ee minutes and a half, and
they made two miles beyond Dennison at over a hundred miles an hour. As
the mail rushed west, word was flashed ahead, and crowds gathered at the
stations to cheer and marvel.

"There must have been five hundred people on the platform at Dixon,"
said White, telling the story, "and they looked to me like a swarm of
ants, just a black, wriggling mass, and then they were gone. We came on
to a bridge there after a big reverse curve with a down grade, and I
guess no one will ever know how fast we were going, as we slammed her
around one way and then slammed her around the other way. It was every
bit of ninety miles an hour. You got all you wanted, didn't you, Fred?"

The fireman looked up, torch in hand, and remarked, in a dry monotone:
"Goin' through Dixon I said my prayers and hung on, stretched out flat.
That's what I done."

"Fred and I," continued White, "both got letters about the run from the
superintendent. Here's mine, if you'd like to read it."

The pleasure of these two blackened men over this graciousness of the
superintendent was a thing to see. For such a bit of paper, crumpled and
smeared with oil, I believe they would have taken the Mississippi at a
jump, engine, train, and all. Superintendent's orders, superintendent's
praise--there is the beginning and end of all things for them.

My first long ride on one of these splendid locomotives was with the
Burlington night mail (no passengers), 590 pulling her and Frank Bullard
at the throttle. It is said that the Baldwin Locomotive Works never
turned out a faster engine than this 590. The man must be a giant whose
head will top her drivers, and, for all her seventy tons, there is
speed in every line of her. She is a young engine, too--only four years
old--and Bullard swears he will back her in the matter of getting over
rails to do anything that steel and steam can do. "She's willing and
gentle, sir, and easy running. You'll see in a minute."

These words from Bullard, first-class engine-driver of the C. B. & Q., a
long, loosely jointed man, with the eye and build of a scout. As he
spoke they were coupling us to the mail-cars, in preparation for the
start. In overalls and sweater I had come, with type-written authority
to make the run that night. This was in the first week in January, the
second time Bullard had drawn the throttle for Burlington on the new
fast schedule. Burlington lay off there in Iowa, on the Mississippi,
with all