The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1874-05-16
PoE: TRY.
BINLEY AND "46."

BY BRET HARTE.
from Frank Leslie's Weekly
Upon Wasatch's peaks of snow,
Night holds illimitable sway,
Where but single hour ago
The crags and chasms, high and low.
Respondent shone with day.
From out the sky no star ray shines
Upon the awful solitude:
While meaning through the tossing pines,
Like some unquiet spirits brood
The winds sweep to and fro,
Aud seem in saddened mood
To breathe a wall of woe
At first they only sighed,
But now they moan and Sob
And since the eveutide
Their maddened pulses throb
In quicker, faster low
As their feetlng footsteps gd,.
Der the cold expanse of snow.
And all the upper air
Is filled with drifting clouds
While fiends that reve there
Are weaving shifting shrouds:
Tossing in endless whirl,
They reel in golden mirth,
And then the shronds they hur
On tempest's wings to earth.
=
Twas 'leyen O'Clock near Bridgcr's Gap,
In station that swayed in the tempests sweep
Where lightning ierker enjoyed his nap
When & call from the Canyon broke his Sleep
And he caught the words from the subtle clicks,
" Send Bney down here with 40
Soon Binley had mounted his iron steed,
And the fires of the furnace glowed again.
As the ponderous monster devoured its feed,
And rolled from the side track on to The main.
Out on the night where the snowhakes fell
Ont where the blasts of the tempest's roar.
Binley shouted his friend farewell,
AS he opened the throttle valve one notch more.
Then over the winding track he sped
Where the pathway with chasms and crags was
lined;
The glare of his great light cleaned ahead
And the snow like brides vail streamed behind,
And soon the sound of the canking steel.
Was drowned in the echoes from hill to hill
He felt the engine sway and reel,
But the throttle went one notch further still
And down the grade like course feet
Piunging through mountains of drifted snow,
The engine ploughs through the crusts of sleet,
Aud hurls a thousand feet below
The ponderous masses that block lts way:
Throws them far to the left and right,
Into the black of oblvious night.
To reach the canyons by break of day.
And now old Binley feels the thrill
That the soldier feels when he meets his foe:
He opens the throttle valve wider still,
And his furnace burns with a fercer glow
As the piston flashes in faster stroke;
But firm as rock stands the engineer
And in his honest old heart of oak
There beats not the slightest pulse of fear,
But soon the engine is running slower
Though its pathway lies on a level grade
And then trcmor comes stealing DER
Binley's hand on the the throttle laid
There's Stacking up of the driving wheel,
While the engine struggles with human will
Then slowly ceases the clank of steel,
And the painting monster is standing still
Thicker and faster the drifting snow
Throws round its victim its winding sheet,
And luenches the glare of the headlights glow,
AS Btniey mutters. = give up heat"
Next morning snow-pow forced its way
To the spot where the buried engine lay:
They hewed path through the frozen crust,
And then was the ghastly story told;
There sat Binley beside his trust
With his hand on the throttle valve stiff and cold.