Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online

Chapter 7

2138 1/8/1981 – 0156 1/9/1981:
C&SL Snowplow Extra One

For the third time in less than a day, Plow Extra One headed eastbound, again with John Penny in the plow’s cupola and with Bud at the controls of the Rock. The storm hadn’t let up any; in fact, with the wind shifting, Bud thought it might now be even worse.

Behind the Rock was the Milwaukee, with its throttle wide open as soon as the state road crossing had been cleared. Bud could guess that Frank was already watching over it, and that Walt was curled up asleep in the corner of the NW2’s cab. “Another rule shot to hell,” he thought. “Probably won’t be the last one before this is over, either.”

The Burlington was still sitting in the engine shed in Spearfish Lake. It was showing signs of life, according to Sloat, but there was no way it was ready to make the trip. Maybe next run, he hoped. Bud would desperately have liked to have been taking the Burlington on this trip instead of the Milwaukee. That would have allowed Walt a chance to get several good hours of sleep, and then maybe Walt could have spelled him on the next trip, sick as he was.

There certainly would be a next trip. Blair hadn’t shown up by the time they had left. Bud had been sorely tempted to wait for them; it would have allowed time for rest that the train crew sorely needed. But there was no telling how long the wait might be, and besides, the Albany River department that sat on Plow Extra One’s flatcars would be useful in Warsaw right away. Besides, Linder had seemed anxious about getting a “scram train” up there.

Even though they were on their way, Bud was still troubled by the decision. Wouldn’t it have been better to wait? With the plow on the front and both engines pulling, power to punch through the drifts wasn’t a problem eastbound.

It was pointless to worry about it, Bud knew, as he munched on the hamburger that had come from Rick’s at the last minute. Plow Extra One headed out across the Spearfish River swamp, and the going was easy just now. Even though Bud was so tired he could barely hold his eyes open, he felt glad he was doing what he could.

The relay of front loader drivers had finally managed to get the bin at Northern Fertilizer empty of the dangerous ammonium nitrate, which now lay in a huge white pile by the south door of the plant; Halsey could now begin loading the hopper cars. The elevator had been set up under the first hopper car long before, and the plant manager had the elevator running even as the crew was getting the bin boards back in place. The elevator made a racket that could be heard even over the roar of the storm, but it was obvious to everyone that nothing was falling into the now-empty bin.

Halsey went outside to the hopper cars. In the beam of his flashlight he quickly noted that the gate at the bottom of the car was open, but that there was nothing coming out of it. He ducked under the car and felt around inside the gate, grabbing a handful of fertilizer. It didn’t even take the light of his flashlight to confirm his suspicions, but he checked to be sure. “Goddamn DAP!” he swore to the wind.

Back at the south end of the building, he called to one of his drivers. “That goddamn car is loaded with 18-46-0. I didn’t even think to check it!”

“Well, shit!” Roberts replied. “I’ll go get a sledge and a wrecking bar.”

The car had sat on the siding most of the winter loaded with di-ammonium phosphate. DAP cakes up when exposed to moisture, and this car held three big cakes of solid fertilizer. Probably the other car did, too, Halsey guessed now that he’d thought about it. It could be gotten out, after a fashion, but it would be a long job of poking and prying at the stuff through the narrow gate at the bottom of the hopper car, interspersed at intervals with beating on the side of the car with a sledge hammer to break up the fertilizer cake in the hopper bin.

It would take hours longer than he had expected. Halsey knew that he’d have to tell Fred Linder about it.

Bruce Marshall was again prowling all over the paper plant. The lights were on, and there was a flurry of activity that hadn’t died out since the morning before. His mind was a turmoil of exhaustion and suspicion.

Marshall’s discussion with Fred Linder over at the school hadn’t helped a bit. If anything, he was even more suspicious, but he couldn’t make himself believe his suspicions were true. “Those dumb sons of bitches may be heartless, but they aren’t crooked,” he thought.

But was there a chance that someone from the main office might have thought of torching the place?

