To conceive this great project, to put it into shape, present it in London, secure the funds and the necessary concessions from two governments, survey and build, and have a locomotive running in Alaska a year from the first whoop of the happy Klondiker, had been a mighty achievement; but it was what Heney would call “dead easy” compared with the work that confronted the President at this time.  On July 20, 1897, the first pick was driven into the ground at White Pass; just a year later the pioneer locomotive was run over the road.  More than once had the financial backers allowed their faith in the enterprise and in the future of the country beyond to slip away; but the President of the company had always succeeded in building it up again, for they had never lost faith in him, or in his ability to see things that were to most men invisible.  In summer, when the weekly reports showed a mile or more or less of track laid, it was not so hard; but when days were spent in placing a single bent in a bridge, and weeks were consumed on a switch back in a pinched-out canon, it was hard to persuade sane men that business sense demanded that they pile on more fuel.  But they did it; and, as the work went on, it became apparent to those interested in such undertakings that all the heroes of the White Pass were not in the hills.

In addition to the elements, ever at war with the builders, they had other worries that winter.  Hawkins had a fire that burned all the company’s offices and all his maps and notes and records of surveys.  Foy had a strike, incited largely by jealous packers and freighters; and there was hand-to-hand fighting between the strikers and their abettors and the real builders, who sympathized with the company.

Brydone-Jack, a fine young fellow, who had been sent out as consulting engineer to look after the interests of the shareholders, clapped his hands to his forehead and fell, face down, in the snow.  His comrades carried him to his tent.  He had been silent, had suffered, perhaps for a day or two, but had said nothing.  The next night he passed away.  His wife was waiting at Vancouver until he could finish his work in Alaska and go home to her.

With sad and heavy hearts Hawkins and Hislop and Heney climbed back to where Foy and his men were keeping up the fight.  Like so many big lightning-bugs they seemed, with their dim white lamps rattling around in the storm.  It was nearly all night then.  God and his sunlight seemed to have forsaken Alaska.  Once every twenty-four hours a little ball of fire, red, round, and remote, swung across the canon, dimly lighted their lunch-tables, and then disappeared behind the great glacier that guards the gateway to the Klondike.