vate wire.

The next thing we knew, orders began to come in hot from the president's
office--the president of the road, if you please--to get that wheat on
the high line into Chicago, and to get it there quickly.

Trainmen, elevator-men, superintendents of motive power, were spurred
with special orders and special bulletins. Farmers, startled by the
great prices offering, hauled night and day. Every old tub we had in the
shops and on the scrap was overhauled and hustled into the service. The
division danced with excitement. Every bushel of wheat on it must be in
Chicago by the morning of May 31st.

For two weeks we worked everything to the limit; the Sky-Scraper led any
two engines on the line. Even Dad Hamilton was glad to cry enough, and
take a helper. We doubled them every day, and the way the wheat flew
over the line towards the lower end of Lake Michigan was appalling to
speculators. It was a battle between two commercial giants--and a battle
to the death. It shook not alone the country, it shook the world; but
that was nothing to us; our orders were simply to move the wheat. And
the wheat moved.

The last week found us pretty well cleaned up; but the high price
brought grain out of cellars and wells, the buyers said--at least, it
brought all the hoarded wheat, and much of the seed wheat, and the 28th
day of the month found fifty cars of wheat still in the Zanesville
yards. I was at Harvard working on a time-card when the word came, and
behind it a special from the general manager, stating there was a
thousand dollars premium in it for the company, besides tariff, if we
got that wheat into Chicago by Saturday morning.

The train end of it didn't bother me any; it was the motive power that
kept us studying. However, we figured that by running McNeal with the
Sky-Scraper back wild we could put all the wheat behind her in one
train. As it happened, Neighbor was at Harvard, too.

"Can they ever get over Beverly with fifty, Neighbor?" I asked,
doubtfully.

"We'll never know till they try it," growled Neighbor. "There's a
thousand for the company if they do, that's all. How'll you run them?
Give them plenty of sea-room; they'll have to gallop to make it."

Cool and reckless planning, taking the daring chances, straining the
flesh and blood, driving the steel loaded to the snapping-point; that
was what it meant. But the company wanted results; wanted the prestige,
and the premium, too. To gain them we were expect