ad easy" compared with
the work that confronted the President at this time. On July 20, 1897,
the first pick was driven into the ground at White Pass; just a year
later the pioneer locomotive was run over the road. More than once had
the financial backers allowed their faith in the enterprise and in the
future of the country beyond to slip away; but the President of the
company had always succeeded in building it up again, for they had never
lost faith in him, or in his ability to see things that were to most men
invisible. In summer, when the weekly reports showed a mile or more or
less of track laid, it was not so hard; but when days were spent in
placing a single bent in a bridge, and weeks were consumed on a switch
back in a pinched-out canon, it was hard to persuade sane men that
business sense demanded that they pile on more fuel. But they did it;
and, as the work went on, it became apparent to those interested in such
undertakings that all the heroes of the White Pass were not in the
hills.

In addition to the elements, ever at war with the builders, they had
other worries that winter. Hawkins had a fire that burned all the
company's offices and all his maps and notes and records of surveys. Foy
had a strike, incited largely by jealous packers and freighters; and
there was hand-to-hand fighting between the strikers and their abettors
and the real builders, who sympathized with the company.

Brydone-Jack, a fine young fellow, who had been sent out as consulting
engineer to look after the interests of the shareholders, clapped his
hands to his forehead and fell, face down, in the snow. His comrades
carried him to his tent. He had been silent, had suffered, perhaps for a
day or two, but had said nothing. The next night he passed away. His
wife was waiting at Vancouver until he could finish his work in Alaska
and go home to her.

With sad and heavy hearts Hawkins and Hislop and Heney climbed back to
where Foy and his men were keeping up the fight. Like so many big
lightning-bugs they seemed, with their dim white lamps rattling around
in the storm. It was nearly all night then. God and his sunlight seemed
to have forsaken Alaska. Once every twenty-four hours a little ball of
fire, red, round, and remote, swung across the canon, dimly lighted
their lunch-tables, and then disappeared behind the great glacier that
guards the gateway to the Klondike.

As the road neared the summit, Heney observed that Foy was growing