the Herculean task of
bridging a continent was more than a thought in even the most ambitious
minds.

Owsley was an engineer, and he came from the East, when they broke
ground at Big Cloud for a start toward the western goal through the
mighty range, a comparatively young man--thirty, or thereabouts. Then,
inch by inch and foot by foot, Owsley, with his ballast cars and his
boxes and his flats bumping material behind him, followed the
construction gangs as they burrowed and blasted and trestled their way
along--day in, day out, month in, month out, until the years went by,
and they were through the Rockies, with the Coast and the blue of the
Pacific in sight.

First over every bridge and culvert, first through every cut, first
through every tunnel shorn in the bitter gray rock of the mountain
sides, the pilot of Owsley's engine nosed its way; and, when the rough
of the work was over, and in the hysteria of celebration, the toll of
lives, the hardships and the cost were forgotten for the moment, and
the directors and their guests crowded the cab and perched on running
boards and footplates till you couldn't see the bunting they'd draped
the engine with, and the mahogany coaches behind looked like the
striped sticks of candy the kids buy on account of more bunting, and
then some, and the local band they'd brought along from Big Cloud got
the mouthpieces of their trombones and cornets mixed up with the necks
of champagne bottles, and the Indian braves squatted gravely at
different points along the trackside and thought their white brothers
had gone mad, Owsley was at the throttle for the first through run over
the division--it was Owsley's due.

Then other years went by, and the steel was shaken down into the
permanent right of way that is an engineering marvel to-day, and Owsley
still held a throttle on a through run--just kept growing a little
older, that was all--but one of the best of them, for all
that--steadier than the younger men, wise in experience, and with a
love for his engine that was like the love of a man for a woman.

It's a strange thing, perhaps, a love like that; but, strange or not,
there was never an engineer worth his salt who hasn't had it--some more
than others, of course--as some men's love for a woman is deeper than
others. With Owsley it came pretty near being the whole thing, and it
was queer enough to see him when they'd change his engine to give him a
newer and more improved type for a