They flashed past the outer signal towers and now only two twin ribbons of steel lay ahead of them. The mail was speeding down the right-hand westbound track. They would meet the eastbound trains coming down the left-hand pair of rails.
The needle on the speed indicator mounted steadily as Henshaw opened the throttle notch by notch. The 1064’s exhaust was a steady, deafening volley that made conversation impossible.
Block signals popped up in the searching rays of the headlight to disappear in the thunder of the train almost before Tim had time to read their signals. But the engineer saw them all and knew that the steel highway ahead of him was clear.
Harry Benson was busy feeding the fire. He swayed to and fro in the glare from the open firebox. First to the tender, then to the cab with a scoop of coal, then back to the tender for more coal.
By the time the mail was five miles out of Atkinson, Henshaw had the 1064 near the peak of its stride. They were rolling down the line at better than seventy miles an hour. It was a dizzy pace and the cab rocked and rolled over the steel.
Tim marveled at the easy grace of the fireman as he swung back and forth between the cab and the tender, feeding great shovels of coal into the hungry firebox.
The mail flashed through sleeping villages and past darkened farmhouses. The country through which they were speeding was sparsely settled and there were few grade crossings. Only occasionally did Henshaw reach for the whistle cord and send a sharp warning into the night.
Raleigh was their first scheduled stop and five miles this side of the city they slid down into a valley where a roaring stream rushed under the rails. A repair crew had been strengthening the bridge and had not quite completed their work. As a result the dispatcher had put out a slow order which called for a speed not in excess of thirty miles an hour over the bridge. Henshaw glanced at his watch and grumbled to himself as he pinched the mail down to comply with the orders. The air brakes ground hard on the wheels and Tim looked back at the train. Sparks were flying from every truck, cascading in showers along the right-of-way.
They rumbled over the bridge and Henshaw opened up again. Every minute counted and he rolled the mail into Raleigh at a lively clip.
There was no need to handle the mail as he would a crack transcontinental limited with extra fare passengers and a diner full of chinaware and Henshaw whipped the mail into the station and ground her down hard. They stopped with a jerk that jarred every bone in Tim’s body.