had traveled through this part of the West many times, and
always with the mighty project of a railroad looming in his mind. It had
taken years to evolve the plan of a continental railroad, and it came
to fruition at last through many men and devious ways, through plots and
counterplots. The wonderful idea of uniting East and West by a railroad
originated in one man's brain; he lived for it, and finally he died
for it. But the seeds he had sown were fruitful. One by one other men
divined and believed, despite doubt and fear, until the day arrived when
Congress put the Government of the United States, the army, a group of
frock-coated directors, and unlimited gold back of General Lodge, and
bade him build the road.

In all the length and breadth of the land no men but the chief engineer
and his assistants knew the difficulty, the peril of that undertaking.
The outside world was interested, the nation waited, mostly in doubt.
But Lodge and his engineers had been seized by the spirit of some great
thing to be, in the making of which were adventure, fortune, fame,
and that strange call of life which foreordained a heritage for future
generations. They were grim; they were indomitable.

Warren Neale came hurrying up. He was a New Englander of poor family,
self-educated, wild for adventure, keen for achievement, eager, ardent,
bronze-faced, and keen-eyed, under six feet in height, built like a
wedge, but not heavy--a young man of twenty-three with strong latent
possibilities of character.

General Lodge himself explained the difficulties of the situation and
what the young surveyor was expected to do. Neale flushed with pride;
his eyes flashed; his jaw set. But he said little while the engineers
led him out to the scene of the latest barrier. It was a rugged gorge,
old and yellow and crumbled, cedar-fringed at the top, bare and white at
the bottom. The approach to it was through a break in the walls, so that
the gorge really extended both above and below this vantage-point.

"This is the only pass through these foot-hills," said Engineer Henney,
the eldest of Lodge's corps.

The passage ended where the break in the walls fronted abruptly upon the
gorge. It was a wild scene. Only inspired and dauntless men could have
entertained any hope of building a railroad through such a place. The
mouth of the break was narrow; a rugged slope led up to the left; to the
right a huge buttress of stone wall bulged over the gorge; across