Marshall knew that they wanted the plant closed, but he couldn’t believe that anyone in the main office would want it closed that bad. Burning the place would surely close it, of course, but it would mean that someone was risking jail, not to mention lawsuits that could easily exceed the value of the plant.

After all, starting a fire in the warehouse instead of the main plant kind of missed the point. But then, a fire starting in the warehouse and getting away from the inadequate local fire department wouldn’t seem very suspicious. If the fire had been intentionally set at the outset of a major storm, it wouldn’t be surprising if it got away from the handful of firefighters in Warsaw. But then, Marshall couldn’t conceive of a Warsaw local setting the fire; besides, the town had already been snowed in when the fire started, and a stranded outsider would have been noticed by now. But that didn’t mean anything, either. Money could pry open a lot of doors, and besides, there were a lot of snowmobiles running around the country. Even in this weather, an arsonist on a snowmobile could be far away when a fire was discovered.

But then, but then, but then . . .

No, there was no way of telling at this time. Linder had been right in that. If Marshall could know that the fire had been set, he’d have the groundings for his suspicions. If he knew that the fire was accidental, he’d feel relieved, and a bit embarrassed at himself. Without any way of knowing, all he could do was worry – and continue roaming the old building, trying to do his best to make the perhaps mythical arsonist’s efforts a waste.

“Bud, we’ve got a problem here.”

It was Walt’s voice on the VHF. Walt must not have been asleep after all. Bud picked up the mike and replied, “Say again, Walt.”

“We’ve got a problem. This thing isn’t putting out like it’s supposed to.”

Bud looked at his own gauges. Sure enough, the speed was dropping, and the load meter was increasing, even though the Rock was performing normally. True, the snow might be getting worse, but Penny hadn’t commented on it recently. They were up on the plains past the swamp, past the trestle over the Spearfish River. It wasn’t very far to Warsaw, now.

“You got any idea what it is?”

“It’s got to be something electrical. The diesel’s doing fine. I was asleep when it happened, but Frank said the load meter dropped just like that. Just from the way it’s running and from what I can get off the panel, I can’t help but think that maybe two traction motors are completely dead. Both motors off the line. And I’ve kind of got a hunch that they’re both on the front truck.”

This mystified Bud, as it was obviously mystifying the far more experienced Walt. The symptoms seemed to rule out shorting of the traction motors from the wetness. Bud would have thought that would have been gradual, and besides, why would both traction motors on the same truck crap out at once? At this point, that could argue against a traction motor problem.

“Well, give me all you’ve got,” Bud told the other engineer. “It’s not that far to Warsaw. Maybe we can get into the Milwaukee there and figure it out.

Bud tried to think while he drove the Rock through the drifting snow. The third run to Warsaw in this storm, and two engines out of the three that he had available were sick, now. This was bound to change things, but he didn’t know how. He felt glad he’d called for help, but what would he do next?

One possibility was to return to Spearfish Lake after they got to Warsaw, with the NW2 dead in train, and most of the load left behind. They’d talked about doing something like that to give one of the engineers a rest, and now they’d have to do it, anyway. Maybe by the time they got back to Spearfish Lake the Burlington might be running again, and then Sloat could see what he could do with the Milwaukee.

Bud’s grappling with the problem was interrupted by Betty’s voice on the VHF; up on the flats, now, they could still reach Spearfish Lake. “What’s up, Betty?” he asked.

“Ralph called a few minutes ago, but you were out of range,” she said. “He’d like you to call him back as soon as you can. Do you think you can find a phone in Warsaw?”

“Did he say what he wanted?”

“Sorry, Bud, he didn’t. He just said it was important and he had to get back to work.”

“All right, I’ll try to find a phone,” he replied. “Is Blair there yet?”

