“You’ve got her!” shouted Ford.  “Now hit it—­hit it hard!”

Swiftly the huge mass of engine and plow gathered headway, the pounding exhausts quickening until they blended in a continuous roar.  The little Irishman stayed himself with a foot against the boiler brace; the fireman ducked under the canvas curtain and clung to the coal bulkhead; and Ford held on as he could.

The shock came like the crashing blow of a collision.  The box-plow buckled and groaned with fine cracklings as of hard-strained timbers, and an avalanche of snow thrown up from its inclined plane buried engine and cab and tender in a smothering drift.  Ford slid his window and looked out.

“Good work, Michael; good work!  You gained a full car-length that time.  Try it again.”

Gallagher backed the plow carefully out of the cutting, and the fireman opened the blower and nursed his fire.  Again and again the wheeled projectile was hurled into the obstruction, and Ford watched the steadily retrograding finger of the steam-gauge anxiously.  Would the pressure suffice for the final dash which should clear the cutting?  Or would they have to stop and turn out the wretched shovelmen again?

The answer came with the fourth drive into the stubborn barrier.  There was the same nerve-racking shock of impact; but now the recoil was followed by a second forward plunge, and Gallagher yelled his triumph when the 206 burst through the remaining lesser drifts and shot away on the clear track beyond.

Ford drew a long breath of relief, and the engineer checked the speed of the runaway, stopped, and started back to couple on the car-load of laborers.

Ford swung around and put his back to the open window.

“Let’s hope that is the worst of it and the last of it for this winter, Mike,” he said, speaking as man to man.  “I believe the weather will break before we have any more snow; and next year—­”

The pause was so long that Gallagher took his chance of filling it.

“Don’t be tellin’ me the big boss has promised us a rotary for next winter, Misther Foord.  That’d be too good to be thrue, I’m thinking.”

“No; but next winter you’ll be doing one of two things, Michael.  You will be pulling your train through steel snow-sheds on Plug Mountain—­or you’ll be working for another boss.  Break her loose, and let’s get to camp as soon as we can.  Those poor devils back in the box-car are about dead for sleep and a square meal.”

II

A SPIKED SWITCH

Ford’s hopeful prophecy that the snow battles were over for the season proved true.  A few weeks later a warm wind blew up from the west, the mountain foot-trails became first packed ice-paths and then slippery ridges to trap the unwary; the great drifts began to settle and melt, and the spring music of the swollen mountain torrents was abroad in the land.