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

Chapter 3

1339 1/8/1981 – 1613 1/8/1981:
C&SL Snowplow Extra One

By the time Bud blew the Burlington’s whistle for the County Road 919 crossing just outside Spearfish Lake, the engine wasn’t contributing much to the train’s progress. Though the diesel itself was running, the amperage gauges were resting down toward their pegs.

Bud was glum. “Looks like this thing’s down for the count,” he told Penny.

“The Burlington strikes again,” the brakeman agreed.

“Yeah, just when we really need it, too.” The engineer shook his head and reached for the VHF, calling the office. “Is Ed there yet?” he asked.

“He got here right after you called the last time,” Betty replied, “So I had him plow out the piggyback ramp.”

“Find him and get him right down to the engine shed. The 104 is pretty sick. Tell him to bring along his magic wand.”

“It’s going to be a while before you get into the engine shed,” she told him. “Walt’s still switching around trying to get the way car out, and he’s got Track One blocked up.”

This was more bad news for Bud. Walt should have been done switching by now; he’d hoped to have the consist loaded for the return to Warsaw. If Walt hadn’t finished switching, then the loading couldn’t be done, either.

“OK, Betty,” Bud replied into his microphone, then continued, “Walt, how are you coming along with that?”

“One more cut will get the way car out,” was the reply from the switch engine. “You don’t want any of the repair cars, do you?”

“Not this trip. We’ll hold up on the north wye till you get the stuff off Two.”

“If you’re really in a hurry,” Walt replied, “Why don’t you hold on till I get the way car onto Three? Then you can help me take all of the stuff off of One and put it back on Two. Then I can put the way car on Two so we can hang it on the end of the load for Warsaw.”

“The way car doesn’t have to go on the end,” Bud protested, then asked, “How’s the loading going?”

“Pretty slow. We’re still unloading. I only got the last of the flats up to the dock a few minutes ago. Had to move them in three cuts, and it took a while.

This was a real shock to Bud. He had assumed that things would be pretty well ready to go, and they were nowhere near that stage. Apparently there was a real mess to straighten out. He thought for a moment, then got back on the VHF: “Betty, did Upton find enough stuff to fill seventeen flats?”

“I doubt it,” she replied. “But he’s right here. Give me a minute to see what we do have to go.”

The sheriff had been lounging near the coffeepot, and he began to run the list though his mind as he heard the exchange. He replied to Betty’s glance, “Let’s see . . . we’ve got both the rural and the city pumper . . . ”

“How long are they?” Betty broke in.

“About forty or forty-five feet.” As the sheriff spoke, Betty took notes. Two tankers, about thirty-five feet long, two ambulances, the rescue van and grass buggy, all at about twenty-five feet; a forty-foot cherry picker from the power company, a twenty-foot power company van, and two county plows, at least thirty feet if not more. “Oh, yeah,” he added, “They’ve got a four-wheel drive pickup from the fire department loaded with spare clothes and heavy clothing and sleeping bags and stuff like that. They’re planning on staying a while.”

“We’ve got sixty-foot flats mostly,” Betty said to herself, shuffling figures around while she tried to ignore Bud talking with Walt on the radio.

“Walt, who’s getting the chains off the trailers on those flats?”

“Tefke’s been working on them.”

“You anywhere near him?” Bud called from the cab of the Burlington, by now parked on the north wye.

“Pretty close, if he hasn’t moved,” Walt replied after a moment. “I’m just backing out with the way car now. I’ll be going right by him.”

“Stop when you get near him and get his attention. How many cars do you think he’s got empty now?”

“Don’t know for sure. Maybe ten. Let’s see, he’s got to be around here somewhere. Be back in a minute.” Walt left the cab to try and yell at the section gang foreman, who was busy unchaining truck trailers in the blowing snow. The howling wind blew away the sound of the engineer’s voice; a blast from the Milwaukee’s air horn got his attention, though.

While Tefke floundered through the snow to the switcher, Bud called the office once again. “Betty, got any idea of how many flats we’re going to need?”

