in a postmaster-general down there,
by mistake, who wouldn't take the old song. When the bureau fellows that put
their brains up in curl papers told him it couldn't be done he smiled softly,
but he sent for the managers of the crack lines across the continent, without
suspecting how it bore incidentally on Jimmie Bradshaw's grievance against his