But the Sweetgrass winds are the same. The same snows whiten the peaks,
the same sun dies in western glory, and the mountains still see nestling
among the tracks at the bend of the Medicine River the first headquarters
building of the mountain division, nicknamed The Wickiup. What, in the
face of continual and unrelenting changes, could have saved the Wickiup?
Not the fact that the crazy old gables can boast the storm and stress of
the mad railroad life of another day than this--for every deserted curve
and hill of the line can do as much. The Wickiup has a better claim to
immortality, for once its cracked and smoky walls, raised solely to house
the problems and perplexities of the operating department, sheltered a
pair of lovers, so strenuous in their perplexities that even yet in the
gleam of the long night-fires of the West End their story is told.
In that day the construction department of the mountain division was
cooped up at one end of the hall on the second floor of the building.
Bucks at that time thought twice before he indorsed one of Glover's
twenty-thousand-dollar specifications. Now, with the department
occupying the entire third floor and pushing out of the dormer windows, a
million-dollar estimate goes through like a requisition for postage
stamps.
But in spite of his hole-in-the-wall office, Glover, the construction
engineer of that day, was a man to be reckoned with in estimates of West
End men. They knew him for a captain long before he left his mark on the
Spider the time he held the river for a straight week at twenty-eight
feet, bitted and gagged between Hailey's piers, and forced the yellow
tramp to understand that if it had killed Hailey there were equally bad
men left on the mountain pay-roll. Glover, it may be said, took his
final degrees in engineering in the Grand Cañon; he was a member of the
Bush party, and of the four that got back alive to Medicine one was Ab
Glover.
Glover rebuilt the whole system of snowsheds on the West End, practically
everything from the Peace to the Sierras. Every section foreman in the
railroad Bad Lands knew Glover. Just how he happened to lose his
position as chief engineer of the system--for he was a big man on the
East End when he first came with the road--no one certainly knew. Some
said he spoke his mind too freely--a bad trait in a railroad man; others
said he could not hold down the job. All they knew in the mountains was
that as a snow fighter he could wear out all the plows on the division,
and that if a branch line were needed in haste Glover would have the
rails down before an ordinary man could get his bids in.