“I think we can do it with nine flats, Bud, if we mix the load right. The fire department has two pumpers, and the power company has a cherry picker truck that are too long to mix with anything else on those flats. The rest of the load we can work around somehow on the other six flats. We should leave some space for Albany River, if they show up before you leave. You want the details on that loading?”

“Not just now, Betty.” Bud marshaled his thoughts before he went on. “I’ll get back to you on that in a minute. Two questions for Upton. Is all that stuff ready to load, and does he have any idea when Albany River might get here?”

Betty looked at the sheriff, who replied, “Enough to get started. The fire department guys are still getting personal gear together for a long stay. Albany River didn’t get started until the county got a plow out to them, so there’s no telling. I’ll call and see if I can find out where they are.”

The accountant nodded and spoke into the microphone, “Most of the load is ready and waiting, at least the people from Spearfish Lake. Upton’s getting a reading on Albany River.”

“Good enough,” Bud replied. “Be back with you in a minute. Walt, have you caught up with Tefke yet.”

“Yeah,” Walt replied. “Here he is.”

The lean, grizzled section gang foreman took the microphone as Bud began to speak. “Roger, how many flats you got empty?”

“Eleven with the load that’s moving now.”

Bud thought for a moment, then ordered Tefke to empty one more, then get started loading. They would leave the flatcars that were still full behind, so Tefke’s crew could unload them later.

“You’re going to want them all unloaded?” Tefke wondered.

“Sure do,” Bud replied. “Nine’s all we’re going to use this trip, unless Albany River shows up, but we might need the rest of them later. We can always reload them if we don’t need them. Make sure the stuff we’re loading is chained down the best way it can. We don’t need it coming loose.”

“Will do,” the section foreman replied. “Sorry we weren’t all done.”

“Couldn’t be helped. Let me talk to Walt, again.” Bud gave Walt some further orders about switching the train around, then called back to the office, wondering if Upton had heard about Albany River yet.

“An hour at least, maybe more,” Betty replied. “They had to bring in a plow from out south, and it isn’t there yet.”

“If they get here before we’re ready to go, we’ll take them,” Bud told her. “Give Upton your list of how to load that stuff. Have him go over to the piggyback ramp and direct traffic. Everything goes on straight ahead, and we’ll change ends so they’ll go off straight ahead in Warsaw. The only thing is, I want one of the plows to go on first. I don’t know if anybody’s thought to plow out the piggyback ramp in Warsaw.”

“OK, Bud, no problem.”

“Uh, Betty, if there’s anybody standing around there without something heavy in both hands, have them go over to Rick’s. Have them get four burgers with everything, two orders of fries, a milkshake and John, what do you want to drink?”

“Coke.

“And a Coke.” Plus, there’s a thermos in my office. Get it filled with coffee so we can take it on the next run, will you?” He hung up the microphone as Betty replied in the affirmative, then reached for the throttle. “Switch set for us?” he asked John.

“Yeah, I checked. How do you do it, anyway?”

“Do what?”

“How do you throw orders around like that? They were floundering around, wasting time. Then, you come in and it’s do this, do that, what’s the story on the other thing, and all of a sudden, everything’s working.”

“Someone had to do it,” Bud shrugged. “You yell at bag boys as much as I have and you get used to it.”

On the way back from the aborted attempt on County Road 919, Harry Masterfield had told the Spearfish Lake firemen to get personal gear together and expect a stay of several days at Warsaw, and to load all the spare equipment the department owned into the back of Rod Turpin’s four wheel drive pickup, which would go to the troubled town on the train with the department.

The fireman had no sooner arrived in Spearfish Lake before Joe McGuinness was busy. The fireman/accountant was just getting started on tax preparation season, and if he was going to be gone for a few days, it was necessary to make special arrangements to keep his business going. His wife would have to look after the office for a few days, but she couldn’t handle much of the business, which was new and not well established, He hardly dared turn his back on it for the several days he might be in Warsaw, but still, he felt he had to go.

