A MASTER OF MEN

Engine Number 206, narrow gauge, was pushing, or rather failing to push, the old-fashioned box-plow through the crusted drifts on the uptilted shoulder of Plug Mountain, at altitude ten thousand feet, with the mercury at twelve below zero.  There was a wind—­the winter day above timber-line without its wind is as rare as a thawing Christmas—­and it cut like knives through any garmenting lighter than fur or leather.  The cab of the 206 was old and weather-shaken, and Ford pulled the collar of his buffalo coat about his ears when the grunting of the exhaust and the shrilling of the wheels on the snow-shod rails stopped abruptly.

“Gar-r-r!” snarled Gallagher, the red-headed Irish engineer, shutting off the steam in impotent rage.  “The power is not in this dommed ould camp-kittle sewin’ machine!  ‘Tis heaven’s pity they wouldn’t be givin’ us wan man-sized, fightin’ lokimotive on this ind of the line, Misther Foord.”

Ford, superintendent and general autocrat of the Plug Mountain branch of the Pacific Southwestern, climbed down from his cramped seat on the fireman’s box and stood scowling at the retracting index of the steam-gauge.  When he was on his feet beside the little Irishman, you saw that he was a young man, well-built, square-shouldered and athletic under the muffling of the shapeless fur greatcoat; also, that in spite of the scowl, his clean-shaven face was strong and manly and good to look upon.

“Power!” he retorted.  “That’s only one of the hundred things they don’t give us, Mike.  Look at that steam-gauge—­freezing right where she stands!”

“’Tis so,” assented Gallagher.  “She’d be dead and shtiff in tin minutes be the clock if we’d lave her be in this drift.”

Ford motioned the engineer aside and took the throttle himself.  It was the third day out from Cherubusco, the station at the foot of the mountain; and in the eight-and-forty hours the engine, plow and crew of twenty shovelers had, by labor of the cruelest, opened eleven of the thirteen blockaded miles isolating Saint’s Rest, the mining-camp end-of-track in the high basin at the head of the pass.

The throttle opened with a jerk under the superintendent’s hand.  There was a snow-choked drumming of the exhaust, and the driving-wheels spun wildly in the flurry beneath.  But there was no inch of forward motion, and Ford gave it up.

“We’re against it,” he admitted.  “Back her down and we’ll put the shovelers at it again while you’re nursing her up and getting more steam.  We’re going to make it to Saint’s Rest to-day if the Two-six has to go in on three legs.”

Gallagher pulled the reversing lever into the back gear and sent the failing steam whistling into the chilled cylinders with cautious little jerks at the throttle.  The box-plow came out of the clutch of its snow vise with shrillings as of a soul in torment, and the bucking outfit screeched coldly down over the snowy rails to the “let-up,” where the shovelers’ box-car had been uncoupled.