Empire Builders | Page 4

seat on the fireman's box, and
bracing himself for what should come.
Gallagher released the driver-brakes and let the 206 and the plow drift
down the grade until his tender drawhead touched the laborers' car.
Then the reversing lever went forward with a clang, and the steam
squealed shrilly in the dry-pipe. For a thunderous second or two the
driving-wheels slipped and whirled futilely on the snowy rails.

Gallagher pounced upon the sand lever, whereat the tires suddenly bit
and held and a long-drawn, fire-tearing exhaust sobbed from the stack.
"You've got her!" shouted Ford. "Now hit it--hit it hard!"
Swiftly the huge mass of engine and plow gathered headway, the
pounding exhausts quickening until they blended in a continuous roar.
The little Irishman stayed himself with a foot against the boiler brace;
the fireman ducked under the canvas curtain and clung to the coal
bulkhead; and Ford held on as he could.
The shock came like the crashing blow of a collision. The box-plow
buckled and groaned with fine cracklings as of hard-strained timbers,
and an avalanche of snow thrown up from its inclined plane buried
engine and cab and tender in a smothering drift. Ford slid his window
and looked out.
"Good work, Michael; good work! You gained a full car-length that
time. Try it again."
Gallagher backed the plow carefully out of the cutting, and the fireman
opened the blower and nursed his fire. Again and again the wheeled
projectile was hurled into the obstruction, and Ford watched the
steadily retrograding finger of the steam-gauge anxiously. Would the
pressure suffice for the final dash which should clear the cutting? Or
would they have to stop and turn out the wretched shovelmen again?
The answer came with the fourth drive into the stubborn barrier. There
was the same nerve-racking shock of impact; but now the recoil was
followed by a second forward plunge, and Gallagher yelled his triumph
when the 206 burst through the remaining lesser drifts and shot away
on the clear track beyond.
Ford drew a long breath of relief, and the engineer checked the speed of
the runaway, stopped, and started back to couple on the car-load of
laborers.
Ford swung around and put his back to the open window.

"Let's hope that is the worst of it and the last of it for this winter,
Mike," he said, speaking as man to man. "I believe the weather will
break before we have any more snow; and next year--"
The pause was so long that Gallagher took his chance of filling it.
"Don't be tellin' me the big boss has promised us a rotary for next
winter, Misther Foord. That'd be too good to be thrue, I'm thinking."
"No; but next winter you'll be doing one of two things, Michael. You
will be pulling your train through steel snow-sheds on Plug
Mountain--or you'll be working for another boss. Break her loose, and
let's get to camp as soon as we can. Those poor devils back in the
box-car are about dead for sleep and a square meal."

II
A SPIKED SWITCH
Ford's hopeful prophecy that the snow battles were over for the season
proved true. A few weeks later a warm wind blew up from the west, the
mountain foot-trails became first packed ice-paths and then slippery
ridges to trap the unwary; the great drifts began to settle and melt, and
the spring music of the swollen mountain torrents was abroad in the
land.
At the blowing of the warm wind Ford aimed the opening gun in his
campaign against fate--the fate which seemed to be bent upon adding
his name to the list of failures on the Plug Mountain branch. The
gun-aiming was a summons to Frisbie, at the moment a draftsman in
the engineering office of the Great Northern at St. Paul, and pining, like
the Plug Mountain superintendent, for something bigger.
"I have been waiting until I could offer you something with a
bread-and-meat attachment in the way of day pay," wrote Ford, "and
the chance has come. Kennedy, my track supervisor, has quit, and the
place is yours if you will take it. If you are willing to tie up to the most

harebrained scheme you ever heard of, with about one chance in a
thousand of coming out on top and of growing up with a brand new
country of unlimited possibilities, just gather up your dunnage and
come."
This letter was written on a Friday. Frisbie got it out of the carriers'
delivery on the Sunday morning; and Sunday night saw him racing
westward, with the high mountains of Colorado as his goal. Not that the
destination made any difference, for Frisbie would have gone quite as
willingly to the ends of the earth at the crooking of Ford's finger.
It