e locomotive and had not much
information to give.

"Track's gone down not far ahead; snow-slide, I guess."

He shrugged when Foster asked if it would be a long job. "You can see
for yourself, if you like," he remarked, indicating a plume of smoke
that rose above the pines. "There's a construction gang at work round
the bend. It's a sure thing we won't pull out before you're back."

Foster set off with Pete and several passengers, and the Scot gazed
about with wonder.

"I was born among the hills, but never have I seen ought like this!" he
exclaimed. "Man, it passes dreamin' o'; it's just stupenjious! But I
wouldna' say they'll mak' much o' farming here."

"They have some bench tablelands and pretty rich alluvial valleys,"
Foster answered with a smile. "The province depends largely on its
minerals."

Pete glanced back up the track that wound down between rock and forest
from a distant notch in the high, white rampart.

"I'm thinking the men who built yon line had stout hearts."

"It wasn't an easy job," Foster agreed. "They were up against savage
Nature, and she's still too strong for the engineer now and then, as I
expect you'll shortly see."

They walked through a gap in the pines and stopped with a sense of awe
on the edge of a great red furrow in the mountain. The gash was
fringed by shattered trees, and here and there a giant splintered trunk
rested precariously among stones ground to fragments. Far beneath, a
vast pile of earth and snow dammed the river, and half-way up an
overturned locomotive, with boiler crushed like an eggshell, lay among
the wreckage. The end of a smashed box-car rose out of the boiling
flood. For a hundred yards the track had vanished, but gangs of men
were hurrying to and fro about the gap. Farther back, there was clang
of flung-down rails and a ringing of hammers.

"If they open the road again by to-morrow morning, they'll be lucky,"
Foster remarked, and stopped a big fellow who was going past with an ax
on his shoulder. "Is there any settlement not too far ahead?"

"There's a smart new hotel at the flag station about six miles off,"
said the man. "You can make it all right walking if you keep to the
track and watch out you don't meet the construction train in the
snowshed."

Foster, who knew he would find waiting tedious, went back to the car
for his small bag, after which he and Pete set off for the hotel. They
had some trouble to cross the path of the aval