“Not yet, but Sheriff Upton just called and . . . ” her voice faded into a garbled something, and then the air went dead. The radio skips were even freakier than normal in this storm, Bud guessed, then fell to wondering what McPhee wanted. Either bad news or a decision from him. Probably more bad news, Bud guessed. It was nice to have hoped for help from the outside, but he knew that he couldn’t depend on it. Now, if the Rock could avoid giving him any bad news . . .

Fred Linder was as tired as anyone. More tired, maybe. Everyone in Warsaw was tired, but even considering the gravity of this fire to the town, there wasn’t anyone else who had quite the weight on him that the fire chief carried.

Possibly another six hours to get that multiply-dammed ammonium nitrate out of Northern Fertilizer! They ought to be done loading those hopper cars by now, and they hadn’t even started!

True, Linder hadn’t helped progress there by taking away the critical front-loader for most of the afternoon, but whatever time it took, the stuff had to be gotten out of town or he could have a real mess on his hands.

Linder offered Halsey some spare hands to fight with the caked-up DAP in the hopper cars, but the plant manager said that there would be little for the extra hands to do. The available equipment could only handle the material so fast, and it was going just as hard as it could go. More people would just get in the way. They wouldn’t speed things up, and they might well slow things down.

Linder agreed, realizing that he was getting a bit leery of the fertilizer plant. How many more unpleasant surprises could it produce? He’d have to keep a closer eye on it.

For hours now, Fred had been everywhere. His snowmobile showed up at the school to check on things there, then over to the railroad track. Then, he’d go to the warehouse fire, where he wondered just how long the steel building could hold out, then around the burning hopper cars to the pulp yard fire. Amazingly, Spearfish Lake and the tag ends of Warsaw people and Hoselton people had been able to hold on, and were still keeping the fire out of Yard 4, in spite of all the wind. Linder couldn’t see how they’d be able to hold out much longer, in spite of the fact that Yard 4 was mostly an icy swamp from all the water that had been dumped there to fireproof the yard; if a fire started up there, the place would dry out quickly.

Linder’s snowmobile might show up at the Warsaw Oil Company, where the manager mostly worried about thousands of gallons of gasoline, propane, diesel oil, and fuel oil. There wasn’t much to be done there but hope that the fire wouldn’t get that far. No embers were going to light those tanks off; it would take a solid blaze and a hot one at that. But, if things went wrong, it could be as bad as anything the ammonium nitrate at the fertilizer plant could produce.

Perhaps Linder’s snowmobile might show up next at the fire hall, where a couple of Warsaw garage mechanics worked continually at filling the face mask tanks. Fortunately, the fire hall had managed to stay just out of the toxic smoke all afternoon, and now that the wind had shifted the firemen in Warsaw could be assured of clean air to breathe if the tanks could be filled fast enough. With all the air being used, the compressors were falling behind, and the departments were getting to the bottoms of their reserves.

From there, Linder would head on to the next trouble spot, and there was trouble all over. Occasionally, he would have to stop for gas for the snowmobile; at one of these stops, he noticed the time.

The four hours that Ellsberg had given him were almost up! The train was due back any minute now, and he hadn’t even thought about the scram train he’d asked for earlier. Once he got the gas tank filled, he sat down without starting the snowmobile’s engine. He needed to think this one out.

They were going to be screwing around with that ammonium nitrate outside. If an ember should happen to land in it while they were working with it, there’d be a hell of a mess. Among other things, the main plant would be surrounded, and there’d be a damn good chance that the oil company could go, too. But an ember could come from anywhere, and it go anywhere. The wind could shift again, this time back to the east, and set the town itself on fire. In this wind, with the people he had available, it was possible that a fire could rip clear through town.

There was no point in thinking further along that depressing line. Given a little time, he could think of a dozen ways that things could go wrong where the only option open would be to run like hell. There were enough pieces of fire equipment in town for the firemen to run in, and Linder had made sure that the roads were kept plowed to the south, east, and north, so there would at least be an “away” to run to if they had to run away. But there were a lot of civilians in town who might be running on foot if they did have to leave.

