Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/170

 built in the first place. It isn't finished yet, that double-looped tunnel, it won't be for years, but, no matter, it's begun, and some day a good many more than a few men will sleep the easier because of it.

From Carleton, the super, to the last section hand and track-walker, the Devil's Slide was a nightmare. The dispatchers, under their green-shaded lamps, cursed it in the gray hours of dawn; the traffic department cursed it spasmodically, but at such times so whole-heartedly and with such genuine fervor and abandon that its occasional lapses into silence were overlooked; the motive power department in the shape of Regan, the master mechanic, cursed it all the time, and did it breathlessly. It had only one friend—the passenger agent's department. The passenger agent's department swore by it—on account of the scenery.

"Scenery!" gulped the dispatchers, and the white showed under their nail tips as their fingers tightened on their keys.

"Scenery!" howled the traffic department, and reached for the claim file.

"Scenery!"—Regan didn't say it—he choked. Just choked, and spat the exclamation point in a stream of black-strap.

"Scenery!" murmured Mr. General Passenger Agent esthetically, waving a soft and diamond bedecked hand from the platform of Carleton's private car. "Wonderful! Grand! Magnificent! We've got them all beaten into a coma. No other road has anything like it anywhere in the world."