But the work went on--the great, driving, united
heart beat on.
Neale was under its impulse, in another sense.
When he lifted a tie and felt the hard, splintering wood, he
wondered where it had come from, what kind of a tree it was, who had
played in its shade, how surely birds had nested in it and animals
had grazed beneath it. Between him and that square log of wood there
was an affinity. Somehow his hold upon it linked him strangely to a
long past, intangible spirit of himself. He must cling to it, lest
he might lose that illusive feeling. Then when he laid it down he
felt regret fade into a realization that the yellow-gravel road-bed
also inspirited him. He wanted to feel it, work in it, level it,
make it somehow his own.
When he strode back for another load his magnifying eyes gloated
over the toilers in action--the rows of men carrying and laying
rails, and the splendid brawny figures of the spikers, naked to the
waist, swinging the heavy sledges. The blows rang out spang--spang--
spang! Strong music, full of meaning! When his turn came to be a
spiker, he would love that hardest work of all.
The engine puffed smoke and bumped the cars ahead, little by little
as the track advanced; men on the train carried ties and rails
forward, filling the front cars as fast as they were emptied; long
lines of laborers on the ground passed to and fro, burdened going
forward, returning empty-handed; the rails and the shovels and the
hammers and the picks all caught the hot gleam from the sun; the
dust swept up in sheets; the ring, the crash, the thump, the scrape
of iron and wood and earth in collision filled the air with a sound
rising harshly above the song and laugh and curse of men.
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