The road foreman’s summary was beyond dispute. Glacier Canon was as wild a piece of track as the Hill Division boasted, which was going some. The right of way hugged the bald gray rock of the mountains that rose up at one side in a sheer sweep, and the trains crawled along for all the world like huge flies at the base of a wall. On the other side was the Glacier River with its treacherous sandy bed that had been the subject of more reports and engineers’ gray hairs than all the rest of the system put together. The construction camp lay just to the east of the Canon, and at the foot of a long, stiff, two-mile, four-per-cent grade. That was the reason the camp was there--that grade. Locking the stable door when the horse is gone is a procedure that is very old. It did not originate with the directors of the Transcontinental--they never claimed it did. But their fixed policy, if properly presented before a court of arbitration, would have gone a long way toward establishing a clear title to it. If they had built a switchback at the foot of the grade in the first place, Extra Number Eighty-three, when she lost control of herself near the bottom coming down, would have demonstrated just as clearly the necessity for one being there as she demonstrated most forcibly what would happen when there wasn’t. All of which is by way of saying that rock or no rock, expense or no expense, the door was now to be locked, and McCann and his men were there to lock it. McCann explained this to Shanley as he walked him around, up the track to the men’s shanties, over the work, and back again down the track to inspect the interior of the dwelling they were to share in common--a relic of deceased Extra Number Eighty-three in the shape of a truckless box-car with dinted and bulging sides--dinted one side and bulged the other, that is. “But,” said Shanley, “I dunno what a switchback is.” “Who expected it av ye?” inquired McCann. “An’ fwhat difference does ut make? Carleton sint word ye were green. Ye’ve no need to know. So’s ye can do as yez are told an’ make them geesers do as they are told, _an’_ can play forty-foive at night--that’s the point, the main point wid me, an’ it’s me yez av to get along wid----‘twill be all right. Since Meegan, him that was helpin’ me, tuk sick a week back, I’ve been alone. Begad, playin’ solytare is----” “I can play forty-five,” said Shanley. McCann’s face brightened.