He called a few clients to put off appointments, and then got down to the business of preparing. Since he was an outdoors person – that, after all, was the reason he had moved to Spearfish Lake – his winter sleeping bag and the foam pad to go under it were easy to find. He thought about taking his spare snowmobile suit, but since the pad and sleeping bag were already on his pack frame and other useful winter gear was already in the pack, it just seemed easiest to fasten the snowmobile suit to the outside of the pack with some bungee straps.

He was in a hurry now, for Masterfield had said there would only be an hour or so before the department would be loading onto the train, and that time was almost gone. As ready to go as he could get in that time, he kissed his wife goodbye and loaded himself and his gear onto his snowmobile. At the fire hall a few minutes later, he found other firefighters busy loading spare hose and other gear into the back of Turpin’s pickup.

“You got here just in time,” the logger told him. “We’re just about loaded. We just had a call from the sheriff, and they’re about ready for us over there. Lend a hand with the hose.”

McGuinness threw his pack into the pickup, then headed for the hose rack at the back of the fire hall. “They hear anything from Warsaw?” he yelled at Turpin.

“Last I heard they were still up to their asses in it. Walsenberg’s trying to get there through the forest, and they’re having a hell of a time.”

The logger looked around the fire hall and couldn’t see any other useful equipment, then counted noses to see how many men were still in the building: seven. “Well, I guess that’s about it,” he called. “About four of you guys are going to have to ride in back on top of all this stuff. Let’s get our butts in gear.”

With Track One finally cleared, Bud powered Plow Extra One toward the engine shed. The Burlington’s horn sounded; inside, Ed Sloat hit the switch for the overhead door, and Bud ran the engines inside. The submariner-cum-mechanic-cum-brakeman stood ready to close the door, but Bud leaned out of the cab and yelled at him, “Hold the door, we’re going out again right away.”

The mechanic pointed at the plow and shook his head over the noise of the idling engines in the enclosed space of the engine shed. Bud brought the two Geeps to a stop, and Sloat ran down the apron toward him while Penny turned to the task of opening the coupling between the two engines and disconnecting the control lines.

Bud shut the Burlington down, leaving the Rock idling, with the plow pointed toward the door. He got out of the cab to meet the mechanic, who asked, “What the hell did you do to the plow?”

To be honest, Bud hadn’t even thought about looking at the plow since the attempt to move the hopper cars, but he wasn’t anxious to let his overprotective chief mechanic in on that little secret. “Scorched it a bit, didn’t we?” he replied in as neutral a tone as he could manage.

“You sure as hell did! What the hell did you guys do, take a blowtorch to it?” The two of them walked up to inspect the damage.

“Damn near,” Bud admitted, shaking his head at the sight. “Tried to move some burning hopper cars with it.” They reached a point where he could see the front of the big plow. The blade was blackened with smoke, and the paint was scorched here and there. There were spots of scorched paint on the cupola, too, but the wood and glass were intact.

“Wow,” Bud said, surveying the damage. “It must have been hotter in there than I thought.” He looked back at the blue Rock, which was now smoke-blackened, too. He and Penny HAD been right in the thick of the fire a few hours earlier.

“You sure raised hell with it,” Sloat said, disapproving.

“Couldn’t be helped.”

Sloat was unmollified. “We’ve got to check it over good before you use it again.”

“Don’t have the time,” Bud protested. “We’ve got to use it again in a few minutes. We just pulled in here to drop off the Burlington. Don’t know if Betty told you, but something electrical crapped out on it.”

“Look, Bud, there’s no way I can have this engine and plow ready to go right away. If you got that deep into a fire, there’s a bunch of things that have got to be checked over.”

“Like I said,” Bud retorted. “We don’t have the time. Tell you what: I have to go over to the office for a few minutes. You and John do the best you can. Check the journal boxes on the plow. Hot as it was, they might have burnt a bit. Check the light on the plow, and then work on anything else you think might need help, but don’t take over fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“Fifteen or twenty minutes, hell,” Sloat snorted in his best CPO-disapproving-of-an-ensign manner. “It’ll take us that long to get started.”

“Well, get started, then,” Bud told him. “I’ll fill you in on the Burlington when I get back from the office.”

