Foley made suggestions and Dad Sinclair made suggestions. Everybody had a suggestion left; the trouble was, Neighbor said, they didn't amount to anything, or were impossible.
"It's a dead block, boys," announced Neighbor, sullenly, after everybody had done. "We are beaten unless we can get No. 1 through to-day. Look there; by the holy poker it's snowing again!"
The air was dark in a minute with whirling clouds. Men turned to the windows and quit talking; every fellow felt the same—at least, all but one. Sankey, sitting back of the stove, was making tracings on his overalls with a piece of chalk.
"You might as well unload your passengers, Sankey," said Neighbor. "You'll never get 'em through this winter."
And it was then that Sankey proposed his Double Header.
He devised a snow-plough which combined in one monster ram about all the good material we had left, and submitted the scheme to Neighbor. Neighbor studied it and hacked at it all he could, and brought it over to the office. It was like staking everything on the last cast of the dice, but we were in the state of mind which precedes a desperate venture. It was talked over for an hour, and orders were finally given by the superintendent to rig up the Double Header and get against the snow as quick as it could be made ready.
All that day and most of the night Neighbor worked twenty men on Sankey's device. By Sunday morning it was in such shape that we began to take heart.
"If she don't get through she'll get back again, and that's what most of 'em don't do," growled Neighbor, as he and Sankey showed the new ram to the engineers.
They had taken the 566, George Sinclair's engine, for one head, and Burns's 497 for the other. Behind these were Kennedy with the 314 and Cameron with the 296. The engines were set in pairs, headed each way, and buckled up like pack-mules. Over the pilots and stacks of the head engines rose the tremendous ploughs which were to tackle the toughest drifts ever recorded, before or since, on the West End. The ram was designed to work both ways. Under the coal each tender was loaded with pig-iron.
The beleaguered passengers on No. 1, side-tracked in the yards, watched the preparations Sankey was making to clear the line. Every amateur on the train had his camera snapping at the ram. The town, gathered in a single great mob, looked silently on, and listened to the frosty notes of the sky-scrapers as they went through their preliminary manœuvres. Just as the final word was given by Sankey, in charge, the sun burst through the fleecy clouds, and a wild cheer followed the ram out of the western yard—it was good-luck to see the sun again.