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

Chapter 11

0510 1/9/1981 – 0823 1/9/1981:
C&SL Snowplow Extra One

Marshall himself had discovered the fire. He had been roaming the upper floors of the plant on his ceaseless, worried vigil. In the northern stretches of the plant, the air was filled with smoke from the burning hopper cars, but in the extreme northwestern part, the air seemed warmer and smokier than elsewhere. Really worried now, he investigated further; sure enough, a section of the roof was burning.

The plant supervisor ran to the nearest in-plant fire alarm and yanked it, then ran from there to a telephone, where he called the main office. Then, still rushing, he went down the stairs to see how bad the damage was.

Had the arsonist struck again?

Once outside, Marshall could see that his fear was silly. The wind had shifted enough to have picked up a still-burning brand from the pulpwood yard and deposited it on the rooftop.

Someone in the office relayed the call to the Warsaw fire hall, and the fireman on duty there had put the call on the air. Within seconds, Linder’s voice echoed through radio speakers all across the town: “Warsaw and Albany River, take up and assist Walsenberg at the northeast corner of the paper plant.”

The fireman on radio duty at the fire hall in Warsaw corrected him. “It’s the northwest, repeat northwest corner, Fred.”

“Northwest? What the hell is it doing burning over there? Are you sure?”

Joe McGuinness from Spearfish Lake happened to be driving the department’s utility truck back from the rest train when he heard the exchange. He was trying to take the short way through the smoke cloud, perhaps not too bright a move, but he happened to be right at the northwest corner of the plant. He quickly radioed, “This is Spearfish Lake C-22. Confirm roof fire, small in extent, on the northwest, repeat northwest corner of the plant.”

“Roger,” Linder replied. “Warsaw and Albany River to the northwest corner of the plant. Spearfish Lake C-1, do you think you can get any hoses on it from your south yard fire pumper?”

“It’s kind of far,” Harry Masterfield replied from his command post on the north side of the yard, trying to visualize the situation of his rural pumper on the south side. “We can try.”

“C-1, this is C-22,” McGuinness shouted into the utility truck’s microphone. “Have them run a two-and-a-half out to the end and point it toward the plant. I’ll be your forward observer.”

A minute or so later, four Spearfish Lake firemen were pointing a two-and-a-half-inch thick stick of water into the smoke cloud. As soon as it crashed to the ground not far from the accountant, he reported, “Short and left.”

A few seconds later the hose stream moved to the right. “Still short, bearing good,” he reported to the firemen directing the hose stream, but who couldn’t see where they were pointing the hose through the smoke and the storm.

“We’re at maximum elevation,” Rod Turpin reported over his portable radio from the head of the hose.

“Raise it anyway,” the accountant suggested. “Maybe the wind will carry it farther.”

Somewhat more raggedly, the stream of water began to hit the side of the building.

“Better,” McGuinness reported. “Try some more.”

The stream became more ragged still, but moved no closer to the fire. “No good,” McGuinness reported. “We’re still about thirty yards short.”

“This is C-1. Better knock it off,” Masterfield ordered. “A Warsaw truck just left here. They ought to be over to your location in a minute or so. We’d better get that hose line back over to the firebreak.”

Fred Linder roared up on his snowmobile as one of the two Warsaw pumpers arrived from the other direction, and for the first time he had a good look at the fire. It was still small; a single hole had been burned in the roof. But Linder knew well enough that in a building as old and dry as the paper plant, looks could be deceiving. The fire could have gotten well into the structure of the building in the time it had taken to discover it and get the first trucks to it. Still, the fire was on the downwind side of the plant, so it wouldn’t be carried by the wind. The firemen still had a chance to save the building, and, for the Warsaw firemen, their jobs as well.

The standard procedure for fighting a fire in a building like this is simple: get on top of it and hit it hard. There wasn’t much any of the departments could do about getting on top of it, since none of them had a snorkel truck with a cherry-picker lift to get a hose line up in the air, but when Linder saw the Northern Electrical Co-op truck head toward the plant, he had an idea. As soon as power to the plant had been cut off, he commandeered the company’s cherry-picker truck, took two firemen and a two-and-a-half-inch hose line and put them in the truck’s bucket. It took a few minutes, but they were on top of the fire.

