m. To let them know I love them!

CHAPTER V

THE END OF STEEL.

I love the hills and the hills love me
As mates love one another.--MACCATHMHAOIL.

It is over a year since, in the last chapter, I was turned back from
the End of Steel because of a wash-out on construction, and now I am
come back, but this time, through the kindness of the Grand Trunk
Pacific Railway, on a through service, electric-lighted,
fast-scheduled, no-fare excursion. And on this occasion, I am not the
only woman on the train but merely one among a hundred, for this, you
must know, is the triennial excursion of the women journalists and
authors of Canada. The men present may be counted on one hand. The
engineers who travelled with me last time have gone on further to new
outposts.

"What are they doing?" you ask. I'll tell you.

"They are busy building railways on
The map's deserted spot,
Or staking out an empire in
The land that God forgot."

Doers of deeds are these men and the world has salted them with curious
and stern experiences. To my way of thinking, Dinny Hogan, boss
contractor, with his blue eyes that are the blue of steel, is a bigger
man than the First Lord of the Admiralty and his work is of more
permanent value to the Empire. It was only the other day that Dinny
made an arch of "coyotes"--that is to say, of round holes--in one of
the mountains, and into them he packed fifty carloads of gunpowder.
The reader may find it difficult to follow this idea, but no doubt he
could if he saw where Dinny removed the mountain in one shot. This
would seem to be a kind of big game shooting which has all others
vanquished into nothingness. This is a wonderful trail through the
mountains--the pass called the Yellowhead--a level ribbon of land along
which the steels are laid for most of the way. But in some places, a
road has been blasted out just to show how the mountains can be beaten.
These lords of earth and sky, when called upon, must bow their
unwilling necks to the yoke of steel. And no proper-spirited person
can stand in this pass without feeling the challenge of the hills and
without an immutable desire to conquer them. This I take it is the
spirit of the buccaneer.

The highest mountain in these Rockies is Robson, called
_Yu-hai-has-kun_ by the Indians, meaning thereby a high, winding road.
The Alpine Club of Canada intend, one of these times, to erect a chalet
at Mount Robson so that they ma