In an hour the run was broken. But when the four railroad men left the bank, after all sorts of hugging by excited directors, they carried not only the blessings of the officials, but each in his vest pocket a check, every one of which discounted the biggest voucher ever drawn on the West End for a month's pay; though I violate no confidence in stating that Georgie Sinclair's was bigger than any two of the others. And this is how it happens that there hangs in the directors' room of the Sierra Leone National a very creditable portrait of the kid engineer.
Besides paying tariff on the specie, the bank paid for a new coat of paint for the McWilliams Special from caboose to pilot. She was the last train across the Mattaback for two weeks.
The Million-Dollar Freight-Train
It was the second month of the strike, and not a pound of freight had been moved; things looked smoky on the West End.
The general superintendent happened to be with us when the news came.
"You can't handle it, boys," said he, nervously. "What you'd better do is to turn it over to the Columbian Pacific."
Our contracting freight agent on the coast at that time was a fellow so erratic that he was nicknamed Crazyhorse. Right in the midst of the strike Crazyhorse wired that he had secured a big silk shipment for New York. We were paralyzed.
We had no engineers, no firemen, and no motive power to speak of. The strikers were pounding our men, wrecking our trains, and giving us the worst of it generally; that is, when we couldn't give it to them. Why the fellow displayed his activity at that particular juncture still remains a mystery. Perhaps he had a grudge against the road; if so, he took an artful revenge. Everybody on the system with ordinary railroad sense knew that our struggle was to keep clear of freight business until we got rid of our strike. Anything valuable or perishable was especially unwelcome.
But the stuff was docked and loaded and consigned in our care before we knew it. After that, a refusal to carry it would be like hoisting the white flag; and that is something which never yet flew on the West End.