THE NIGHT OPERATOR
THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE DALE
THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE DALE
THE WIRE DEVILS
THE SIN THAT WAS HIS
THE BELOVED TRAITOR
GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN
THE MIRACLE MAN
Summed up short, the Hill Division is a vicious piece of track; also,it is a classic in its profound contempt for the stereotyped equationsand formulae of engineering. And it is that way for the very simplereason that it could not be any other way. The mountains objected, andobjected strenuously, to the process of manhandling. They were therefirst, the mountains, that was all, and their surrender was a bittermatter.
So, from Big Cloud, the divisional point, at the eastern fringe of theRockies, to where the foothills of the Sierras on the western sidemerge with the more open, rolling country, the right of way performsgyrations that would not shame an acrobatic star. It sweeps throughthe rifts in the range like a freed bird from the open door of itscage; clings to cañon edges where a hissing stream bubbles and boilseighteen hundred feet below; burrows its way into the heart of thingsin long tunnels and short ones; circles a projecting spur in a dizzywhirl, and swoops from the higher to the lower levels in grades whosepercentages the passenger department does not deem it policy to specifyin its advertising literature, but before which the men in the cabs andthe cabooses shut their teeth and try hard to remember the prayers theylearned at their mothers' knees. Some parts of it are worse thanothers, naturally; but no part of it, to the last inch of itssingle-tracked mileage, is pretty—leaving out the scenery, which isgrand. That is the Hill Division.
And the men who man the shops, who pull the throttles on the big,ten-wheel mountain racers, who swing the pick and shovels in thelurching cabs, who do the work about the yards, or from the cupola of acaboose stare out on a string of wriggling flats, boxes and gondolas,and, at night-time, watch the high-flung sparks sail heavenward, as thefull, deep-chested notes of the exhaust roar an accompaniment in theirears, are men with calloused, horny hands, toilers, grimy of face anddress, rough if you like, not gentle of word, nor, sometimes, ofaction—but men whose hearts are big and right, who look you in theface, and the grip of whose paws, as they are extended after a hastycleansing on a hunk of more or less greasy waste, is the grip of men.
Many of these have lived their lives, done their work, passed on, andleft no record, barely a memory, behind them, as other men in otherplaces and in other spheres of work have done and always will do; butothers, for this or that, by ci