Soon, nine of the two-and-a-half-inch hoses were playing on the fire. “Don’t screw around with the little stuff,” Linder told his men, and now they were hitting it hard. He could afford to feel a little bit more relieved. The fire hadn’t gotten away from them.

Linder’s attention was diverted by Cliff Sprague, calling from the other side of the plant: “What’s happening to all our water?”

Over his portable radio, Linder replied, “What’s happening, Cliff?”

“We’re not getting water! We’re pumping it out faster than we’re getting it. Our tanks are dropping fast.”

Linder knew instantly what the problem was. “We’re all on the same main,” he told Sprague.

Up to this point, there had never been more than four of the four-inch feeder hoses, plus smaller lines, working off of the single twelve-inch water main that serviced hydrants on both sides of the plant. Now there were seven: two each from Warsaw, Walsenberg, and Albany River, and one from Spearfish Lake. All were trying to pull off of the same main. Walsenberg, at the end of the line, had little left to pump.

“Albany River, shut down your pumpers,” Linder ordered, giving himself time to think. The major fire mains in town went down the east-west streets. The north-side yard fire pumper was pulling off the Second Street Main. Everybody else was on the Third Street main, which ran past the end of the street to the far end of the plant.

“That’s better,” Sprague reported from the far end of the plant. It may have been better for Walsenberg, but now Albany River had no water. Support them with tankers? That would be better, but not good enough. Linder wanted the fire hit as hard as it could be.

“Spearfish Lake,” he ordered, “Shut down your south-side pumper from the hydrant. Run it off tankers. Tankers can fill at the Second Street hydrants. Albany River, you can restart one pumper.”

That was better, but Albany River still had a quiet truck, and the Second Street fire main still had water. Linder mentally juggled assignments for a moment and then got on the radio, “We have to set up a support line from the Second Street main. Warsaw, Albany River, and Spearfish Lake, use the booster pumps on your grass trucks. Run it from the Second and Winter Street hydrant. Albany River tankers, support your pumper. That support line is only going to be two-and-a-half-inch, so you’ll have to keep it full.”

There had to be booster pumps every few hundred feet to keep the pressure up at the engines; pumpers use a LOT of water at high pressure. What else could be done?

Linder thought for a moment, then spoke into the radio again. “Somebody over at the train, find Jim Horton and have him get over to the pump house and see if there’s any way he can pump up the line pressure. Walsenberg, your grass truck has a four-inch booster, doesn’t it?”

“Right.”

“There’s a hydrant down on Railroad Street, by the corner of Shed 4. Is your south-side pumper close enough to it for a booster line with your grass truck?

“Won’t reach,” Sprague reported.

“Dig it out and lay the hose out in reserve,” Linder ordered. “If we need it, we can send you a tanker with a booster pump.”

“Will do,” came the word from the Walsenberg chief.

Linder turned to Fred Rumsey, the proud father who had returned from Spearfish Lake on the last train. “Get a couple more inch and a halfs and some people and get up inside the plant. Get them on the fire. You get back out here. I need to know how things are going in there.”

“It’s getting pretty thick in there,” Rumsey replied. “Mr. Marshall was just out here. He wanted me to tell you that all the patrols are out of the plant and he’s counted noses. The smoke was getting to be too much for the gas masks.”

Plow Extra One was just climbing up out of the Spearfish River valley onto the Hoselton flats. The Rock was running through the cloud of snow that the plow was putting up, and in the darkness, Bud could hardly see a thing. He couldn’t help but wonder how Ed was getting along up in the plow’s cupola. Easy enough to find out; he called him on the VHF.

“I can’t see a bloody thing up here,” Sloat replied. “I don’t know how John did.”

“I guess he more felt things than saw them.”

Sloat yawned. “Wonder how things are going in Warsaw?”

“Probably about the same as always,” Bud replied. “Fred Linder seemed to be holding the line the last two times we were up there.”