Linder wanted the scram train, but Ellsberg had said that it was a choice between what he could haul in and what he could haul out. Was there that much to haul in? The last time that Linder had talked on the phone to Joe Upton, he’d been told that Albany River was coming on this trip, but even Blair hadn’t made it. Even if the railroad managed to accumulate three or four fire departments to haul in, would everything they had be necessary? Obviously not. Walsenberg and Spearfish Lake had brought everything but the kitchen sink, and Linder wasn’t so sure that Spearfish Lake hadn’t thrown that in, too. Granted, the ambulances and rescue vehicles and tool trucks were nice to have around, but were they necessary? Not really. If there were a lot of units to haul in on a single trip, the railroad could just bring the major units – pumpers, maybe tankers, too – and leave all the secondary stuff in Spearfish Lake for later. Reserve men might be more important than reserve units, anyway. Sure as hell, though, Linder knew that if he’d decide to leave, say, ambulances behind he’d need every one of them he could get his hands on shortly afterward.

“Better get a move on,” he said to himself. As he rode through the storm to check on the progress of the DAP at the fertilizer plant, Linder realized that the scram train represented the lesser of the two evils. Limiting the inward loads might not hurt that much.

Besides, there were other advantages to having the scram train. It could solve the problem of the rest center. If the wind shifted to blow them out of the school or the VFW hall, it couldn’t blow them out of the train. The train could move out of trouble, no matter which way the wind shifted.

When he pulled up to the fertilizer plant, the clincher came to him. As soon as they had even one car of ammonium nitrate loaded, the scram train’s engine could get it out of danger. Maybe down to Hoselton, or even just upwind of the fire.

So be it. He had his decision. Now, where was the train?

“You stupid son of a bitch! You want everybody in town to think we’re chickening out?” Sprague muttered a few more obscenities in response to Linder’s idea.

That stupid son of a bitch, himself, Linder thought. He really wants to cut his own throat, and all he wants to do is show his balls.

Well, he’d try to be diplomatic. “We’re not chickening out,” he told the Walsenberg chief, who showed no sign of listening. “We’re trying to build a bridge that won’t burn before we cross it. I don’t plan to run. This is my town.”

Sprague stomped off into the storm, muttering, “Stupid son of a bitch wants to show the world he’s chickening out.”

I’m glad Spearfish Lake is here, Linder thought, again. But why did we even call Walsenberg?

Once again, the Rock’s air horn split the night and reminded the people in Warsaw that they weren’t entirely cut off from the rest of the world. Bridges might be out, and roads might be totally impassable in the snow, but as the clock reached midnight, the railroad had made it through again, bringing contact – and assistance – from elsewhere.

Frank Matson had barely climbed down from the cab of the Milwaukee to make the first cut when the fire chief’s green snowmobile raced up to the Rock. Up in the cab, Linder greeted Bud: “It’s always good to see this rig of yours. You got everybody down to Spearfish Lake all right?”

“More than that,” Bud smiled. “We even got there with more people than we left with.”

“So she had it on the way, huh? Boy or girl?” Linder was almost as proud as if he were the father himself; everyone in the Warsaw Volunteer Fire Department was almost like family to him.

“I heard it was a boy. I wasn’t really paying attention.” The radio squawked with Penny’s voice, saying that the switch was thrown for the move ahead; it was followed by Matson’s word that the first cut had been made. Bud increased the throttle a notch, hit the whistle, and asked Linder, “How are things going up here?”

“About the same. No better and no worse. If the goddamn wind would quit, I’m beginning to think we could lick this thing where it sits. With the wind blowing like hell, it could get away from us at any time.”

“You got those hoppers ready to go?”

“Hell, no. The way they’re screwing around over there, they’re barely started at them. I want to talk to you about that, anyway. We’ll keep the standby train here, like we talked about the last time. When they get a car loaded, we can get it the hell out of there, even if it’s just over to Hoselton or even onto the tracks upwind of the fire.”

