The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Night Operator, by Frank L. Packard

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Title: The Night Operator

Author: Frank L. Packard

Release Date: September 4, 2010 [EBook #33634]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OPERATOR ***

Produced by Al Haines

THE NIGHT OPERATOR

BY

FRANK L. PACKARD

AUTHOR OF "THE WIRE DEVILS," "THE ADVENTURES
OF JIMMIE DALE," ETC.

THE COPP, CLARK CO., LIMITED

TORONTO

COPYRIGHT, 1919.

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO

CHARLES AGNEW MACLEAN

BY FRANK L. PACKARD

THE NIGHT OPERATOR
THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE DALE
THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE DALE
THE WIRE DEVILS
THE SIN THAT WAS HIS
THE BELOVED TRAITOR
GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN
THE MIRACLE MAN

FOREWORD

Summed up short, the Hill Division is a vicious piece of track; also,
it is a classic in its profound contempt for the stereotyped equations
and formulae of engineering. And it is that way for the very simple
reason that it could not be any other way. The mountains objected, and
objected strenuously, to the process of manhandling. They were there
first, the mountains, that was all, and their surrender was a bitter
matter.

So, from Big Cloud, the divisional point, at the eastern fringe of the
Rockies, to where the foothills of the Sierras on the western side
merge with the more open, rolling country, the right of way performs
gyrations that would not shame an acrobatic star. It sweeps through
the rifts in the range like a freed bird from the open door of its
cage; clings to canyon edges where a hissing stream bubbles and boils
eighteen hundred feet below; burrows its way into the heart of things
in long tunnels and short ones; circles a projecting spur in a dizzy
whirl, and swoops from the higher to the lower levels in grades whose
percentages the passenger department does not deem it policy to specify
in its advertising literature, but before which the men in the cabs and
the cabooses shut their teeth and try hard to remember the prayers they
learned at their mothers' knees. So