Instead of going directly to the office, Bud strode through the old building to the nearby loading ramp. The loading was finally getting started; one of the county plows was going down the line of empties under Tefke’s guidance. Harry Masterfield was guiding the next rig, an ambulance, up the ramp. With that one starting down the line of cars, Bud went over to talk to him.

It was bitterly cold out in the blowing snow, but they got their conversation in while walking up the line of empty flats, Masterfield all the while giving the driver hand signals to guide him up the narrow flats. “It’s going to be a cold, windy ride up there,” Bud told the fire chief. “Make sure your people are inside truck cabs or something.”

“Will do,” Masterfield shouted over the noise of the wind.

“It’s gonna be a rough ride, too. I want everybody sitting down where they can hang on to something. If it gets too crowded, there’ll be room in the caboose. When you get everything loaded, give me a call somehow or another, and I’ll give three blasts on the horn. Then, everybody’s got two minutes to get settled, and then we’ll get going.”

“Sounds good. You’re planning on making another run after this one, aren’t you?”

“I’m about going to have to if I want to keep the line open.”

“Good,” the fire chief replied. “I heard Albany River on the radio a couple minutes ago. The plow truck hasn’t gotten to them yet, so they can’t get here for an hour, at least, probably more. I hate to have you wait that long. They’ve been waiting long enough for us in Warsaw as it is.”

“When you’re tied down,” Bud agreed, “we’ll leave. Don’t load the three flats at the ramp; we’ll leave them here.”

The loading was going about as well as could be expected, and the walk up the line of flatcars had left Bud opposite the office. He got off the flatcars and floundered through the snow across the intervening two tracks to the office, where he headed directly for the coffee pot.

“Betty, this one trip isn’t going to do it,” he said as he filled his cup, then collapsed into a chair. “Upton and Masterfield are going to want me to keep the line open, and there’s no way to do it unless we keep at it. There’s going to be more fire departments coming. If they’re going for Albany River, then Blair isn’t that much farther off.”

“How long are you going to have to keep it up?”

“Until it’s over, or until the storm quits,” Bud replied, sipping his coffee. “I’m sure we’re going to have to make another run after this one, for Albany River if for nothing else. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have to make more after that. This could go on for days. With the wind blowing the way it is, the equipment they’ve got up there isn’t going to get that fire out overnight. Those hopper cars could keep going for days by themselves, even if they don’t let the fire get away from them.”

“Is it that bad?” Betty worried.

“It’s that bad. And it could get worse. If that fire gets to the main plant, they could lose the whole town. They’ve got damn little to stop it with.”

The accountant searched for words, but there wasn’t much that could be said about that news.

After a moment of silence, Bud went on, “We’ve got to have someone here all the time to keep things organized on this end and keep up with what’s going on. You’ve about got to be the one. Will staying here be too much trouble for you? I’ll get Kate in here to spell you when nothing much is going on. She won’t particularly like it, but she’ll do it.”

Kate was Bud’s wife. There was no real secret that there wasn’t much of a marriage left between the two anymore. It was dying, mostly from a mutual lack of interest; only habit and inertia kept the two together.

“That’ll help a lot,” Betty agreed. “Of course, I’ll stay. I haven’t got anything to do at home in this weather, anyway.”

“Good,” Bud replied, and reached for the phone to call his wife.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to be late again,” she complained as soon as she heard his voice.

“Doesn’t look like I’ll make it home at all tonight. We’ve got big trouble.” Bud took a deep breath and explained what was happening. “We’re going to keep the office open all night, and I need you here to spell Betty.”

“Well, I suppose,” Kate replied, “But I was going to make a meat loaf tonight.”

Bud wanted to tell her what to do with the meat loaf, but thought better of it. “OK, great,” he said. “As soon as we get the train loaded, I’ll send Roger over with the pickup. Bring the sleeping bags and cots, the camp stove, some canned food, and anything else you can think of that might be useful. This could be a long siege in this weather.”

