"Spearman, Frank H - The Run of the Yellow Mail" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spearman Frank H)

master mechanic.
The postmaster-general called the managers of the big lines, and they had a
dinner at Chamberlain's, and they told him the same thing. "It has been tried,"
they said in the old, tired way; "really it can't be done."
"California has been getting the worst of it for years on the mail service,"
persisted the postmaster-general moderately. "But Californians ought to have the
best of it. We don't think anything about putting New York mail in Chicago in
twenty hours. It ought to be simple to cut half a day across the continent and
give San Francisco her mail a day earlier. Where's the fall-down?" he asked,
like one refusing no for an answer.
The general managers looked at our representative sympathetically, and coughed
cigar smoke his way to hide him.
"West of the Missouri," murmured a Pennsylvania swell, who pulled indifferently
at a fifty-cent cigar. Everybody at the table took a drink on the expose',
except the general manager, who sat at that time for the Rocky Mountains.
The West End representative was unhappily accustomed to facing the finger of
scorn on such occasions. It had become with our managers a tradition. There was
never a conference of continental lines in which we were not scoffed at as the
weak link in the chain of everything--mail, passenger, specials, what not--the
trouble was invariably laid at our door.
But this time there was a new man sitting for the line at the Chamberlain
dinner; a youngish man with a face that set like cement when the West End was
trod upon.
The postmaster-general was inclined, from the reputation we had, to look on our
chap as a man looks at a dog without a pedigree, or at a dray horse in a bunch
of standard breeds. But something in the mouth of the West End man gave him
pause; since the Rough Riders. It has been a bit different about verdicts on
things Western. The postmaster-general suppressed a rising sarcasm with a sip of
Chartreuse, for the dinner was ripening, and waited; nor did he mistake--the
West Ender was about to speak.
"Why west of the Missouri?" he asked, with a lift of the face that was not
altogether candid. The Pennsylvania man shrugged his brows; to explain might
have seemed indelicate.
"If it is put through, how much of it do you propose to take yourself?" inquired
our man, looking evenly at the Alleghany official.
"Sixty-five miles, including stops from the New York post-office to Canal
Street," replied the Pennsylvania man, and his words flowed with irritating
smoothness and ease.
"What do you take?" continued the man with the jaw, turning to the Burlington
representative, who was struggling, belated, with an artichoke.
"About seventy from Canal to Tenth and Mason. Say, seventy," repeated the "Q"
manager, with the lordliness of a man who has miles to throw at almost anybody,
and knows it.
"Then suppose we say sixty-five from Tenth and Mason to Ogden," suggested the
West Ender. There was a well-bred stare the table round, a lifting of glasses to
mask expressions that might give pain. Sixty-five miles an hour? Through the
Rockies?
But the postmaster-general struck the table quickly and heavily; he didn't want
to let it get away. "Why, hang it, Mr. Bucks," he exclaimed with emphasis, "if
you will say sixty, the business is done. We don't ask you to do the Rockies in