ankey's device. By Sunday morning it was in such shape that we began to
take heart.

"If she don't get through she'll get back again, and that's what most of
'em don't do," growled Neighbor, as he and Sankey showed the new ram to
the engineers.

They had taken the 566, George Sinclair's engine, for one head, and
Burns's 497 for the other. Behind these were Kennedy with the 314 and
Cameron with the 296. The engines were set in pairs, headed each way,
and buckled up like pack-mules. Over the pilots and stacks of the head
engines rose the tremendous ploughs which were to tackle the toughest
drifts ever recorded, before or since, on the West End. The ram was
designed to work both ways. Under the coal each tender was loaded with
pig-iron.

The beleaguered passengers on No. 1, side-tracked in the yards, watched
the preparations Sankey was making to clear the line. Every amateur on
the train had his camera snapping at the ram. The town, gathered in a
single great mob, looked silently on, and listened to the frosty notes
of the sky-scrapers as they went through their preliminary manoeuvres.
Just as the final word was given by Sankey, in charge, the sun burst
through the fleecy clouds, and a wild cheer followed the ram out of the
western yard--it was good-luck to see the sun again.

Little Neeta, up on the hill, must have seen them as they pulled out;
surely she heard the choppy, ice-bitten screech of the 566; that was
never forgotten whether the service was special or regular. Besides, the
head cab of the ram carried this time not only Georgie Sinclair but her
father as well. Sankey could handle a slice-bar as well as a punch, and
rode on the head engine, where, if anywhere, the big chances hovered.
What he was not capable of in the train service we never knew, because
he was stronger than any emergency that ever confronted him.

Bucking snow is principally brute force; there is little coaxing. Just
west of the bluffs, like code signals between a fleet of cruisers, there
was a volley of sharp tooting, and in a minute the four ponderous
engines, two of them in the back motion, fires white and throats
bursting, steamed wildly into the canon.

Six hundred feet from the first cut Sinclair's whistle signalled again;
Burns and Cameron and Kennedy answered, and then, literally turning the
monster ram loose against the dazzling mountain, the crews settled
themselves for the shock.

At such a moment there is nothing to be done.