“But now I’m here, I’m going to do something with my two streaks of rust to make them pay—­make a spoon or spoil a horn.  Just what shall be done I haven’t decided fully, but I have a notion in the back part of my head, and if it works out, I shall need you first of all.  Will you come?

“Have I told you in any of my earlier letters that I have personally earned the ill-will of General Manager North?  I have, and it is distinct from and in addition to his hostility for the unearning branch for which I am responsible.  I’m sorry for it, because I may need his good word for my inchoate scheme later on.  It came up over some maintenance-of-way charges.  He is as shrewd as he is unscrupulous, and he knows well how to pile the sins of the congregation on the back of the poor scapegoat.  To make a better showing for the main line, and at the same time to show what a swilling pig the Plug Mountain is, he had the branch charged up with a lot of material we didn’t get.  Naturally, I protested—­and was curtly told to mind my own business, which had no ramifications reaching into the accounting department.  Then I threatened to carry it over his head to President Colbrith; whereupon I gained my point temporarily, and lost a possible stepping-stone to success.

“None the less, I am going to win out if it costs me the best year of my life.  I’m going to swing to this thing till I make something out of it, if I have to put in some more winters like the one I have just come through—­which was Sheol, with ice and snow in the place of the traditional fire and brimstone.  If I have one good quality—­as I sometimes doubt—­it’s the inability to know when I am satisfactorily and permanently licked.”

Stuart Ford was shivering through the second of the winters on the gray, needle-winded day when he stood on the crusted drift, heartening his men who were breaking the way for further rammings of the scrap-heap 206 and her box-plow.  During the summer which lay behind the pitiless storms and the blockading snows he had explored and planned, studied and schemed; and now a month of good weather would put the finishing touches preparatory upon the “notion” hinted at in the letter to Frisbie.

“That’ll do, boys; we’ll let Gallagher hit it a few times now,” he sang out, when he saw that the weaker ones among the shovelers were stumbling numbly and throwing wild.  “Get back to the car and thaw yourselves out.”

The safety-valve of the 206 was stuttering under a gratifying increase of steam pressure when the superintendent climbed to the canvas-shrouded cab.

“Ha! two hundred and fifty pounds!  That looks a little more like it, Michael.  Now get all the run you can and hit her straight from the shoulder,” he ordered, mounting to his seat on the fireman’s box, and bracing himself for what should come.

Gallagher released the driver-brakes and let the 206 and the plow drift down the grade until his tender drawhead touched the laborers’ car.  Then the reversing lever went forward with a clang, and the steam squealed shrilly in the dry-pipe.  For a thunderous second or two the driving-wheels slipped and whirled futilely on the snowy rails.  Gallagher pounced upon the sand lever, whereat the tires suddenly bit and held and a long-drawn, fire-tearing exhaust sobbed from the stack.