Bud wondered how to give the bad news to the harried fire chief. Might as well give it to him straight, he thought. “I hate to tell you this, Fred, but we’re not going to be able to leave an engine here. The switcher there” – Bud pointed to the Milwaukee – “got sick on the way up here. It’s only running on half power. We’re going to have to take it back to Spearfish Lake with us to work on it. We’ll leave the bus flats here for you. In fact, we have to leave them. If we’re going to take a dead engine back with us, we’re going to want to keep the return trip light.”

Now that Linder had made up his mind about the scram train, he wasn’t about to give it up easily. “How about leaving this one here and going back with the sick one?”

“So what happens if it craps out on the way?” Bud asked. “We don’t know what’s wrong with it. Something that’s half blown might blow the rest of the way. Or, we might not be able to fix it in Spearfish Lake, either. Then we really would be in shit.”

“Sorry, Bud,” Linder replied. “It was a dumb idea.”

“I’m just sorry that we can’t help you out on this, Fred.” Bud cut the power when Penny called that the tail of the bus flats was clear of the switch, then reversed when Penny reported the switch was thrown. He went on talking all this time: “Maybe next trip. My guy down there said the other Geep might be running by the time we get back. If it is, then we ought to be able to leave an engine for the scram train the next trip.”

This news disappointed Linder. “That really leaves us hanging, Bud. The thing of it is, the longer we leave that ammonium nitrate around, the bigger chance for trouble from it that we have. I’d like to be rid of it just as soon as I can. How long do you think before you can get back up here?”

Bud could answer that one. “We’ve got to figure on four hours. We might be able to do it in a little less, but we’ve got to plan on it taking at least that long.”

Linder shook his head. “I don’t want to wait that long if I can help it.”

Bud had a chance to think as he backed up the main line. He stopped just past the east switch and waited for Matson to throw it, thinking all the while that there wasn’t any reason he couldn’t leave the Milwaukee here while he made a round trip. After all, there was no certainty that the Burlington would be ready to go when he got back to Spearfish Lake. If it wasn’t, it would be even longer before Linder had help. Against that, the Milwaukee was at least running to some degree. Half power was still 500 horsepower, more than enough to move a couple of hopper cars. The NW2 could probably pull some of the bus flats, if it came to that.

Besides, Walt was dead tired; not that Bud wasn’t pretty well all in himself, but Walt was in far worse shape. He could sleep in Warsaw just as well as he could sleep in Spearfish Lake.

If the Burlington was ready to go when Bud got back to the office, so much the better. He could mate the two GP-7s up again to get one of them up to Warsaw and relieve the Milwaukee on the watch over the scram train, then either he or Walt could tow the sick switch engine back to Spearfish Lake dead in train behind the other Geep. It made sense.

With couplers closed to the consist, Bud started easing the flatcars carrying the Albany River Volunteer Fire Department up to the TOFC ramp while he talked to the Warsaw fire chief. “Tell you what, Fred. I’ll leave the switcher here for a trip. It’s sick, but it ought to be able to move the hopper cars when they’re ready to go. We’ll leave the bus flats here, but I want you to understand that I’m not going to guarantee that the 202 will move all of them loaded, or that it’ll keep running at all.”

Relief flooded over Linder. That took care of at least two thirds of the problem. The engine would be available to move the hopper cars when they were ready to go, and it gave him his mobile rest center. Maybe they wouldn’t have to leave in a hurry, anyway. Thinking of the rest center, he asked, “Can you leave us some extra flatcars?” He explained what he had on his mind.

“Can do,” Bud told him. “But just understand that the whole deal is on hold until we can poke around in the switcher a bit. If we find something obviously ready to let go, then the deal’s off. And remember, the switcher won’t be able to move all the bus flats we’re leaving.”

None of the four railroad men was really much of a mechanic, even though all of them, including Matson, had worked on the engines with Sloat at one time or another. In the darkness in the open and the blowing snow, they didn’t have time for a thorough inspection.

