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 Number One 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--hopeless; at
least, all but one. Sankey, sitting back of the stove, was making
tracings 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-plow 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 an hour, and orders were finally given by
the superintendent to rig up the double-header and get against the snow
with it.

All that day and most of the night Neighbor worked twenty men on
Sankey's device. By Sunday morning it was in such shape that we began to
take heart. "If she don't get through, she'll sure get back again, and
that's what most of 'em don't do," growled Neighbor, as he and Sankey
showed the new ram to the engineers.

They had taken the 566, George Sinclair's engine, for one head, and
Burns's, the 497, for the other. Behind these were Kennedy, with the
314, and Cameron, with the 296. The engines were set in pairs, headed
each way, and buckled up like pack mules. Over the pilots and stacks of
the head engines rose the tremendous plows, which were to tackle the
worst drifts ever recorded, before or since, on the West End. The ram
was designed to work both ways. Under the coal, each tender was loaded
with pig-iron.

The beleaguered passengers on Number One, side-tracked in the yards,
eagerly watched the preparations Sankey was making to clear the line.
Every amateur on the train had his camera out taking pictures of the
ram. The town, gathered in a single great mob, looked silently on, and
lis