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

proposition was conceded to be the toughest affair the motive power at Medicine
Bend ever faced. However, forty-eight hours before the mail left the New York
post-office Doubleday wired to Neighbor, "Ready"; Neighbor to Bucks, "Ready";
and Bucks to Washington, "Ready"--and we were ready from end to end.
Then the orders began to shoot through the mountains. The test run was of
especial importance, because the signing of the contract was believed to depend
on the success of it. Once signed, accidents and delays might be explained; for
the test run there must be no delays. Despatches were given the 11, which meant
Bucks; no lay-outs, no slows for the Yellow Mail. Road masters were notified: no
track work in front of the Yellow Mail. Bridge gangs were warned, yard masters
instructed, section bosses cautioned, track walkers spurred--the system was
polished like a bar-keeper's diamond, and swept like a parlor car for the test
flight of the Yellow Mail.
Doubleday, working like a boiler washer, spent all day Thursday and all Thursday
night in the roundhouse. He had personally gone over the engines that were to
take the racket in the mountains. Ten-wheelers they were, the 1012 and the 1014,
with fifty-six-inch drivers and cylinders big enough to sit up and eat breakfast
in. Spick and span both of them, just long enough out of the shops to run
smoothly to the work; and on Friday Oliver Sollers, who, when he opened a
throttle, blew miles over the tender like feathers, took the 1012, groomed as
you'd groom a Wilkes mare, down to Piedmont for the run up to the Bend.
Now Oliver Sollers was a runner in a thousand, and steady as a clock; but he had
a fireman who couldn't stand prosperity, Steve Horigan, a cousin of Johnnie's.
The glory was too great for Steve, and he spent Friday night in Gallagher's
place celebrating, telling the boys what the 1012 would do to the Yellow Mail.
Not a thing, Steve claimed after five drinks, but pull the stamps clean off the
letters the minute they struck the foothills. But when Steve showed up at five
A. M. to superintend the movement, he was seasick. The instant Sollers set eyes
on him he objected to taking him out. Mr. Sollers was not looking for any
unnecessary chances on one of Bucks' personal matters, and for the general
manager the Yellow Mail test had become exceedingly personal. Practically
everybody East and West had said it would fail; Bucks said no.
Neighbor himself was on the Piedmont platform that morning, watching things. The
McCloud despatchers had promised the train to our division on time, and her
smoke was due with the rise of the sun. The big superintendent of motive power,
watching anxiously for her arrival, and planning anxiously for her outgoing,
glared at the bunged fireman in front of him, and, when Sollers protested,
Neighbor turned on the swollen Steve with sorely bitter words. Steve swore
mightily he was fit and could do the trick--but what's the word of a railroad
man that drinks? Neighbor spoke wicked words, and while they poured on the
guilty Steve's crop there was a shout down the platform. In the east the sun was
breaking over the sand-hills, and below it a haze of black thickened the
horizon. It was McTerza with the 808 and the Yellow Mail. Neighbor looked at his
watch; she was, if anything, a minute to the good, and before the car tinks
could hustle across the yard, a streak of gold cut the sea of purple alfalfa in
the lower valley, and the narrows began to smoke with the dust of the race for
the platform.
When McTerza blocked the big drivers at the west end of the depot, every eye was
on the new equipment. Three standard railway mail cars, done in varnished
buttercup, strung out behind the sizzling engine, and they looked pretty as