"Got to: you hit it up, and I'll skin her. Twenty-six, Dan."
Four minutes to wait. Two station officials come up with polite inquiries. The thermometer is falling, they say, and we shall have it bitter cold over the plains. They reach up with cordial hand-shakes. I pull my cap down, and take my stand behind Bullard. Our side of the cab is quite cut off from the fireman's side by a swelling girth of boiler, which leaves an alleyway at right and left wide enough for a man's body and no wider. Bullard and I are in the right-hand alleyway, Bullard's back and black cap just before me. Dan, with his shovel, is out on a shaky steel shelf behind, that bridges the space between engine and tender. That is where he works, poor lad! We are breathing coal-dust and torch-smoke and warm oil.
"F-s-s-s-s-s!" comes the signal, and instantly we are moving. Lights flash about us everywhere—green lights, white lights, red lights, a phantasmagoria of drug-store bottles. The tracks shine yellow far ahead. A steady pounding and jarring begins, and grows like the roar of battle. Our cab heaves with the tugging of a captive balloon. Our speed increases amazingly. We seem constantly on the point of running straight through blocks of houses, and escape only by sudden and disconcerting swayings around curves that all lead, one will vow, straight into black chasms under the dazzle. Whoever rides here for the first time feels that he is ticketed for sure destruction, understands that this plunging engine must necessarily go off the rails in two or three minutes, say five at the latest; for what guidance, he reasons, can any man get from a million crazy lights, and who that is human can avoid a snarl in such a tangle of bumping switches? I am free to confess, for my own part, that I found the first half hour of my ride on 590 absolutely terrifying.
Thus, at break-neck speed, we come out of Chicago, all slow-going city ordinances to the contrary notwithstanding. We are chasing a transcontinental record schedule, and have fifteen minutes to make up. I breathe more freely as we get into open country. We are going like the wind, but the track is straighter, and the darkness comfortable. I begin to notice things with better understanding. As the lurches come, I brace myself against the boiler side without fear of burning; that is something learned. I find out later that I owe this protection to a two-inch layer of asbestos. I catch a faint sound of the engine bell, and discover, to my surprise, that it has been ringing from the start—indeed, it rings, without ceasing, all the way to Burlington, the rope pulled by a steam jerking contrivance, but the roar of the engine drowns it.
Deep shadows inwrap the cab, all the deeper for the glare that flashes through them every minute or two as Dan, back there on his iron shelf, stokes coal in at the red-hot door. Two faint lights burn for the gages—a jumping water column in front, a pair of wavering needles on the boiler. These Bullard watches coolly, and from time to time reaches back past me to turn the injector-cock, whereupon steam hisses by my head. For the most part he is quite still, like an Indian pilot, head forward at the lookout window, right hand down by the air-brake valve, left hand across the throttle lever, with only a second's jump to the reversing lever that rises up from the floor straight before him. As we race into towns and roar through them, he sounds the chime whistle, making its deep voice challenge the darkness. At curves he eases her with the brakes. And for grades and level stretches and bridges he notches the throttle up or down as the need is. Watch his big, strong grip on the polished handles! Think of the hours he spends here all alone, this man who holds life and death in his quick, sure judgment!
Now he catches the window-frame and slides it open. A blast sweeps in like an arctic hurricane. Bullard leans out into the night and seems to listen. "Try it," he cries, but his voice is faint. I put my head out, and come into a rush of air billows that strangle like breakers.
AT THE THROTTLE.
"Greggs—Hill—three—miles—long. Let—her—go—soon." He closes the window. And now, as we clear the grade, begins a burst of speed that makes the rest of small account. Faster and faster we go, until the very iron seems alive and straining underneath us. I am tossed about in hard pitches. The glow of the furnace lights up continuously. There is no sense of fear any longer. It is too splendid, what we are doing. Of course it means instant death if anything breaks. Let the massive side rod that holds the two drivers snap, and a half—ton knife sweeping seventy miles an hour will slice off our cab and us with it like a cut of cheese. Did not an engineer go to his death that way only last week on the Union Pacific run? After all, why not this death as well as any other? Have we not valves and tubes in our bodies that may snap at any moment!
"How—fast?" I call out.