e mist had blown clear and the
quivering monsters were again recalled for a dash. Then it was plain
that Sankey's instinct was right; they were gaining.

Again they went in, lifting a very avalanche over the stacks, packing
the banks of the cut with walls hard as ice. Again, as the drivers
stuck, they raced in a frenzy, and into the shriek of the wind went the
unearthly scrape of the overloaded safeties. Slowly and sullenly the
machines were backed again. "She's doing the work, Georgie," cried
Sankey. "For that kind of a cut she's as good as a rotary. Look
everything over now while I go back and see how the boys are standing
it. Then we'll give her one more, and give it the hardest kind."

And they did give her one more; and another. Men at Santiago put up no
stouter fight than these men made that Sunday morning in the canyon of
the Blackwood. Once they went in, and twice. And the second time the
bumping drummed more deeply; the drivers held, pushed, panted, and
gained against the white wall; heaved and stumbled ahead; and with a
yell from Sinclair and Sankey and the fireman, the double-header shot
her nose into the clear over the Blackwood gorge. As engine after engine
flew past the divided walls each cab took up the cry; it was the wildest
crowd that ever danced to victory. Through they went and half-way across
the bridge before they could check their monster catapult. Then, at a
half full, they shot it back again at the cut, for it worked as well one
way as the other.

"The thing is done," declared Sankey, when they got into position up the
line for a final shoot to clean out the eastern cut and get head for a
dash across the bridge and into the west end of the canyon, where there
lay another mountain of snow to split. "Look the machines over pretty
close, boys," said he to the engineers. "If nothing's sprung, we'll take
a full head across the gorge--the bridge will carry anything--and buck
the west cut. Then after we get Number One through this afternoon,
Neighbor can put his baby cabs in here and keep 'em chasing all night.
But it's done snowing," he added, looking at the leaden sky.

He had the plans all figured out for the master mechanic, the shrewd,
kindly old man. I think, myself, there's no man on earth like a good
Indian; and, for that matter, none like a bad one. Sankey knew by a
military instinct just what had to be done and how to do it. If he had
lived, he was to have been assistant superintendent. Th