I Travel by Train | Page 8

In these ancient worn-off hills the valleys were too
complicated, too stuffy, for some dreaming surveyor, and he took to the
hills. Now, after the engine's long steady climb that seemed to be taking
us across a county or two, we were up on them ourselves. We swept
round long curves from which we could look down over ranges of hills
on both sides of the train; we took long straight-of-ways on the comb of
watersheds; we described letter S's; we made sharp hair-pin turns all in
an effort to keep to the ridges. Once we passed a freight train that was
taking water at a tank and filling 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