Part 22 (1/2)
”It will be hot,” said Cheyne, as they rolled out of San Diego in the dawn of Sunday ”We're going to hurry, mama, just as fast as ever we can; but I really don't think there's any good of your putting on your bonnet and gloves yet You'd aood Oh, I will be good Only--taking off et there”
”Try to sleep a little, o before you know”
”But it's Boston, father Tell the their way to San Bernardino and the Mohave wastes, but this was no grade for speed That would come later
The heat of the desert followed the heat of the hills as they turned east to the Needles and the Colorado River The car cracked in the utter drought and glare, and they put crushed ice to Mrs Cheyne's neck, and toiled up the long, long grades, past Ash Fork, towards Flagstaff, where the forests and quarries are, under the dry, reed to and fro; the cinders rattled on the roof, and a whirl of dust sucked after the whirling wheels, The crew of the co in their shi+rt-sleeves, and Cheyne found hi old, old stories of the railroad that every trainman knows, above the roar of the car He told theiven up its dead, and they nodded and spat and rejoiced with him; asked after ”her, back there,” and whether she could stand it if the engineer ”let her out a piece,” and Cheyne thought she could
Accordingly, the great fire-horse was ”let out” frostaff to Winslow, till a division superintendent protested
But Mrs Cheyne, in the boudoir state-roo to the silver door-handle, only ed her husband to bid them ”hurry” And so they dropped the dry sands and rilled on till the crash of the couplings and the wheeze of the brake-hose told thee by the Continental Divide Three bold and experienced an; white, quivering, and hen they finished their trick at those terrible wheels--swung her over the great lift froer, up and up to the Raton Tunnel on the State line, whence they dropped rocking into La Junta, had sight of the Arkansaw, and tore down the long slope to Dodge City, where Cheyne took co his watch an hour ahead
There was very little talk in the car The secretary and typewriter sat together on the stalass observation- at the rear end, watching the surge and ripple of the ties crowded back behind the notes of the scenery Cheyne eousness and the naked necessity of the co crews forgot that he was their tribal eneht the bunched electrics lit up that distressful palace of all the luxuries, and they fared suh the emptiness of abject desolation Now they heard the swish of a water-tank, and the guttural voice of a China-man, the clink-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 scaur and ravine changed and rolled back to jagged e, and now broke into hills lower and lower, till at last cae City an unknown hand threw in a copy of a Kansas paper containing some sort of an intervieith 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 theether now, and apeople
”I can't see the dial, and ?”
”The very best we can,in before the Limited We'd only have to wait”
”I don't care I want to feel we'reSit 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, steaiant bee Yet the speed was not enough for Mrs Cheyne; and the heat, the reiddy; the clock-hands would not o?
It is not true that, as they changed engines at Fort Madison, Cheyne passed over to the Aineers an endowht him and his fellows on equal terineers and firemen as he believed they deserved, and only his bank knohat he gave the creho had sympathised with hie of switching operations at Sixteenth Street, because ”she” was in a doze at last, and Heaven was to help any one who buhly paid specialist who conveys the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Li 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 ht have been a load of dynamite, and when the crew rebuked him, they did it in whispers and dumb show
”Pshaw!” said the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Felife later, ”eren't runnin' for a record Harvey Cheyne's wife, she were sick back, an' we didn't want to jounce her 'Coo was 5754 You can tell that to them Eastern way-trains When we're tryin' for a record, we'll let you know”
To the Western o and Boston are cheek by jowl, and soe the delusion The Limited whirled the ”Constance” into Buffalo and the arms of the New York Central and Hudson River (illustrious old 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 cohty-seven hours and thirty-five minutes, or three days, fifteen hours and one half Harvey aiting for them
After violent emotion most people and all boys deal behind drawn curtains, cut off in their great happiness, while the trains roared in and out around theed on his adventures all in one breath, and when he had a hand free hisin the open, salt air; his palurry-sores; and a fine full flavour of cod-fish hung round rubber boots and blue jersey
The father, well used to judginghar that he knew very little whatever of his son; but he distinctly reht in ”calling down the oldhis aiety of public roo of the wealthy play with or revile the bell-boys But this well set-up fisher-youth did not wriggle, looked at hi, and spoke in a tone distinctly, even startlingly, respectful There was that in his voice, too, which seeht be permanent, and that the new Harvey had coht Cheyne ”Now Constance would never have allowed that Don't see as Europe could have done it any better”
”But why didn't you tell this man, Troop, who you were?” the mother repeated, when Harvey had expanded his story at least twice
”Disko Troop, dear The best man that ever walked a deck I don't care who the next is”
”Why didn't you tell him to put you ashore? You know papa would have made it up to hiht I was crazy I'm afraid I called him a thief because I couldn't find the bills in staff that--that night,” sobbed Mrs
Cheyne