He hurried away and modified the train-orders, so that Clem Johnson, the engineer who was to take the special from Wadsworth to Parkersburg, suddenly lost all interest in life and climbed into his cab in a towering rage.
“Lost his nerve,” he said to his fireman, with a jerk of his head toward the private car. “An’ I don’t suppose they’ll be any runnin’ on the same road with Michaels no more—he’ll have the swell-head so bad. It’s tough luck—that’s what I call it—mighty tough luck.”
“Them fellers never do have any sand,” observed the fireman, contemptuously. “We’d ’a’ beat Michaels’s time easy.”
“O’ course we would!” growled the engineer. “An’ now we’ve got t’ crawl along like a funeral percession. I’ll show him!” and he pulled the throttle open viciously, so that the train started with a jerk that caused the great man to jump with alarm.
The engineer observed his orders not to exceed fifty miles an hour, but the trip was not a pleasant one, for all that; for he took a savage delight in banging and jerking the train, so that even the great private car felt the uneven motion, and swayed and groaned and jumped in a manner which reduced its distinguished occupant to the verge of prostration. Finally he called the conductor.
“What’s the matter with this track, anyway?” he demanded. “I feel like I was riding over a corduroy road. Has there been an earthquake, or what?”
“No, sir,” answered the conductor, who understood what the engineer was doing and was delighted thereat. “There ain’t been no earthquake. The track is perfectly smooth, sir. I don’t think the engine’s working just right—a little uneven.”
“Uneven!” repeated the great man. “Is that the best word you can find for it? It reminds me of a bucking broncho! Heavens!” and he buried his face in his hands again.
“Huh!” grunted the conductor to himself, as he withdrew. “Lost his nerve!”
It was true. The great man had lost his nerve. Not for weeks did he regain his usual tone. The leaders in New York were greatly disappointed by his lack of “ginger;” his speeches did not have that telling quality they had possessed of old—in a word, he lost New York State and the Presidency—and all, perhaps, because a freight crew went to sleep on a siding out in Ohio. An incident, surely, to rank with the spider that saved Mahomet or the whinny which made Darius King of Persia.