McWilliams Special showed better speed than the train itself ever
attempted--and he kicked no more.

After all the row, it seems incredible, but they never got ready to
leave Chicago till four o'clock; and when the McWilliams Special lit
into our train system, it was like dropping a mountain-lion into a bunch
of steers.

Freights and extras, local passenger-trains even, were used to being
side-tracked; but when it came to laying out the Flyers and (I whisper
this) the White Mail, and the Manila express, the oil began to sizzle in
the journal-boxes. The freight business, the passenger traffic--the
mail-schedules of a whole railway system were actually knocked by the
McWilliams Special into a cocked hat.

From the minute it cleared Western Avenue it was the only thing talked
of. Divisional headquarters and car tink shanties alike were bursting
with excitement.

On the West End we had all night to prepare, and at five o'clock next
morning every man in the operating department was on edge. At precisely
3.58 A.M. the McWilliams Special stuck its nose into our division, and
Foley--pulled off No. 1 with the 466--was heading her dizzy for
McCloud. Already the McWilliams had made up thirty-one minutes on the
one hour delay in Chicago, and Lincoln threw her into our hands with a
sort of "There, now! You fellows--are you any good at all on the West
End?" And we thought we were.

Sitting in the dispatcher's office, we tagged her down the line like a
swallow. Harvard, Oxford, Zanesville, Ashton--and a thousand people at
the McCloud station waited for six o'clock and for Foley's muddy cap to
pop through the Blackwood bluffs; watched him stain the valley maples
with a stream of white and black, scream at the junction switches, tear
and crash through the yards, and slide hissing and panting up under our
nose, swing out of his cab, and look at nobody at all but his watch.

We made it 5.59 A.M. Central Time. The miles, 136; the minutes, 121. The
schedule was beaten--and that with the 136 miles the fastest on the
whole 1026. Everybody in town yelled except Foley; he asked for a chew
of tobacco, and not getting one handily, bit into his own piece.

While Foley melted his weed George Sinclair stepped out of the
superintendent's office--he was done in a black silk shirt, with a blue
four-in-hand streaming over his front--stepped out to shake hands with
Foley, as one hostler got the 466 out of the way, and another backed
down with a n