the night and all the State of Illinois between us.

Now the train stands ready--three mail-cars and the engine, not a stick
besides. No Pullman comforts here, no bunks for sleeping, no man aboard
who has the right to sleep. Everything is hustle and business. Already
the mail clerks are swarming at the pouches, like printers on a rush
edition. See those last bags swung in through the panel doors! Not even
the president of the road may ride here without a permit from the
government.

Bullard takes up a red, smoking torch and looks 590 over. He fills her
cups, and prods a two-foot oiler into her rods and bearings. Dan Cleary,
the fireman, looks out of his window on the left and chews complacently.
Down the track beside him locomotive 1309 backs up, a first-class engine
she, but 590 bulks over her as the king of a herd might over some good,
ordinary working elephant. As she stands here now, purring through her
black iron throat, 590 measures sixteen feet three inches from rails to
stack-top. Both engines blow out steam, that rolls up in silver clouds
to the electric lights.

Bullard climbs to his place at the right, and a hiss of air tells that
he is testing the brakes. Under each car sixteen iron shoes close
against sixteen wheels, and stay there. Down the length of the train
goes the repair man with his kit, and makes sure that every contact is
right, then pulls a rope four times at the rear, whereupon four hissing
signals answer in the cab. Bullard shuts off the air.

"It's all there is to stop her with," says he, "so we take no chances
with it. She's got high-speed brakes on her, 590 has--one hundred and
ten pounds to the inch. Twenty-four, Dan," he adds, and snaps his watch.
"We start at thirty."

Dan chews on. "Bad wind to-night," he says; "reg'lar gale."

Bullard nods. "I know it; we're fifteen minutes late, too."

"Make Burlington on time?"

"Got to: you hit it up, and I'll skin her. Twenty-six, Dan."

Four minutes to wait. Two station officials come up with polite
inquiries. The thermometer is falling, they say, and we shall have it
bitter cold over the plains. They reach up with cordial hand-shakes. I
pull my cap down, and take my stand behind Bullard. Our side of the cab
is quite cut off from the fireman's side by a swelling girth of boiler,
which leaves an alleyway at right and left wide enough for a man's body
and no wider. Bullard and I are in the right-hand alleyway, Bullard's
back and black cap j