nta 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--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, mamma, 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 o' 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, mamma, 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 drought and glare, and they put crushed ice to Mrs. Cheyne's
neck, and toiled up the long, long grades, past Ash Fork, toward
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 cinders rattled on the roof, and a whirl of dust sucked after
the whirling wheels. The crew of the combination sat on their bunks,
panting in their shirt-sleeves, and Cheyne found himself among them
shouting old, old stories of the railroad that every trainman knows,
above the roar of the car. He told them about his son, and how the sea
had given up its dead, and they nodded and spat and