|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 63
At night the bunched electrics lit up that distressful palace of all
the luxuries, and they fared sumptuously, swinging on through the
emptiness of abject desolation.
Now they heard the swish of a water-tank, and the guttural voice
of a Chinaman, the click-clink of hammers that tested the Krupp
steel wheels, and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear-platform;
now the solid crash of coal shot into the tender; and now a beating
back of noises as they flew past a waiting train. Now they looked
out into great abysses, a trestle purring beneath their tread, or up to
rocks that barred out half the stars. Now scour and ravine changed
and rolled back to jagged mountains on the horizon's edge, and
now broke into hills lower and lower, till at last came the true
plains.
At Dodge City an unknown hand threw in a copy of a Kansas
paper containing some sort of an interview with Harvey, who had
evidently fallen in with an enterprising reporter, telegraphed on
from Boston. The joyful journalese revealed that it was beyond
question their boy, and it soothed Mrs. Cheyne for a while. Her
one word "hurry" was conveyed by the crews to the engineers at
Nickerson, Topeka, and Marceline, where the grades are easy, and
they brushed the Continent behind them. Towns and villages were
close together now, and a man could feel here that he moved
among people.
"I can't see the dial, and my eyes ache so. What are we doing?"
"The very best we can, Mama. There's no sense in getting in before
the Limited. We'd only have to wait."
"I don't care. I want to feel we're moving. Sit down and tell me the
miles."
Cheyne sat down and read the dial for her (there were some miles
which stand for records to this day), but the seventy-foot car never
changed its long steamer-like roll, moving through the heat with
the hum of a giant bee. Yet the speed was not enough for Mrs.
Cheyne; and the heat, the remorseless August heat, was making
her giddy; the clock-hands would not move, and when, oh, when
would they be in Chicago?
It is not true that, as they changed engines at Fort Madison, Cheyne
passed over to the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers an endowment sufficient to enable them to fight him
and his fellows on equal terms for evermore. He paid his
obligations to engineers and firemen as he believed they deserved,
and only his bank knows what he gave the crews who had
sympathized with him. It is on record that the last crew took entire
charge of switching operations at Sixteenth Street, because "she" was
in a doze at last, and Heaven was to help any one who bumped her.
Now the highly paid specialist who conveys the Lake Shore and
Michigan Southern Limited from Chicago to Elkhart is something
of an autocrat, and he does not approve of being told how to back
up to a car. None the less he handled the "Constance" as if she
might have been a load of dynamite, and when the crew rebuked
him, they did it in whispers and dumb show.
"Pshaw!" said the Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe men,
discussing life later, "we weren't runnin' for a record. Harvey
Cheyne's wife, she were sick back, an' we didn't want to jounce
her. 'Come to think of it, our runnin' time from San Diego to
Chicago was 57.54. You can tell that to them Eastern way-trains.
When we're tryin' for a record, we'll let you know."
To the Western man (though this would not please either city)
Chicago and Boston are cheek by jowl, and some railroads
encourage the delusion. The Limited whirled the "Constance" into
Buffalo and the arms of the New York Central and Hudson River
(illustrious magnates with white whiskers and gold charms on their
watch-chains boarded her here to talk a little business to Cheyne),
who slid her gracefully into Albany, where the Boston and Albany
completed the run from tide-water to tide-water--total time,
eighty-seven hours and thirty-five minutes, or three days, fifteen
hours and one half. Harvey was waiting for them.
After violent emotion most people and all boys demand food.
They feasted the returned prodigal behind drawn curtains, cut off
in their great happiness, while the trains roared in and out around
them. Harvey ate, drank, and enlarged on his adventures all in one
breath, and when he had a hand free his mother fondled it. His
voice was thickened with living in the open, salt air; his palms
were rough and hard, his wrists dotted with marks of gurrysores;
and a fine full flavour of codfish hung round rubber boots and blue
jersey.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|