world with ice and snow and scattering rock; then to settle, a
jumbled conglomerate mass of destructiveness, robbed of its prey.

And the men shouted, and screamed and beat at one another in their
frenzy of happiness, in spite of the fact that the track had been torn
away from behind them as though it never had existed, and that they now
were cut off entirely from the rest of the world. Only one snowshed
remained, with but a feeble bulwark of drifts before it. Already
lights were gleaming down the back-stretch, engines were puffing
upward, bearing ties and rails and ballast and abuttment materials, on
toward the expected, with men ready to repair the damage as soon as it
was done. There were cries also from there below, the shouts of men
who were glad even as the crews of the engines and plows were glad, and
the engineers and firemen leaned from their cabs to answer.

Still the whistles screamed; all through the night they screamed, as
drift after drift yielded, as the eight-foot bite of the first giant
auger gnawed and tore at the packed contents of the last shed atop
Crestline; then roared and sang, while the hills sent back their
outbursts with echoes that rolled, one into another, until at last the
whole world was one terrific out-pouring of explosive sounds and
shrill, shrieking blasts, as though the mountains were bellowing their
anger, their remonstrance at defeat. Eight feet, then eight feet more;
steadily eight feet onward. Nor did the men curse at the sulphur
fumes, nor rail at the steel-blue ice. It was the final fight; on the
downgrade were lesser drifts, puny in comparison to what they had gone
through, simple, easily defeated obstacles to the giant machinery,
which would work then with gravity instead of against it. Eight feet
more--eight feet after that; they marked it off on the windows of the
engine cabs with greasy fingers and counted the hours until success.
Night faded. Dawn came and then,--the sun! Clear and brilliant with
the promise of spring again and of melting snows. The fight was the
same as over.

Sleep,--and men who laughed, even as they snored, laughed with the
subconscious knowledge of success, while the bunk cars which sheltered
them moved onward, up to the peak, then started down the range. Night
again,--and Houston once more in the engine cab. But this time, the
red glare of the fire-box did not show as often against the sky; the
stops were less frequent for the ice packs;