at was the word
that leaked from headquarters afterward. And with a volley of jokes
between the cabs and a laughing and yelling between toots, down went
Sankey's double-header again into the Blackwood gorge.

At the same moment, by an awful misunderstanding of orders, down came
the big rotary from the west end with a dozen cars of coal behind. Mile
after mile it had wormed east toward Sankey's ram, and it now burrowed
through the western cut of the Blackwood, crashed through the drift
Sankey was aiming for, and whirled out into the open, dead against him,
at forty miles an hour. Each train, in order to make the grade and the
blockade against it, was straining the cylinders.

Through the swirling snow that half hid the bridge and interposed
between the rushing plows Sinclair saw them coming. He yelled. Sankey
saw them a fraction of a second later, and while Sinclair struggled with
the throttle and the air, Sankey gave the alarm through the whistle to
the poor fellows in the blind pockets behind. But the track was at the
worst. Where there was no snow there were "whiskers"; oil itself
couldn't have been worse to stop on. It was the old and deadly peril of
fighting blockades from both ends on a single track. The great rams of
steel and fire had done their work, and with their common enemy
overcome, they dashed at each other like madmen across the Blackwood
gorge.

The fireman at the first cry shot out the side. Sankey yelled at
Sinclair to jump. But Georgie shook his head: he never would jump.
Without hesitating, Sankey picked him from the levers in his arms,
planted a sure foot, and hurled him like a coal shovel through the
gangway far out into the gorge. The other cabs were already empty. But
the instant's delay in front cost Sankey his life. Before he himself
could jump the rotary crashed into the 566. They reared like mountain
lions, pitched sideways and fell headlong into the creek, fifty feet.
Sankey went under them. He could have saved himself; he chose to save
George. There wasn't time to do both; he had to choose, and to choose
instantly. Did he, maybe, think in that flash of Neeta and of whom she
needed most--of a young and a stalwart protector rather than an old and
failing one? I do not know; I know only what he did. Every one who
jumped got clear. Sinclair lit in ten feet of snow, and they pulled him
out with a rope: he wasn't scratched. Even the bridge was not badly
strained. Number One pulled over it next