Kate could be snotty – Bud knew that all too well – but that didn’t affect her ability to cope with problems. Living out of the office for the next few days wouldn’t be any trouble now; that much could be depended upon to go smoothly. He’d hear about it later, of course, but that would be later. He’d worry about later when it came.

Bud put down the phone and turned back to his accountant. “You and Kate are going to have to keep a handle on things,” he said. “Feel free to call me when I’m in range if you have questions or problems, but keep things going when they have to.”

“I’m not used to running things, Bud,” Betty protested. “You usually run everything. But I’ll try to get along.”

“Can’t ask for much more than that.” Bud got up, drew another cup of coffee, then went to the office VHF radio and called the Milwaukee. “Walt, did I tell you we’re taking you and the 202 with us this trip?” he asked into the microphone.

Walt’s voice rasped back from the speaker. “Not in so many words, but I figured as much.”

“Would Fred mind going?”

“Naw, Jerusalem Paper owes the bank money sideways. He’s been worried about what’s going on up there every time he’s been in the cab. He can worry better when he’s seen what’s going on.”

One wisecrack deserved another, and it felt good to break the tension, besides. “I’ll tell him you said that. You didn’t really need a mortgage on your house, anyway.” That would even them up; now, Bud got serious. “Where you at?”

“On Two, right next to where they’re loading.”

“How are they coming?”

“About half loaded. Roger’s got the first couple loads tied down. Fred’s out helping him.”

“Good enough,” Bud replied. “I didn’t notice which way the Milwaukee is headed, but we’ll want the apron blade pointed westward when we leave. We’ll go straight out, so turn it around if you need to.”

“It already is,” Walt told him. “Look, unless you think you’re gonna need me, I’ll slide over to the consist and couple up, then get out and help Roger with the tie downs.”

“Shouldn’t need you,” Bud said into the microphone. “I’m leaving now. If you need me, I’ll be around the loading ramp somewhere or in the engine shed.”

Bud hung up the microphone and set down his coffee cup, telling Betty that it would be three to four hours before he could expect to be back.

“Take it easy on Walt if you can,” she warned him.

“Oh? Anything the matter?”

“He’s got the flu so bad he can hardly stand up,” she warned. “He’s putting on a brave front, but I can see he’s not well.”

“Boy, I couldn’t tell, but I’ve only talked to him on the radio.” Bud said. “I’ll try not to push him.” With that, he zipped up his coat and disappeared into the blowing snow.

In spite of the storm with its attending high winds, the Warsaw Fire Department had been able to hold the line so far. It had been a battle much like one of the battlefields of old, where a stubborn defense had managed to hold off an aggressive enemy that pressed them hard at the center and both flanks.

At Linder’s center, the battle for the hopper cars had been lost with Plow Extra One’s failure. Though he wasn’t likely to lose more ground there, the toxic gases that poured out of the fertilizer-loaded cars made the battle on either flank that much harder.

One tanker and one desperately undermanned pumper were keeping the spread of the fire at a standstill in the paper storage warehouse. If the long expected reserves ever arrived from Walsenberg or Spearfish Lake, it might still be possible to win. Shed 1 was a total loss, of course, but a victory would mean keeping the fire out of the warehouses to the south and keeping some vagrant spark or another from setting the main plant afire.

Since shortly after the fire had been discovered, a team of Jerusalem Paper employees had been striving mightily to empty the warehouse to the immediate south of the fire, Shed 2. The railroad had hauled a huge load of boxcars from this warehouse a couple days before, so it was now partially empty; and a scurrying army of fork trucks and rushing workers toiled to remove the remaining toilet paper to Shed 4, still farther south. The heat in the warehouse was uncomfortable from its steel doors being baked by the fire next door, and the north end of the building would never be the same, but by mid-afternoon, the rest of the warehouses were safe: there was nothing left that could burn in Shed 2.

Shed 1 was still dangerous. It was steel, the only thing that the firefighters had going for them. The heat inside was hellish, but the steel walls and roof kept sparks from getting loose and causing disaster. Eventually the steel building could be expected to give way, and what was now a relatively safe area could turn into a deadly hole in Linder’s line through which fire could pour unchecked.

