Little Neeta, up on the hill, must have seen them as they pulled out; surely she heard the choppy, ice-bitten screech of the 566; that was never forgotten whether the service was special or regular. Besides, the head cab of the ram carried this time not only Georgie Sinclair but her father as well. Sankey could handle a slice-bar as well as a punch, and rode on the head engine, where, if anywhere, the big chances hovered. What he was not capable of in the train service we never knew, because he was stronger than any emergency that ever confronted him.
Bucking snow is principally brute force; there is little coaxing. Just west of the bluffs, like code signals between a fleet of cruisers, there was a volley of sharp tooting, and in a minute the four ponderous engines, two of them in the back motion, fires white and throats bursting, steamed wildly into the cañon.
Six hundred feet from the first cut Sinclair's whistle signalled again; Burns and Cameron and Kennedy answered, and then, literally turning the monster ram loose against the dazzling mountain, the crews settled themselves for the shock.
At such a moment there is nothing to be done. If anything goes wrong eternity is too close to consider. There comes a muffled drumming on the steam-chests—a stagger and a terrific impact—and then the recoil like the stroke of a trip-hammer. The snow shoots into the air fifty feet, and the wind carries a cloud of fleecy confusion over the ram and out of the cut. The cabs were buried in white, and the great steel frames of the engines sprung like knitting-needles under the frightful blow.
Pausing for hardly a breath, the signalling again began. Then the backing; up and up and up the line; and again the massive machines were hurled screaming into the cut.
"You're getting there, Georgie," exclaimed Sankey, when the rolling and lurching had stopped. No one else could tell a thing about it, for it was snow and snow and snow; above and behind, and ahead and beneath. Sinclair coughed the flakes out of his eyes and nose and mouth like a baffled collie. He looked doubtful of the claim until the mist had blown clear and the quivering monsters were again recalled for a dash. Then it was plain that Sankey's instinct was right; they were gaining.
Again they went in, lifting a very avalanche over the stacks, packing the banks of the cut with walls hard as ice. Again as the drivers stuck they raced in a frenzy, and into the shriek of the wind went the unearthly scrape of the overloaded safeties.
Slowly and sullenly the machines were backed again.
"She's doing the work, Georgie," cried Sankey. "For that kind of a cut she's as good as a rotary. Look everything over now while I go back and see how the boys are standing it. Then we'll give her one more, and give it the hardest kind."
And they did give her one more—and another. Men at Santiago put up no stouter fight than they made that Sunday morning in the cañon of the Blackwood. Once and twice more they went in. And the second time the bumping drummed more deeply; the drivers held, pushed, panted, and gained against the white wall—heaved and stumbled ahead—and with a yell from Sinclair and Sankey and the fireman, the Double Header shot her nose into the clear over the Blackwood gorge. As engine after engine flew past the divided walls, each cab took up the cry—it was the wildest shout that ever crowned victory.