Daybreak

At five o'clock that morning despatchers and night men under the
Wickiup gables, sitting moodily around the big stove, sprang to their
feet together. From up the distant gorge, dying far on the gale, came
the long chime blast of an engine whistle; it was the lost Special.

They crowded to the windows to dispute and listen. Again the heavy
chime was sprung and a second blast, lasting and defiant, reached the
Wickiup--McGraw was whistling for the upper yard and the long night of
anxiety was ended. Unable to see a car length into the storm howling
down the yard, save where the big arc-lights of the platform glared
above the semaphores, the men swarmed to the windows to catch a glimpse
of the belated engine. When the rays of its electric headlight pierced
the Western night they shouted like boys, ran to the telephones, and
while the roundhouse, the superintendent, and the master-mechanic were
getting the news the Special engine steamed slowly into sight through
the whirling snow and stopped at the semaphore. So a liner shaken in
the teeth of a winter storm, battered by heading seas, and swept by
stiffening spray, rides at last, ice-bound, staggering, majestic, into
port.

The moment they struck the mountain-path into the Bend, McGraw and
Glover caught their bearings by the curves, and Glover, standing at
Gertrude's elbow, told her they were safe.

Not until he had laughed into her ear something that the silent McGraw,
lying on his back under the engine with a wrench, when he confessed he
never expected to see Medicine Bend again, had said of her own splendid
courage did the flood spring from her eyes.