Pilot

"There are mountains a man can do business with," muttered Bucks in the
private car, his mustache drooping broadly above his reflecting words.
"Mountains that will give and take once in a while, play fair
occasionally. But Pilot has fought us every inch of the way since the
day we first struck a pick into it. It is savage and unrelenting. I'd
rather negotiate with Sitting Bull for a right of way through his
private bathroom than to ask an easement from Pilot for a tamarack tie.
I don't know why it was ever called Pilot: if I named it, it should be
Sitting Bull. What the Sioux were to the white men, what the Spider
Water is to the bridgemen, that, and more, Pilot has been to the
mountain men.

"There was no compromise with Pilot even after we got in on it.
Snowslides, washouts, bowlders, forest-fires--and yet the richest
quartz mines in the world lie behind it. This little branch, Mr.
Brock, forty-eight miles, pays the operating expenses of the whole
mountain division, and has done so almost since the day it was opened.
But I'd rather lose the revenue ten times every year than to lose
Morris Blood." The second vice-president was talking to Mr. Brock.
Their car was just rounding the curve into the gap in front of Mount
Pilot.

"What do you think of Blood's chances?" asked Mr. Brock.

"I don't know. A mountain man has nine lives."

"What does Glover think?"

"He doesn't say."

"Who built this line?"