When that happened, and it seemed bound to happen sooner or later, only quick action and the fire guards patrolling the main plant could keep fire from getting established there. With the high winds, when it did happen, Linder couldn’t see that there was any way to stop the fire in the plant short of a total loss.

For the moment, however, the south end of the line was safe. Danger lay on the north, where Linder’s was losing ground through the pulp storage yards.

There, Warsaw’s remaining pumper and tanker fought hand in hand with the grass truck (a four-wheel-drive pickup specially rigged to fight grass and forest fires off roads). The battle wasn’t going well. The dry pulpwood, thickly stacked around the four storage yards, burned fast and hot. At the beginning, the fire was only in a small part of Yard 3, the southeastern most of the pulp storage yards, but with the forces at hand Linder could see no way of stopping it there. If the fire got into Yard 4, to the west, there would be no hope of stopping it there, either. The next line of defense to the west was Winter Street – and on the west side of Winter Street was residential housing.

The hope all afternoon was to contain the fire to Yard 3, no easy task with the dry pulpwood throwing embers up into the sky for the wind to blow into Yard 4. Here, the storm helped almost as much as it hurt, for the piles of wood in Yard 4 were thickly covered in snow. A lucky ember could set the yard alight, but the snow might buy time.

While there was still time, more Jerusalem Paper employees and other volunteers tried to widen the firebreak between Yards 3 and 4, and between those yards and the other two to the north. This involved moving tons upon tons of logs with a limited number of fork trucks and other handling equipment, aided to some extent by Kuralt and his Cat.

By midafternoon, this effort had been partly successful. Yards 1 and 2 were safe behind wide firebreaks, and the southern edges of the woodpile had been heavily piled with snow. Linder had gambled here; he borrowed the frontloader from Northern Fertilizer where it was desperately needed to move the explosive ammonium nitrate, to load the two available dump trucks with snow. If he could hold the fire where it was, maybe the fertilizer wouldn’t have to be moved. If he couldn’t hold . . . he didn’t like to think about what could happen.

Warsaw had begun to receive some assistance, feeble though it was. All but six men from the tiny Hoselton fire department, ten miles to the east and on the other side of the river, were fighting alongside the Warsaw men. The two departments had responded to any number of fire calls over the years, and now Hoselton’s firemen were not about to let their Warsaw brothers down. The Hoselton chief, Wally Borck, led the majority of the department up the railroad grade on snowmobiles, dragging what equipment they could on sleds. The remaining six men started for Spearfish Lake with the pumper and the tanker, taking the only two blade-equipped four wheel drive pickups in town to try and clear the road for the fire equipment, and to get each other unstuck.

As the afternoon wore on, borrowing the frontloader had begun to increasingly look like a bad bet. The west side of Yard 3 was now fully engulfed in flames, and it was nearly impossible for men to work in the firebreak downwind of the yard, and then only under the protection of other hoses. About all Linder could do was to pull his units back and put them to soaking the windward side of Yard 4 at a distance.

The heat that was coming off Yard 3 was melting the snow and drying out the stacked pulpwood, and Linder felt sure that only a miracle could keep Yard 4 from going. While Linder’s tired men had been able to pull off several miracles already, he was more and more afraid that this one would be beyond them.

The hours flew by that afternoon. It seemed to Linder that it couldn’t have been more than minutes between the time that Ellsberg and his two engines failed to move the burning hopper cars and the decision to evacuate the firebreak between Yards 3 and 4, but at some point he realized the time and began to ask himself, “Where the hell are they?”

They were on their way.

Since the Milwaukee didn’t have the remote control equipment necessary to mate up with the Rock, there had to be an engineer in each unit. Again, the Rock was right behind the plow, with John Penny once again riding in the charred, stinking cab of the plow, staring out to see what he could in the thick blowing snow.

A few feet below and behind Penny, Bud had an unaccustomed passenger. As they had finally gotten going, Harry Masterfield had showed up at the last possible instant with the promised hamburgers, but in the turmoil of backing the rescue consist off of Track Three and moving it to One, taking the still-loaded part of the piggyback consist off Two and putting it up to the loading ramp, then hooking up with the rescue train again, the hamburgers had gotten thoroughly cold.

