Adventure, January 20, 1922 — page 125: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Juice Hog Twenty-Seven that could become brittle-hard, to know that he could, too—and would. In fact, the long-expected clash seemed to have arrived one Winter’s night in Val- halla, when a blizzard whooped through the mountains. Danny and the twenty-séven had been sent down to Startup—the little station on the east side of Saddle Moun- tain where the climb to Valhalla begins— to bring Number One, Transcontinental’s train de luxe, to the summit of the “hump.” From Valhalla, Burke would take her through to the Coast, his regular run. Ordinarily, Danny Malone and the twenty- seven pulled nothing but freights up the hill, but the wet snow was packing solidly on the tracks and an engine of the pulling power of Danny’s juice hog was needed. And they had arrived safely at Valhalla, albeit an hour late. Danny had lost no time on the hill, despite the snow; Number One was an hour late when she reached Startup, but Markham, the night-trick dispatcher, was fuming about the delay the train was sure to suffer before she reached the-Coast. There was not time between Valhalla and the Coast to regain the lost hour, despite the fact that it was down-grade most of the way. And in his fussing, the dispatcher had an able second in Tom Burke who saw a chance to thrust at Danny. “A mistake ye made, Markham,” he as- serted, with a freedom born of long service on the road, “in not sending one of the lighter and faster passenger engines to Startup for Number One. What can ye expect with a lumberin’ old hog like the twenty-seven, and a putterin’ freight puller like Malone, who’d lose time goin’ down hill if he’d——’”’ Involuntarily Burke left the sentence un- finished and turned. The door which they had heard open quietly had closed with a bang. And there was Danny Malone, his bronzed cheeks reddened, not only with the tang of the blizzard from which he had just come, but with a fire that burned within him. His blue eyes had hardened to the sheen of polished steel. Though Burke towered over him fully a foot, Danny struck, driving his right fist full against the point of Burke’s jaw and stretching the traducer of the twenty-seven the length of himself. In an instant the bigger man had regained his feet tensed for the attack, but Markham dashed between them. 123 “Cut it out!” he ordered. ‘You, Burke, take your orders and get Number One to the Coast as fast as the will let you. And you, Malone, sign the register and get out. The idea of you fighting in my office! The idea! For two cents I’d get both of you slammed with a thirty-day layoff.” “But he slandered me and the twenty- seven,” insisted Danny stubbornly, as if trying to convince himself that he had actually heard Burke’s sacreligious words. “He slandered the twenty-seven, which pulled Number One through those drifts from Startup without losing time, in spite of her bein’ only a freight engine.” His eyes were wide at the injustice of it. “Oh rats!” snorted Markham. ‘You engineers make me sick. This isa —— ofa time to get sentimental. We’ve got to get Number One to the Coast quick or tell somebody why.” And so the grand finale of the ill-feeling between Burke and Malone, about which the high line railroaders had often proph- esied, fizzled after a flash. But still the men of the high line insisted as they dis- cussed this latest phase that the end could not be put off forever. It seemed logical that Fate was hurrying toward a climax, moving as usual in her own subtle way. Re THERE came a time a few weeks sy} later when all the glittering white phalanxes of Boreas seemed con- centrated on the single idea of blocking traffic on the high line division, and putting gray hairs in the heads of train crews and dispatchers. It began to snow while a gale of unusual violence roared down from the pole. And how it did snow! Only those who have lived through a Winter in the Coast Range can appreciate what a real snow-storm is like. The heavily laden clouds from the Pacific, steamed up by the tepid Japan current in the face of a chill north- easter, sweep billowing toward the summit of the Cascades. And soon they have reached the freezing point, and they fall shattered in soggy flakes that are damp and clinging; piled by the wind into wet drifts that offer the maximum resistance to the great rotary snow-plows. Fifteen and twenty feet deep the snow becomes in the cuts. When this happened, system gave way to chaos on the high line division. Schedules went by the board. Regular trains fell so COMICLOOOkKS (C@