He turned to the telephone and gave his orders.  Then up the stairs he clambered and into his clothes.  Jewel snorted and awoke.

“Goo’by!” roared Martin as he climbed into his coat.  “They’ve sent for me to open the Blue Ribbon.”

“And have they?” Jewel sat up, her eyes beaming.  “I’d been wishin’ it—­and ye’ll do it, Marty; I’ve been thinkin’ about the old section snowed under—­and all the folks we knew——­”

“Will ye shut up?” This was something Martin did not want to hear.  Out of the house he plumped, to the waiting double-header of locomotives attached to the rotary, and the other engines, parked on the switches, with their wedge ploughs, jull-ploughs, flangers, and tunnel wideners.  The “high-ball” sounded.  At daybreak, boring his way through the snow-clogged transfer at Missouri City, Martin came out upon the main line of the O.R. & T.—­and to his duty of revenge.

On they went, a slow, deliberate journey, steam hissing, black smoke curling, whistles tooting, wheels crunching, as the rotary bucked the bigger drifts and the smaller ploughs eliminated the slighter raises, a triumphant procession toward that thing which Martin knew he could attack with all the seeming ferocity of desperation and yet fail—­the fifty-foot thickness of Bander Cut.

Face to face, in the gaunt sun of early morning he saw it—­a little shack, half covered with snow, bleak and forbidding in its loneliness, yet all in all to the man who stared at it with eyes suddenly wistful—­his little old section house, where once the honour flag had flown.

He gulped.  Suddenly his hand tugged at the bell cord.  Voices had come from without, they were calling his name!  He sought the door, then gulped again.  The steps and platform of his car were filled with eager, homely-faced men, men he had known in other days, his old crew of section “snipes.”

All about him they crowded; Martin heard his voice answering their queries, as though someone were talking far away.  His eyes had turned back to that section house, seeking instinctively the old flag, his flag.  It spoke for a man who gave the best that was in him, who surpassed because he worked with his heart and with his soul in the every task before him.  But the flag was not there.  The pace had not been maintained.  Then the louder tones of a straw boss called him back: 

“You’ll sure need that big screw and all the rest of them babies, Garrity.  That ole Bander Cut’s full to the sky—­and Sni-a-bend Hill!  Good-night!  But you’ll make ’er.  You’ve got to, Garrity; we’ve made up a purse an’ bet it down in Montgomery that you’ll make ’er!”

Martin went within and the crew waited for a high-ball order that did not come.  In his private car, alone, Martin Garrity was pacing the floor.  The call of the old division, which he had loved and built, was upon him, swaying him with all the force of memory.

“I guess we could sell the flivver——­” he was repeating.  “Then I’ve got me diamond ... and Jewel ... she’s got a bit, besides what we’ve saved bechune us.  And he’ll win the test, anyhow ... they’ll never beat him over this division ... if I give him back what I’ve earned ... and if he wins anyhow------”