He proved an unerring judge of character. The useless men were laid off, while the competent were encouraged and promoted. He could handle a shovel with the best of them, or drive in a spike without missing a blow. In a year he had the Burdock Route as level as a billiard-table without extra expenditure of money, and travelers were beginning to note the improvement, so that receipts increased. He induced the Pullman Company to put an up-to-date sleeper on the night trains, east and west, and withdraw their antiquated cars hitherto in use.
But there was one thing Steele was not able to accomplish. He could not persuade the venerable president of the road to regard it as anything but a huge joke. The Hon. Duffield Rogers absolutely refused to leave his comfortable chair in the club and take a trip over the Burdock. The president delighted in Steele’s company, and got him made a member of the club, setting him down as a graduate of the Wahoo University, which was supposed to exist somewhere in the remote West. Rogers was a privileged member and a founder of the club, so the committee did not scrutinise his recommendation too closely.
“It’s no use, John,” he would say, when his fervent assistant urged him to come and see what had been done on the Burdock. “Life is hard enough at best without my spending any part of it in a beastly place like Portandit. I hear you have done wonders with the road, but you can’t accomplish anything really worth while with a route that has no terminus on the Atlantic. As long as you have to hand over your Eastern traffic to the Rock-ervelts at Warmington, and take what Western freight they care to allow you, you are in the clutch of the Rock-ervelts, and they can freeze you out whenever they like.=
```You may grade, you may ballast your road, if you will,
```But the shadow of Rockervelt’s over you still."=
Thus Steele always received his discouragement from his own chief, and with most people this would ultimately have dampened enthusiasm; but John was ever optimistic and a believer in his work. One day he rushed into the club, his hat on the back of his head, and his eyes ablaze with excitement.
“Mr. Rogers, I’ve solved the problem at last!” he cried. “I tell you, well make the Burdock the greatest line in this country.”
He shoved aside the heaps of magazines from the reading-room table and spread out a map on its surface. The Hon. Duffield rose slowly to his feet and stood beside the eager young man. A kindly, indulgent smile played about the lips of the aged president.
“Now see here!” shouted Steele (they were alone together in the room, and the “Silence” placard made no protest). “There’s Beechville, on the Burdock Route, and here’s Collins’ Centre, on the C. P. & N. Between these two points are sixty-three miles of prairie country, as level as a floor. It will be the cheapest bit of road to build in America; no embankments, no cuttings, no grade at all. Why, just dump the rails down, and they’d form a line of themselves! Once the Burdock taps the C. P. & N., there is our route clear through to tide-water, independent of the Rockervelt System.”
Steele, his face aglow, looked up at the veteran, but the indulgent smile had taken on a cynical touch. Mr. Rogers placed his hand on John’s shoulder in kindly fashion and said slowly: