mebbe not at
all, there's so little of it."

"Kittrick has been asking for an appropriation to rebuild the Elk Fork
trestle," said Jim. "Will it stand this flood?"

"Well," said Corcoran, "if the water ain't too high, and the ice don't
run too swift in the Fork, it'll be all right. But if there's any such
mixture of downpour and thaw as there was along the Creek back there, we
may have to jump across a gap. It'll probably be all right."

I remembered the Elk Fork, and the trestle just on the hither side of
the Junction. I remembered the valley, green with trees, and populous
with herds, winding down to the lake, and the pretty little town of
Josephine. I remembered that gala day when we christened it. I groaned
in spirit, as I thought of finding the trestle gone, after our
hundred-and-fifty-mile dash through storm and flood. Yet I believed it
would be gone. The blows showered upon us had beaten down my courage. I
felt no shrinking from either struggle or danger; but this was merely
the impulse which impels the soldier to fight on in despair, and sell
his life dearly. I believed that ruin fronted us all; that our great
system of enterprises was going down; that, East and West, where we had
been so much courted and admired, we should become a by-word and a
hissing. The elements were struggling against us. That vengeful flood
had snatched at us, and barely missed; the ruthless hurricane was
holding us back; and somehow fate would yet find means to lay us low. I
had all day kept thinking of the lines:

"Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight
Like this last dim, weird battle of the west.
A death-white mist slept over land and sea:
Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew
Down to his blood, till all his heat was cold
With formless fear: and even on Arthur fell
Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought."

And this, thought I, was the end of the undertaking upon which we had
entered so lightly, with frolic jests of piracy and Spanish galleons and
pieces-of-eight, and with all that mock-seriousness with which we
discussed hypnotic suggestion and psychic force! The bitterness grew
sickening, as Corcoran, hearing the long whistle of the engine, said
that we were coming into Barslow. The tragic foolery of giving that name
to any place!

Out upon the platform here, in the blinding whirl of snow. The night
operator came out and talked to us of the news of the line, while the
engine ran on