So Foley ran a long string of empties and a car or two of rotten oranges down to Harvard Junction that night, with one of the dispatchers for pilot. Under my orders they had a train made up at the junction for him to bring back to McCloud. They had picked up all the strays in the yards, including half a dozen cars of meat that the local board of health had condemned after it had laid out in the sun for two weeks, and a car of butter we had been shifting around ever since the beginning of the strike.
When the strikers saw the stuff coming in next morning behind Foley they concluded I had gone crazy.
"What do you think of the track, Foley?" said I.
"Fair," he replied, sitting down on my desk. "Stiff hill down there by Zanesville."
"Any trouble to climb it?" I asked, for I had purposely given him a heavy train.
"Not with that car of butter. If you hold that butter another week it will climb a hill without any engine."
"Can you handle a passenger-train?"
"I guess so."
"I'm going to send you west on No. 1 to-night."
"Then you'll have to give me a fireman. That guy you sent out last night is a lightning-rod-peddler. The dispatcher threw most of the coal."