Part 11 (1/2)
I am giving you only an inkling of how it started. Not a word as to how countless orders were issued, and countless schedules were cancelled.
Not a paragraph about numberless trains abandoned _in toto_, and numberless others pulled and hauled and held and annulled. The McWilliams Special in a twinkle tore a great system into great splinters.
It set master-mechanics by the ears and made reckless falsifiers of previously conservative trainmen. It made undying enemies of rival superintendents, and incipient paretics of jolly train-dispatchers. It s.h.i.+vered us from end to end and stem to stern, but it covered 1026 miles of the best steel in the world in rather better than twenty hours and a blaze of glory.
”My word is out,” said the president in his message to all superintendents, thirty minutes later. ”You will get your division schedule in a few moments. Send no reasons for inability to make it; simply deliver the goods. With your time-report, which comes by Ry. M.
S., I want the names and records of every member of every train-crew and every engine-crew that haul the McWilliams car.” Then followed particular injunctions of secrecy; above all, the newspapers must not get it.
But where newspapers are, secrecy can only be hoped for--never attained.
In spite of the most elaborate precautions to preserve Peter McWilliams's secret--would you believe it?--the evening papers had half a column--practically the whole thing. Of course they had to guess at some of it, but for a newspaper-story it was pretty correct, just the same. They had, to a minute, the time of the start from Chicago, and hinted broadly that the schedule was a hair-raiser; something to make previous very fast records previous very slow records. And--here in a scoop was the secret--the train was to convey a prominent Chicago capitalist to the bedside of his dying son, Philip McWilliams, in Denver. Further, that hourly bulletins were being wired to the distressed father, and that every effort of science would be put forth to keep the unhappy boy alive until his father could reach Denver on the Special. Lastly, it was hoped by all the evening papers (to fill out the half first column scare) that sunrise would see the anxious parent well on towards the gateway of the Rockies.
Of course the morning papers from the Atlantic to the Pacific had the story repeated--scare-headed, in fact--and the public were laughing at our people's dogged refusal to confirm the report or to be interviewed at all on the subject. The papers had the story, anyway. What did they care for our efforts to screen a private distress which insisted on so paralyzing a time-card for 1026 miles?
When our own, the West End of the schedule, came over the wires there was a universal, a vociferous, kick. Dispatchers, superintendent of motive-power, train-master, everybody, protested. We were given about seven hours to cover 400 miles--the fastest percentage, by-the-way, on the whole run.
”This may be grief for young McWilliams, and for his dad,” grumbled the chief dispatcher that evening, as he cribbed the press dispatches going over the wires about the Special, ”but the grief is not theirs alone.”
Then he made a protest to Chicago. What the answer was none but himself ever knew. It came personal, and he took it personally; but the manner in which he went to work clearing track and making a card for the McWilliams Special showed better speed than the train itself ever attempted--and he kicked no more.
After all the row, it seems incredible, but they never got ready to leave Chicago till four o'clock; and when the McWilliams Special lit into our train system, it was like dropping a mountain-lion into a bunch of steers.
Freights and extras, local pa.s.senger-trains even, were used to being side-tracked; but when it came to laying out the Flyers and (I whisper this) the White Mail, and the Manila express, the oil began to sizzle in the journal-boxes. The freight business, the pa.s.senger traffic--the mail-schedules of a whole railway system were actually knocked by the McWilliams Special into a c.o.c.ked hat.
From the minute it cleared Western Avenue it was the only thing talked of. Divisional headquarters and car tink shanties alike were bursting with excitement.
On the West End we had all night to prepare, and at five o'clock next morning every man in the operating department was on edge. At precisely 3.58 A.M. the McWilliams Special stuck its nose into our division, and Foley--pulled off No. 1 with the 466--was heading her dizzy for McCloud. Already the McWilliams had made up thirty-one minutes on the one hour delay in Chicago, and Lincoln threw her into our hands with a sort of ”There, now! You fellows--are you any good at all on the West End?” And we thought we were.
Sitting in the dispatcher's office, we tagged her down the line like a swallow. Harvard, Oxford, Zanesville, Ashton--and a thousand people at the McCloud station waited for six o'clock and for Foley's muddy cap to pop through the Blackwood bluffs; watched him stain the valley maples with a stream of white and black, scream at the junction switches, tear and crash through the yards, and slide hissing and panting up under our nose, swing out of his cab, and look at n.o.body at all but his watch.
We made it 5.59 A.M. Central Time. The miles, 136; the minutes, 121. The schedule was beaten--and that with the 136 miles the fastest on the whole 1026. Everybody in town yelled except Foley; he asked for a chew of tobacco, and not getting one handily, bit into his own piece.
While Foley melted his weed George Sinclair stepped out of the superintendent's office--he was done in a black silk s.h.i.+rt, with a blue four-in-hand streaming over his front--stepped out to shake hands with Foley, as one hostler got the 466 out of the way, and another backed down with a new Sky-Sc.r.a.per, the 509.
But n.o.body paid much attention to all this. The mob had swarmed around the ratty, old, blind-eyed baggage-car which, with an ordinary way-car, const.i.tuted the McWilliams Special.
”Now what does a man with McWilliams's money want to travel special in an old photograph-gallery like that for?” asked Andy Cameron, who was the least bit huffed because he hadn't been marked up for the run himself. ”You better take him in a cup of hot coffee, Sinkers,”
suggested Andy to the lunch-counter boy. ”You might get a ten-dollar bill if the old man isn't feeling too badly. What do you hear from Denver, Neighbor?” he asked, turning to the superintendent of motive power. ”Is the boy holding out?”
”I'm not worrying about the boy holding out; it's whether the Five-Nine will hold out.”
”Aren't you going to change engines and crews at Arickaree?”
”Not to-day,” said Neighbor, grimly; ”we haven't time.”
Just then Sinkers rushed at the baggage-car with a cup of hot coffee for Mr. McWilliams. Everybody, hoping to get a peep at the capitalist, made way. Sinkers climbed over the train chests which were lashed to the platforms and pounded on the door. He pounded hard, for he hoped and believed that there was something in it. But he might have pounded till his coffee froze for all the impression it made on the sleepy McWilliams.
”Hasn't the man trouble enough without tackling your chiccory?” sang out Felix Kennedy, and the laugh so discouraged Sinkers that he gave over and sneaked away.
At that moment the editor of the local paper came around the depot corner on the run. He was out for an interview, and, as usual, just a trifle late. However, he insisted on boarding the baggage-car to tender his sympathy to McWilliams.