Adventure Magazine Cover — page 126: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

H ere’s T. T. Flynn’s New story of Railroad People The ESSIMISM lay thick over every mile of the Santee Division of the D.&R. From Sky City to Santee and from Santee to Petersburg, the end of the division, gloom stalked in the stations, the switch shanties and the shops. The cause of it was the short, heavy-set McGann, who had been sent out from the East by the powers-that-be to fill the chair of division superintendent. There were many things said about McGann during the first thirty days he was over the Santee Division. The mildest was that he was a loud mouth, a braggart and a bully. Harsh words, those. Yet, in a measure, true. For McGann did not know how to rule men. His sudden jump to power, due, rumor had it, to a marriage connection with a, powerful member of the board, went to his head. He thrived on his prerogative of calling men down. His office in the second story of the Santee Union Station was nicknamed the Bull Ring. There, practically every morning of the world, gathered a group of unfortunates who had strayed from the path of routine and perfection and had been ordered upon the carpet. McGann ridiculed their weaknesses, bul- lied them because of their mistakes, sus- pended some for different periods, fired others, bawled every one out—and in each Super ot ire Sante case took good care to hold McGann upasa model of every virtue included in the annals of man. In between times he rode up and down the division and made himself obnoxious. A sore was McGann on the side of the entire Santee Division. Not aman who did not wish heartily for his downfall. Some- thing, at least, that would close his mouth. In the second month McGann was humbled. The advent of the President’s Special was the first link. When the President of the United States leaves his White House and travels about the country it is a time of tension and appre- hension on those lines over which he elects to travel. For custom has decreed that the President and his party be sped on the way smoothly and swiftly. Man is human. Liable to error. But it is not supposed to crop out when the Presi- dent’s Special passes. And so much labor is expended in preparation, and many men, from the super down to the track-walkers, are on their toes until the Special passes out of their field of responsibility. This time Paddy Reese was assigned the throttle of the President’s train from Santee to Petersburg. Paddy Reese, the fat, the gay, whose hair was graying but whose heart was younger every day. Paddy Reese, who once snaked the Hill and Plain Ex- press across the Santee Division for a year I20 CONMICVOOLKS C©