“It’s like this, Bud,” Walt said when they were back in the cab of the Milwaukee afterward. “We can’t tell what’s wrong with this old girl, and we can’t tell if anything else is going to go wrong.”

“Son of a bitch if I know, either,” Bud replied. He looked up to see Penny and Matson return from overseeing the unloading of the flatcars.

“Everybody’s off the buses,” Penny reported, “And all the vehicles are off the flats. They’re loading some ambulance cases in the way car, and then we’ll be ready to go.”

“Ambulance cases?” Bud asked. “Anything serious?”

“Not really. Two guys with some smoke inhalation, a broken leg, and one guy with bad frostbite. None of it’s really rush stuff, but these guys are out for the duration, so they decided to send them back with us.”

“As long as we’re going that way, we might as well take them,” Bud conceded, and changed the subject. “Since we’re all here, we might as well get our signals straight.”

He told them about the plan to leave the Milwaukee and the bus flats as a standby train in case they were needed, and went on, “Walt, I’m going to leave you and Frank here this trip. If they really do have to get out of here in a hurry, you have a better chance to get more out of this sick old gal than I do. In a rush, one more car might mean a hell of a lot. Before we get back, Linder will probably want you to move one of those hopper cars, but that shouldn’t be any problem. I’ve got to go find a phone and talk to Ralph, so before John and I leave, you and Frank can take the Rock and shove the bus flats up onto the main east of the switch. That’ll leave the ramp and the passing track clear. That sound all right to you?”

Almost anything would have sounded all right to the sick and exhausted Walt Archer right then, so desperate was his need for sleep. “Sounds fine to me. Gives Frank and me a break, and you a shot at a break next trip. They just better hope that we don’t have to run. There’s no way this engine can move the bus consist in one cut, not on just two motors.”

“I don’t think so either,” Bud replied. “I told Linder that, but let’s keep it quiet. I wouldn’t want to worry the town even more. If something holds us up in getting back, it might not be a bad idea for you to run out light maybe four or five miles every few hours. That way, you’ll have a track that’s at least partly clear if you need it. Just don’t go so far that you can’t get back. I’ll talk to Linder again and make sure he understands that if it comes to running, he’s to cram everything into the forward flats, since you may have to cut off a lot of the tail. Frank, if that happens, you be ready to make some fast uncouplings.”

Frank understood Bud perfectly. If they had to leave in a big hurry, he might have to cut off loaded flats, then hope that they made it back from the Hoselton siding in time to make a second cut. “Bud,” Frank broke in, shocked at the vision of such a disaster and the part he would have to play in it, “I hate the thought of having to depend on this one engine.”

“I do, too,” Bud told him. “It comes down to having a little power that you can’t be sure about, or no power at all. That’s not much of a choice. Look, you guys, if you have to run, don’t worry about making it to Spearfish Lake. Just get the hell out of town and call it good enough. If you have to run, give us a call, and give the office a call. As soon as we hear about it, we’ll drop everything and come running. And Walt?”

“Yeah?”

“If it comes to that, I don’t care if you melt the Milwaukee down trying, just so you melt her down where the consist is safe.”

It turned out that there were lights on in the Jerusalem paper office, and Bud expected that he’d find a working phone there. He heard the Rock power up for the last of the switching while he struggled through the snow to the office, which was close enough to the smoke from the burning hopper cars to get a whiff of the smell every now and then.

It was warm inside, and quiet. Bud only took a moment to find a phone and call down to the engine shed in Camden. McPhee answered the second ring. “What’s up, Ralph?” Bud asked.

“I’ve got another engine, if you want it.”

Bud searched his memory quickly. Just where would there be any more power on the north side of the river? There certainly weren’t any more C&SL engines north of the drawbridge, and Marks had said that the SW9 was the only D&O engine on this side of the river. “Just where did you find this engine, Ralph?”

“Right here. You remember me telling you about those TV guys? Well, Bill Lee from the Lordston Northern just called. Apparently one of the TV guys knew that the 9608 was here, and they asked Lee if he could take them up to Warsaw. He told them, ‘Hell, no,’ of course, but he called me and told me that he wants to help. We can take her if we want her.”

That wasn’t going to be much help. “I think we’d better pass on that,” Bud told the oldtimer. “Call him back and tell him thanks, but no thanks.”

McPhee was from a different era. Diesels were mere industrial machinery to him, but the Lordston Northern steam engine represented his youth; he and Stevens had done a lot of work on its restoration. “Why not, Bud?” he asked. “She may be old, like me, but she’ll still pull. We won’t put her on the plow lashup, but she could pull the way car and quite a bit of fire equipment on flatcars.”

“Ralph, right off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen reasons why not,” Bud replied, a bit irritated in his exhaustion. “First of all, that old teakettle is a museum piece. What the hell is Lee going to say if we get it wet, or bust something? He’ll have our hides!”

“He knows it’s a risk. I told him we’d try to take good care of it, but that we couldn’t guarantee anything.”

“Yeah, but what if it craps out? That old crock has been kicking around most of this century. And where do you think you’re going to coal that thing up? You’d have to fill the tender at least once in good weather to get up here. In this stuff, who knows? And water? You’d have to get water at least that often, if not more, and they tore out all the standpipes years ago!”

McPhee was adamant in defending the old engine. “Well, if it does go out on us, which I don’t think it will, we’ll just have to push the consist back to the nearest town with the plow train and let it sit. We can get water from fire hydrants on the way up here, there’s no problem with that. And coal is no problem, either. We’ve got a gon load we were going to take up to Moffatt the day before yesterday, but they called us and told us the ones they already had there weren’t clear yet. I’m sure we can get the coal from the customer.”

“Just one other little thing,” Bud replied, realizing that McPhee was winning. “Just who the Sam Hill is going to run that thing?”

“Harold and I ran steam for thirty years,” McPhee snorted. “We’ll run it. We’ve run it before, filling in for Lee over at Lordston. Like I said, it’s a good engine. We know it.”

“So just who’s going to run the 303?”

“Oh, hell, Bud. The D&O is sending four crews over here. One of them can run it.”

Bud knew defeat when he saw it. “Oh, all right. Look, the only reason I’ll let you guys do it is that the Milwaukee just half crapped out on us, and we can use the power more than ever. I think you’ll find the line to the south, especially down by Thunder Lake, will be plugged to beat hell. Maybe the steamer can lighten the load for the diesels a little, and maybe they can have a little better chance of beating their way through. Besides, if you get stuck, you’ll have the steamer and its consist, so you can rescue yourselves and back up to the nearest town. Nobody’s been killed in this yet, and I don’t want you guys to be the first. Stay pretty close together, in case one or the other of you gets into trouble. Oh, and one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t want you two crazy old crocks killing yourselves pitching coal to that thing. You’re going to have a few young studs from the D&O and probably some Camden firefighters. Let them do the shovel work, and you guys just tell them how. You two are damn near as old as that engine, and that engine was old when Rudolf Diesel was still around. And don’t forget that engine stood in a city park for twenty years, so keep the load light, less than half of what you would take in good weather. I’ll ask around up here and see if there’s anything they want brought up from Camden.”

Bud couldn’t make out McPhee’s reply, for he heard Linder’s voice responding to his question. “Snorkel trucks, air compressors, and a fire marshal,” he said.

Bud told McPhee to hang on for a minute, then turned to Linder. “What was that, Fred?”

“If you’re bringing up something from Camden, I’d like to have a couple snorkel trucks to protect the roof of the main plant, air compressors to fill face mask tanks, and a fire marshal to see if he can figure out what caused this mess.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, the whole city fire department, but I suppose that’s out.”

Bud nodded and turned back to the phone. “Ralph, I’m going to have the guy here call down to the fire department in Camden and have him explain what he wants, but it sounds like a couple flat loads.”

“We can do that,” McPhee agreed.

“All right, be careful and let us know what’s happening,” Bud said. “Good luck.”

With the phone hung up, Bud turned to Linder. “You’d better call the Camden department and tell them directly what you want. Relaying it through us, your order might get screwed up.”

“No problem,” the fire chief responded. “They told me over at the train you were looking for me, and they’re ready to go.”

Bud explained the problem with the standby train. “We ought to be back in four or five hours,” he concluded. “Anything special you need from Spearfish Lake?”

“Just any departments that show up, and all the men they can bring,” Linder replied. “I’ll let Upton know if anything comes up. God, I’m glad you’ve been able to help us out.”

“We’ll keep it going as long as we can, Fred,” Bud replied. “I’d better get a move on, or we’ll never get back at all.”

The switching had all been done. As Penny made a final check of the way car on the miniscule consist that Plow Extra One would take back to Spearfish Lake, Bud got a call on the VHF from Walt. “I hate to see you leave,” the Milwaukee’s engineer said. “I just hope we don’t have to scram unless you’re right close by.”

“Let’s just hope that you don’t have to scram at all,” Bud replied. “Good luck, Walt.”

“Good luck to you. You take it easy, Bud. I won’t be able to help you if you get stuck someplace. If Ed doesn’t get the Burlington going, you might stay stuck till spring. When you get back to Spearfish Lake, why don’t you load my snowmobile on 101, just in case that happens? That way, you’d at least have a way to safety.”

“Good idea, Walt. See you in four or five hours or so.”

Plow Extra One hadn’t been in Warsaw long, perhaps half an hour; nobody thought to check the time. Now, it was leaving again, the only link left between Warsaw and the outside world.

Since the Plow was trailing the lonely engine, its point facing uselessly to the east, Penny was riding in the cab with Bud. The young brakeman was looking tired. He’d been on the go for eighteen hours or so now, but then, so had Bud, who was twice Penny’s age.

The load was light this trip. Plow Extra One consisted only of the blue Rock, the plow, the way car carrying four ambulance cases and three ambulance attendants, a flatcar with a bus loaded on it to allow space for people to ride on future trips, and a mere three empty flatcars. With the three left in Spearfish Lake, that meant that any further loads would have to be on those six flatcars.

Perhaps even Fred Linder didn’t realize how weak the lifeline to Warsaw was, but Bud certainly knew. Not twelve hours before, he had three engines. Now, he had one and a half. The Milwaukee had to be left in a possibly critical role, simply because there was nothing else available. And the Rock? The old Geep was thumping along the same as ever, but she was the only engine left. If anything went wrong with her . . .

Bud didn’t have enough people, either. He and Walt were the only two diesel engineers he knew of in either Warsaw or Spearfish Lake. There were three brakemen: Penny, Sloat, and Matson. Matson was an amateur, of but limited help, and Sloat was more valuable working on engines. Somebody who knew what they were doing had to ride the plow eastbound, and that left out Matson or any volunteer help. Everybody was hoglawed by now, anyway, except for Sloat, and there was no rest in sight. Calling for McPhee and the train from Camden was a faint hope, at best, Bud knew. It was too small, too weak in this snow. They might be able to get past Thunder Lake in this weather, but to be realistic, that was a long shot, even though it had to be tried. Help from the Kremmling branch and the D&O seemed even farther away. In any case, they’d have to keep on punching the best they could until the fire was over or help arrived, rest or no rest.

Rest! How Bud needed it! He envied Walt, up there in Warsaw. Even as Plow Extra One was getting up speed, Walt was probably curled up somewhere getting some sleep. Bud would have loved to curl up somewhere and sleep, even for an hour or so.

Hell, maybe he could!

“John,” he asked the brakeman. “Do you have any idea of how to run this thing?”

Diesels have but three main controls: the throttle, the valves for the air brakes, and the reverse transition lever. With the train running smoothly, running it would be mostly throttle jockeying.

“I can run it a little. Walt has let me do it for a bit now and then.”

“Run it, then. If the going gets tough, wake me up.”

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