known in twenty
years; but mile by mile that month the twin lines of steel crept
steadily into the north under the urgings of Garry's smooth voice. The
snowfall for February broke all records for half that period; but
Steve, with his handful of men at Thirty-Mile, put his piling down.
And then it rained--it rained until small brooks ran torrents and the
river tumbled white and thunderous its entire length.

The snow went off the last of March that spring and the gorges could
not carry away the water. The sun turned summer hot; it burned the
higher ridges dry while the valleys still lay hidden in flood. It was
August temperature, the third Sunday in April, when Stephen O'Mara
stood and watched, beneath the glare of kerosene torches, his bridge at
Thirty-Mile go into position between dark and dawn.

There was no man among them that day who did not show upon his face the
strain they had been under. They were few, they were unshaven and
dirty and lean as hungry hounds; but they were the men whom Steve had
once bidden Hardwick Elliott to watch, once they had begun to scent
combat. Fat Joe was no longer plump. Steve was worn down to actual
thinness. And it would have taken a careful eye to have selected the
chief from their ranks that Sunday.

The huge timbers had dropped into place like bits of jig-sawed puzzle.
At three in the afternoon, too tired both in body and soul for elation,
Steve watched them drive home the last spike and heard their hoarse
effort at a cheer. He had turned to start toward his shack, not like a
man who knows that the end of a well-nigh hopeless task is in sight,
but like a beaten man. The first of May meant more to Steve than any
clause of the East Coast Company's contract could convey. He had not
had even one letter since he put her upon her train. Wickersham's
appearance on horseback, at the head of the valley, picking his way
around the flooded meadow, halted him in his heavy-footed climb. A
whistle shrilled, far to the south of them, down the completed track.
And then, after ten years and more, they were face to face again.

"That bridge will have to go down!" Wickersham was breathing hard, for
all that he had been riding. "I'm going through with my drive to-day!"

He had dismounted. Steve smiled at him.

"You're a whole week previous, Wickersham," he said, wearily. "I'll be
signaling for your first load of logs in less than sixty hours."

Archibald Wickersham wished that