one," declared Sankey. Then they got into position up the
line for a final shoot to clean the eastern cut and to get the head for
a dash across the bridge into the west end of the canon, where lay
another mountain of snow to split.

"Look the machines over close, boys," said Sankey to the engineers. "If
nothing's sprung we'll take a full head across the gorge--the bridge
will carry anything--and buck the west cut. Then after we get No. 1
through this afternoon Neighbor can get his baby cabs in here and keep
'em chasing all night; but it's done snowing," he added, looking into
the leaden sky.

He had everything figured out for the master-mechanic--the shrewd,
kindly old man. There's no man on earth like a good Indian; and for that
matter none like a bad one. Sankey knew by a military instinct just what
had to be done and how to do it. If he had lived he was to have been
assistant superintendent. That was the word which leaked from
headquarters after he got killed.

And with a volley of jokes between the cabs, and a laughing and a
yelling between toots, down went Sankey's Double Header again into the
Blackwood gorge.

At the same moment, by an awful misunderstanding of orders, down came
the big rotary from the West End with a dozen cars of coal behind it.
Mile after mile it had wormed east towards Sankey's ram, burrowed
through the western cut of the Blackwood, crashed through the drift
Sankey was aiming for, and whirled then out into the open, dead against
him, at forty miles an hour. Each train, in order to make the grade and
the blockade, was straining the cylinders.

Through the swirling snow which half hid the bridge and swept between
the rushing ploughs Sinclair saw them coming--he yelled. Sankey saw them
a fraction of a second later, and while Sinclair struggled with the
throttle and the air, Sankey gave the alarm through the whistle to the
poor fellows in the blind pockets behind. But the track was at the
worst. Where there was no snow there were whiskers; oil itself couldn't
have been worse to stop on. It was the old and deadly peril of fighting
blockades from both ends on a single track.

The great rams of steel and fire had done their work, and with their
common enemy overcome they dashed at each other frenzied across the
Blackwood gorge.

The fireman at the first cry shot out the side. Sankey yelled at
Sinclair to jump. But George shook his head: he never would jump.
Without hesitating an instant, San