key caught him in his arms, tore him
from the levers, planted a mighty foot, and hurled Sinclair like a block
of coal through the gangway out into the gorge. The other cabs were
already emptied; but the instant's delay in front cost Sankey's life.
Before he could turn the rotary crashed into the 566. They reared like
mountain lions, and pitched headlong into the gorge; Sankey went under
them.

He could have saved himself; he chose to save George. There wasn't time
to do both; he had to choose and he chose instinctively. Did he, maybe,
think in that flash of Neeta and of whom she needed most--of a young and
a stalwart protector better than an old and a failing one? I do not
know; I know only what he did.

Every one who jumped got clear. Sinclair lit in twenty feet of snow, and
they pulled him out with a rope; he wasn't scratched; even the bridge
was not badly strained. No. 1 pulled over it next day. Sankey was
right: there was no more snow; not enough to hide the dead engines on
the rocks: the line was open.

There never was a funeral in McCloud like Sankey's. George Sinclair and
Neeta followed together; and of mourners there were as many as there
were people. Every engine on the division carried black for thirty days.

His contrivance for fighting snow has never yet been beaten on the high
line. It is perilous to go against a drift behind it--something has to
give.

But it gets there--as Sankey got there--always; and in time of blockade
and desperation on the West End they still send out Sankey's Double
Header; though Sankey--so the conductors tell the children, travelling
east or travelling west--Sankey isn't running any more.

Siclone Clark

"There goes a fellow that walks like Siclone Clark," exclaimed Duck
Middleton. Duck was sitting in the train-master's office with a group of
engineers. He was one of the black-listed strikers, and runs an engine
now down on the Santa Fe. But at long intervals Duck gets back to
revisit the scenes of his early triumphs. The men who surrounded him
were once at deadly odds with Duck and his chums, though now the ancient
enmities seem forgotten, and Duck--the once ferocious Duck--sits
occasionally among the new men and gossips about early days on the West
End.

"Do you remember Siclone, Reed?" asked Duck, calling to me in the
private office.

"Remember him?" I echoed. "Did anybody who ever knew Siclone forget
him?"

"I fired passenger for Siclone twenty years ago,