I Travel by Train | Page 8

the air with surplus steam. Several minutes later I saw the same train not more than a mile or two from us across a wooded valley. We had followed a wide round horseshoe in order to get where we were.
The two men had been drinking steadily while they discussed the economic ills of the country, and their eyeballs were getting pretty yellow. But they could still see what the train was doing.
"I bet you, by God," one of them began easily as if he were established in a point of view that enabled him to see whatever was wrong, "that the fellow who had the contract for building this railroad got paid by the mile. Just look there, will you? There's that same damned freight train that we passed a half-hour ago. Why didn't they come straight across there? It wouldn't have required a trestle more than three or four hundred feet high or maybe five hundred. If we were building her today, that's the way we'd do her."
Once, to the southeast and east, as far as eyes could see detail, the sun was on billowing woodland; and at the horizon there were dark, indistinguishable ridges. There seemed to be no houses. One felt a thinning-out of telepathic ties. Man had not yet done enough to the region to make his kind feel at home in it. Once, to the west, for a memorable second, the red sun shone full in our faces through a gaunt and abandoned old log tobacco-house just above us.
All the while, the steward, a slender youngish man whose hair was thinning, stood at the buffet end of the car, neat and official in his blue suit and white vest, and looked at the floor as if nothing of grandeur were to be seen. Only occasionally did he glance up to learn if the two men were signaling for further drinks.
The two talked on in cumulative friendliness. One of them was interested in oil. The other was the head of a dozen factories. They talked in millions-regardless of what they discussed. One of them said the most valued thing he possessed was his acquaintance with nice people. "If there are any nice people in town, we know them. I wouldn't take five million for that-just that. Honest to God, I wouldn't"
They grew confidential. They discussed their wives. For ten minutes their wives would have been in heaven if they could have heard. Then one of them set forth a list of his wife's deficiencies that would have made her stick her fingers in her ears and run if she had been secretly present. The other admitted that his was sometimes a little hard to manage. But he was gleeful over the birthday present she wanted. He was getting off with nothing more than a trinket of a ten-thousand-dollar necklace. "I said, 'All right, if that's what you want, you shall have it.' " He chuckled. "The jeweler is making it up."
They returned to the state of the nation. "The real trouble with this God-damned government," the man with the roll on the back of his neck said finally, "is that there's too much extravagance among the higher-ups." He was now in the stage of inclusive, graceful gestures, and set out to discuss the matter in detail. But something interrupted the flow of his thought, and he ended up by insisting that he pay for the luncheon now four hours agone and for the drinks.
His friend would hear nothing of the kind. "Or at least we'll go Dutch." But the other was insistent, and held on to the slips which the steward had very tactfully presented face downward. He looked at the bills. Then he fumbled for his large-style reading glasses. The, luncheons were $3.50; the drinks thus far, $14.25. After swallowing once in consternation he said, "You see, I'll just put it on my expense account."
The other showed a ready acquiescence. "Oh, well! That's different. If you want to let the stockholders pay it, O.K. But I won't let you pay it yourself wouldn't think of it."
One of them begged the other to see the gorgeous sunset. It was not gorgeous. In fact, it was a washed-out, pale blue-green affair hardly deserving of a glance. But it was a sunset. The sun was going down. So the two of them decided just to stay right on where they were and eat their suppers. They ordered sirloin steaks and French fried potatoes and apple pie and cheese and ice-cream and coffee. An hour later, when I had finished my own meal and was thinking that I might go early to bed, they were having a little drink together as an aid to digestion.
The next morning I was awakened by inescapable early risers. I am sure they never