there came a storm that
discounted the worst blizzard of the winter. As the reports rolled in on
the morning of the 5th, growing worse as they grew thicker, Neighbor,
dragged out, played out, mentally and physically, threw up his hands.
The 6th it snowed all day, and on Saturday morning the section men
reported thirty feet in the Blackwood canon.

It was six o'clock when we got the word, and daylight before we got the
rotary against it. They bucked away till noon with discouraging results,
and came in with their gear smashed and a driving-rod fractured. It
looked as if we were beaten.

No. 1 got into McCloud eighteen hours late; it was Sankey's and
Sinclair's run west.

There was a long council in the round-house. The rotary was knocked out;
coal was running low in the chutes. If the line wasn't kept open for the
coal from the mountains it was plain we should be tied until we could
ship it from Iowa or Missouri. West of Medicine Pole there was another
big rotary working east, with plenty of coal behind her, but she was
reported stuck fast in the Cheyenne Hills.

Foley made suggestions and Dad Sinclair made suggestions. Everybody had
a suggestion left; the trouble was, Neighbor said, they didn't amount to
anything, or were impossible.

"It's a dead block, boys," announced Neighbor, sullenly, after everybody
had done. "We are beaten unless we can get No. 1 through to-day. Look
there; by the holy poker it's snowing again!"

The air was dark in a minute with whirling clouds. Men turned to the
windows and quit talking; every fellow felt the same--at least, all but
one. Sankey, sitting back of the stove, was making tracings on his
overalls with a piece of chalk.

"You might as well unload your passengers, Sankey," said Neighbor.
"You'll never get 'em through this winter."

And it was then that Sankey proposed his Double Header.

He devised a snow-plough which combined in one monster ram about all the
good material we had left, and submitted the scheme to Neighbor.
Neighbor studied it and hacked at it all he could, and brought it over
to the office. It was like staking everything on the last cast of the
dice, but we were in the state of mind which precedes a desperate
venture. It was talked over for an hour, and orders were finally given
by the superintendent to rig up the Double Header and get against the
snow as quick as it could be made ready.

All that day and most of the night Neighbor worked twenty men on
S