Bud, at least, didn’t have to stare into the flying snow as he munched on the cold, greasy food. Right now, he wasn’t noticing the food much, anyway. Mostly, he was wishing that he had the Burlington with him. The engine lashup now in use had plenty of power, but it took two engineers to run, and two were all that were available. If the whole Geep set had been working, Walt could relieve him once in a while. Now, both of them would be necessary on each trip, and they were going to get tired in a hurry. Bud and John weren’t running illegally yet, but they would be soon enough. The hours-of-service limit was going to have to be ignored, this time, and if the Interstate Commerce Commission ever heard about it, it was just going to be tough.

They would make do with the Milwaukee this trip, anyway. Sloat was busy with the Burlington, and there was some chance it could be ready for the next trip. Sloat was throwing tarps along the engine’s platforms and throwing the heat of all the kerosene heaters Tefke could scrounge on the traction motors. It might just help.

Bud wadded up the greasy bit of wax paper and threw it into the corner of the cab. “Thanks, Harry,” he told the fire chief.

Penny’s voice came over the VHF: “Here’s a big one.” Bud didn’t answer. Plow Extra One was moving well, but he thought it best to add a little extra power to hit the drift with; he was trying to keep the ride as smooth as possible for the sake of the people and equipment behind, but since the track was already drifting over, in spite of the train’s passage only a couple of hours before, it wasn’t easy.

The Rock jolted and slowed as the plow hit the drift, but then the engine’s increasing power carried them through. “Wasn’t that bad,” Bud mumbled.

“Wonder how my guys back there are getting along?” Masterfield said to no one in particular.

It was dark in the cab of the pickup. After the first couple of jolts, Rod Turpin had gotten wise and fastened his safety belt. Nothing much after that in the way of the train jerking around bothered him. He had left the engine running so that the heater would be going, and once in a while he turned the windshield wipers on so that he could see out, not that there was much to see outside in the blowing snow. Once in a while, as the train went around a curve, he could see the plow throwing snow up ahead, but that was about it.

What was strangest was to be sitting in the truck’s cab, moving through the storm and bouncing all over the place – and just be sitting there, with the gearshift in neutral and the wheel just sitting, unattended. In some indescribable way, the movement of the pickup was different than it would have been on a road, and that didn’t help the logger’s faint unease.

The two firemen in the cab of the pickup with him were silent. There wasn’t much desire on anybody’s part to talk. Mostly, they were trying to rest up for what they knew might be a rough time ahead. Someone turned on the truck’s radio, and they listened to music and a few commercials before there was a weather report. Snow and strong winds were expected to last for at least another day, with the winds possibly shifting somewhat more northerly.

“Turn that sonuvabitch off,” Turpin growled, then reached out and did it himself. “That’s all I need to hear. I’ve had just about enough snow to last me forever.”

The flatcar jolted again. Turpin wondered to himself why he hadn’t ridden in the caboose with McGuinness.

The atmosphere in the way car was a lot lighter. The car was something of a bunkhouse on wheels, and there were bunks and seats and tables, a gas stove and a refrigerator, and an oil stove for heat. Intended as a home away from home for the track gang, and thus kept in a fairly decent shape, the way car was now host to a far-from-glum group of firemen, ambulance men, nurses, hospital attendants, and two directors from the Spearfish Lake hospital. The hospital had stripped its staff and some of its portable equipment, with the idea of opening a temporary branch at the Warsaw school.

Perhaps it was the forced gaity, or perhaps the excitement of heading for an out-of-the-ordinary adventure, but as the way car rocked and rolled up the snow-covered track, a radio blasted out rock and roll to fit. Only a shortage of bottles kept it from being the site of a good party.

McGuinness was having a ball. In the tax season, tax accountants are usually a pretty glum group at best, but the prospect of a few days released from a dull, never-ending sea of government-inspired paperwork perked him up as much as anyone else in the caboose. Now that the idea had taken hold, a few days of desperate firefighting was a welcomed vacation.

