hatchet.

It was a busy week-end among the wires; for now that their anxiety was
removed, men and cities hastened to accommodate. Los Angeles called to
San Diego and Barstow that the Southern California engineers might know
and be ready in their lonely roundhouses; Barstow passed the word to
the Atlantic and Pacific; and Albuquerque flung it the whole length of
the Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe management, even into Chicago. An
engine, combination-car with crew, and the great and gilded "Constance"
private car were to be "expedited" over those two thousand three
hundred and fifty miles. The train would take precedence of one hundred
and seventy-seven others meeting and passing; despatchers and crews of
every one of those said trains must be notified. Sixteen locomotives,
sixteen engineers, and sixteen firemen would be needed--each and every
one the best available. Two and one half minutes would be allowed for
changing engines, three for watering, and two for coaling. "Warn the
men, and arrange tanks and chutes accordingly; for Harvey Cheyne is in
a hurry, a hurry, a hurry," sang the wires. "Forty miles an hour will
be expected, and division superintendents will accompany this special
over their respective divisions. From San Diego to Sixteenth Street,
Chicago, let the magic carpet be laid down. Hurry! Oh, hurry!"

"It will be hot," said Cheyne, as they rolled out of San Diego in the
dawn of Sunday. "We're going to hurry, Mama, just as fast as ever we
can; but I really don't think there's any good of your putting on your
bonnet and gloves yet. You'd much better lie down and take your
medicine. I'd play you a game of dominoes, but it's Sunday."

"I'll be good. Oh, I will be good. Only--taking off my bonnet makes me
feel as if we'd never get there."

"Try to sleep a little, Mama, and we'll be in Chicago before you know."

"But it's Boston, Father. Tell them to hurry."

The six-foot drivers were hammering their way to San Bernardino and the
Mohave wastes, but this was no grade for speed. That would come later.
The heat of the desert followed the heat of the hills as they turned
east to the Needles and the Colorado River. The car cracked in the
utter drouth and glare, and they put crushed ice to Mrs. Cheyne's neck,
and toiled up the long, long grades, past Ash Fork, towards Flagstaff,
where the forests and quarries are, under the dry, remote skies. The
needle of the speed-indicator flicked and wagged to and fro; the