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worth, and in the hottest heat of the forwarding
strife it was extended at the rate of a mile a day until the welcome
screech of its locomotive whistles was added to the perfervid clamor of
the new camp in the Plug Pass basin.
The goal reached, the Denver folk took a fresh leaf out of the book of
shrewdness. Holding the completed line only long enough to skim the
cream of the rush earnings, they sold their stock at a sound premium to
the Pacific Southwestern, pocketed their winnings cannily, and escaped
a short half-year before the slump in silver, and the consequent collapse
of Saint's Rest, came to establish the future Waterloo for Napoleonic

young superintendents in the Southwestern's service.
This was all ancient history when Ford left the Granger road to climb,
at President Colbrith's behest, into the Plug Mountain saddle; and a
round half-dozen of the young Napoleons had been broken before he
put foot in stirrup for the mounting. While his attacking of the problem
had been open-eyed, he had not stopped to specialize in the ancient
history of the Plug Mountain branch. When he did specialize, his point
of view was pretty clearly defined in a letter to Mr. Richard Frisbie, of
St. Paul, written after he had been for six months the master of the Plug
Mountain destinies.
"I'm up against it, good and solid," was the way he phrased it to Frisbie.
"My hundred and fifty miles of 'two streaks of rust and a right-of-way'
has never paid a net dollar since the boom broke at Saint's Rest, and
under present conditions it never will. If I had known the history of the
road when President Colbrith went fishing for me--as I didn't--I
wouldn't have touched the job with a ten-foot pole.
"But now I'm here, I'm going to do something with my two streaks of
rust to make them pay--make a spoon or spoil a horn. Just what shall be
done I haven't decided fully, but I have a notion in the back part of my
head, and if it works out, I shall need you first of all. Will you come?
"Have I told you in any of my earlier letters that I have personally
earned the ill-will of General Manager North? I have, and it is distinct
from and in addition to his hostility for the unearning branch for which
I am responsible. I'm sorry for it, because I may need his good word for
my inchoate scheme later on. It came up over some
maintenance-of-way charges. He is as shrewd as he is unscrupulous,
and he knows well how to pile the sins of the congregation on the back
of the poor scapegoat. To make a better showing for the main line, and
at the same time to show what a swilling pig the Plug Mountain is, he
had the branch charged up with a lot of material we didn't get.
Naturally, I protested--and was curtly told to mind my own business,
which had no ramifications reaching into the accounting department.
Then I threatened to carry it over his head to President Colbrith;
whereupon I gained my point temporarily, and lost a possible

stepping-stone to success.
"None the less, I am going to win out if it costs me the best year of my
life. I'm going to swing to this thing till I make something out of it, if I
have to put in some more winters like the one I have just come
through--which was Sheol, with ice and snow in the place of the
traditional fire and brimstone. If I have one good quality--as I
sometimes doubt--it's the inability to know when I am satisfactorily and
permanently licked."
Stuart Ford was shivering through the second of the winters on the gray,
needle-winded day when he stood on the crusted drift, heartening his
men who were breaking the way for further rammings of the scrap-heap
206 and her box-plow. During the summer which lay behind the pitiless
storms and the blockading snows he had explored and planned, studied
and schemed; and now a month of good weather would put the
finishing touches preparatory upon the "notion" hinted at in the letter to
Frisbie.
"That'll do, boys; we'll let Gallagher hit it a few times now," he sang
out, when he saw that the weaker ones among the shovelers were
stumbling numbly and throwing wild. "Get back to the car and thaw
yourselves out."
The safety-valve of the 206 was stuttering under a gratifying increase
of steam pressure when the superintendent climbed to the
canvas-shrouded cab.
"Ha! two hundred and fifty pounds! That looks a little more like it,
Michael. Now get all the run you can and hit her straight from the
shoulder," he ordered, mounting to his