It surely wasn’t a welcomed vacation in Warsaw, but for the moment Linder felt a little of the pressure off of him. The fire in the paper warehouse was more or less under control, at least for now, and the fire lane between Yards 3 and 4 still seemed to be holding. By now, it was well after dark, and he felt the need to see what was going on in the threatened areas downwind of the fire.

Linder rode his snowmobile over to the fertilizer plant, which was far from being out of danger, even though the danger seemed a bit remote. Now that the front loader had been returned to the plant, it was busy loading ammonium nitrate into the plant’s spreader carts. As soon as a truck became available, the carts were towed to the emergency chemical dump south of town.

“How’s it going, Chip?” Linder asked the harried plant manager.

“We’re getting ’em loaded pretty good, but we’re running out of carts. Two more to go, and that’ll make about twenty-four tons. We haven’t been weighing ’em as they leave, we’ve just loaded ’em to the brim.” The plant manager moved out of the way of the front loader as it raced past him with another half-ton scoopload.

“That makes fifty tons or so to go?”

“Right.”

“You got any idea of what can be done about it?”

“I’ve got one idea,” Halsey replied, yelling over the noise of the front loader. “I don’t know if it’s a good one. Our bins are pretty full, but I can clean all of the ammonium out of its bin and pile it on the floor over by the south door. Then, once it’s out of there, we can unload phosphate from those hopper cars out back. With our elevators, it’ll take maybe three hours per car. Then, we move the elevator over to the south end of the building and load the empty cars with the ammonium. Fifty tons, that’s three hours per car again, and it’ll take two cars with a few tons to spare.”

Linder wasn’t thrilled. “That’s twelve hours. You’re saying early morning, at least. Can’t we just haul it out to the chemical dump and dump it on the ground?”

“Could, but it won’t take any less time, and then we’ve got the pollution to worry about afterwards. This is evil stuff.”

Twelve hours, Linder wondered. Would the line hold that long? While he was wondering, Halsey went on, “We’d be halfway through with it by now if you hadn’t stolen our front loader this afternoon.”

“Yeah,” Linder said slowly, his thought still gelling. “But it might have bought us twelve hours now. I can’t think of anything better, and you know more about what you’ve got than I do.”

“We’ll get on with it,” Halsey replied, glancing at the bin of ammonium nitrate. “Just one thing. The siding is full. Do you think you can get your guy with the bulldozer over here to move a couple of those cars? We’ve got to shuffle cars a bit, or it won’t work at all.”

“I’ll send him over right away,” Linder agreed. “When the train gets back up here, and they ought to be here any time, I’ll have them come over and get all the cars you’re not working out of the way. Have him take ’em down to Spearfish Lake or Hoselton or somewhere.”

With that worrisome discussion over with, Linder decided that he’d best look in on the evacuees at the school. They’d be worried too, and they wouldn’t be getting that much news. Besides, he ought to keep track on how they were getting along. He headed down Main Street on his snowmobile, happy with the stray thought that for once the village cops wouldn’t be mad at having snowmobiles on the streets.

On the way to the school he stopped at the C&SL crossing for a moment and looked off to the west, wondering where the relief train was. It was way overdue. Ellsberg had said maybe three hours; it was now over four, and no sign of them yet. Perhaps the snow had drifted up the tracks more than they had expected, but with that big plow, the amount of drifting that could have taken place couldn’t have stopped them.

Still, the fire chief turned his snowmobile to face down the track, to try and get a feeling for the amount of drifting that had happened. The tracks lay east and west here, and with the snow crossing them at a slight angle, he couldn’t tell much about snow accumulation in the gathering darkness of this windswept late afternoon.

Linder was back on his snowmobile and away from the tracks before he put together the pieces. When he had been talking with Ellsberg at the crossing earlier, the snow had been blowing straight down the tracks. It wasn’t doing that any longer as the wind had shifted. And it had shifted toward the northeast. That was a new ball game.

Fred Linder knew he’d have to see what was going on at the school. And then, he’d have to make up his mind.

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