Part 7 (1/2)

”Me?” answered the old man, evasively, ”I've got a boy back East; getting to be a big one, too. He's in school. When are you going to give us a pa.s.senger run with the Sky-Sc.r.a.per, Neighbor?” asked Hamilton, turning to the master-mechanic.

”Soon as we get this wheat, up on the high line, out of the way,”

replied Neighbor. ”We haven't half engines enough to move it, and I get a wire about every six hours to move it faster. Every siding's blocked, clear to Belgrade. How many of those sixty-thousand-pound cars can you take over Beverly Hill with your Sky-Sc.r.a.per?”

He was asking both men. The engineer looked at his chum.

”I reckon maybe thirty-five or forty,” said McNeal. ”Eh, Dad?”

”Maybe, son,” growled Hamilton; ”and break my back doing it?”

”I gave you a helper once and you kicked him off the tender,” retorted Neighbor.

”Don't want anybody raking ashes for me--not while I'm drawing full time,” Dad frowned.

But the upshot of it was that we put the Sky-Sc.r.a.per at hauling wheat, and within a week she was doing the work of a double-header.

It was May, and a thousand miles east of us, in Chicago, there was trouble in the wheat-pit on the Board of Trade. You would hardly suspect what queer things that wheat scramble gave rise to, affecting Georgie McNeal and old man Hamilton and a lot of other fellows away out on a railroad division on the Western plains; but this was the way of it:

A man sitting in a little office on La Salle Street wrote a few words on a very ordinary-looking sheet of paper, and touched a b.u.t.ton. That brought a colored boy, and he took the paper out to a young man who sat at the eastern end of a private wire.

The next thing we knew, orders began to come in hot from the president's office--the president of the road, if you please--to get that wheat on the high line into Chicago, and to get it there quickly.

Trainmen, elevator-men, superintendents of motive power, were spurred with special orders and special bulletins. Farmers, startled by the great prices offering, hauled night and day. Every old tub we had in the shops and on the sc.r.a.p was overhauled and hustled into the service. The division danced with excitement. Every bushel of wheat on it must be in Chicago by the morning of May 31st.

For two weeks we worked everything to the limit; the Sky-Sc.r.a.per led any two engines on the line. Even Dad Hamilton was glad to cry enough, and take a helper. We doubled them every day, and the way the wheat flew over the line towards the lower end of Lake Michigan was appalling to speculators. It was a battle between two commercial giants--and a battle to the death. It shook not alone the country, it shook the world; but that was nothing to us; our orders were simply to move the wheat. And the wheat moved.

The last week found us pretty well cleaned up; but the high price brought grain out of cellars and wells, the buyers said--at least, it brought all the h.o.a.rded wheat, and much of the seed wheat, and the 28th day of the month found fifty cars of wheat still in the Zanesville yards. I was at Harvard working on a time-card when the word came, and behind it a special from the general manager, stating there was a thousand dollars premium in it for the company, besides tariff, if we got that wheat into Chicago by Sat.u.r.day morning.

The train end of it didn't bother me any; it was the motive power that kept us studying. However, we figured that by running McNeal with the Sky-Sc.r.a.per back wild we could put all the wheat behind her in one train. As it happened, Neighbor was at Harvard, too.

”Can they ever get over Beverly with fifty, Neighbor?” I asked, doubtfully.

”We'll never know till they try it,” growled Neighbor. ”There's a thousand for the company if they do, that's all. How'll you run them?

Give them plenty of sea-room; they'll have to gallop to make it.”

Cool and reckless planning, taking the daring chances, straining the flesh and blood, driving the steel loaded to the snapping-point; that was what it meant. But the company wanted results; wanted the prestige, and the premium, too. To gain them we were expected to stretch our little resources to the uttermost.

I studied a minute, then turned to the dispatcher.

”Tell Norman to send them out as second 4; that gives the right of way over every wheel against them. If they can't make it on that kind of schedule, it isn't in the track.”

It was extraordinary business, rather, sending a train of wheat through on a pa.s.senger schedule, practically, as the second section of our east-bound flyer; but we took hair-lifting chances on the plains.

It was noon when the orders were flashed. At three o'clock No. 4 was due to leave Zanesville. For three hours I kept the wires busy warning all operators and trainmen, even switch-engines and yard-masters, of the wheat special--second 4.

The Flyer, the first section and regular pa.s.senger-train, was checked out of Zanesville on time. Second 4, which meant Georgie McNeal, Dad, the Sky-Sc.r.a.per, and fifty loads of wheat, reported out at 3.10. While we worked on our time-card, Neighbor, in the dispatcher's office across the hall, figured out that the wheat-train would enrich the company just eleven thousand dollars, tolls and premium. ”If it doesn't break in two on Beverly Hill,” growled Neighbor, with a qualm.

On the dispatcher's sheet, which is a sort of panorama, I watched the big train whirl past station after station, drawing steadily nearer to us, and doing it, the marvel, on full pa.s.senger time. It was a great feat, and Georgie McNeal, whose nerve and brain were guiding the tremendous load, was breaking records with every mile-stone.

They were due in Harvard at nine o'clock. The first 4, our Flyer, pulled in and out on time, meeting 55, the west-bound overland freight, at the second station east of Harvard--Redbud.