As Linder had suspected, the fire in the paper plant had spread from the roof to inside the plant, in spite of the best efforts of two departments. For the moment, they seemed to be holding it. The yard fire seemed to be no worse than ever, although the hectic tanker movements to the rural pumper on the south side of the yard fire didn’t show this. Over on the west side of the plant, though, things were getting worse. Sprague’s voice on the radio gave Fred Linder the first notice: “I think the shed roof is starting to go.”

“I’d better come over and have a look,” Linder told the smoke-blackened Fred Rumsey. “Tell what’s-his-name from Albany River to keep an eye on the store. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

But then, Linder had second thoughts and decided to talk to the Albany River chief for himself. By the time he got to the east side of the paper plant the shed roof had already gone. Walsenberg was pouring water onto the roaring flames like mad. “You should have been here,” Sprague told him. “When that roof went, it went all at once. We had a regular volcano here for a minute.”

Linder surveyed the scene. Virtually all of the Walsenberg hose lines were playing onto the shed fire. “Jesus, Cliff,” Linder warned, “Don’t forget to protect the exposure you’ve got on the main plant.”

“We get this fire knocked down, we’ll have it protected permanently,” the Walsenberg man replied.

That wasn’t Linder’s idea of covering the exposure; with all the sparks in the air, a wet plant wall would have much less chance for a vagrant spark to take hold. With all the ice that had collected on the side of the plant over the last few hours, the wall should be almost fireproof, but still, “How about throwing a couple of lines onto the east side of that place?”

“You said you were going to send Albany River to do that,” Sprague snapped.

“That was before we had a fire in the other end of the plant,” Linder replied, trying to keep things calm as he turned to study the east side of the plant.

Was that a wisp of smoke he saw on the shingles?

“It’s burning now,” he yelled at Sprague. “Get your big stuff on that right now, and don’t give me any shit. I’ll get Albany River over here.”

Sprague wanted to snap out an angry reply, but he reconsidered. He could see that Linder was really pissed. He began to order his men to face the rear of the line they had been holding.

Linder grabbed his portable radio. “Albany River, take up again,” he ordered. “We’ve got fire on the windward side, now. I want one pumper on the south side of Walsenberg between the plant and the shed, hooked into that booster line from the Walsenberg grass truck. The other pumper, I want on the north side of the plant near the east end. That one can use the Third Street main. Grass trucks, except Walsenberg, break up the support line and support Warsaw on the northwest corner. Tankers, support the grass trucks and the south Spearfish Lake pumper. Everybody hurry! Walsenberg’s shorthanded!”

It took Albany River longer than Linder would have hoped to get set up on the northeast corner of the plant. It was the department’s second move in a little less than an hour, and things were getting confused. With hose lines spread all over and men scattered here and there, it wasn’t surprising. In the meantime, about all that the Walsenberg crew under their surly chief could do was to hit the outside of the building with two-and-a-half-inch hoses and try to penetrate the building with smaller lines.

A radio call from Linder eased the manpower situation somewhat; he had Masterfield send the truckless Hoselton department and a dozen of his own men to reinforce the thinned-out Walsenberg manpower, and, since he couldn’t trust Sprague any longer, told Hoselton’s Wally Borck over the radio, so everyone could hear, that he was in charge on the east side.

It wasn’t enough. At a time when seconds counted, it understandably took minutes to respond to Linder’s desperate call and start putting water on the now-developed fire, but once they were set up, Albany River fought stubbornly.

At the other side of the plant, Warsaw and the grass trucks fought alone. Before Albany River had departed, they had been gaining on the fire. Perhaps another half an hour or so might have made the difference. They now fought to hold the line, to hope that the damage to the west side of the plant wouldn’t be too great if the other departments could do any good on the east side.

There was not a person in town who did not know what that plant meant to Warsaw, and now even the cooks on the now-empty rest train left their stoves to watch what was clearly the town’s life and death struggle. Over on the north side of the yard fire, Harry Masterfield felt helpless. He was fully engaged with the yard fire, but maybe he had a little reserve. He told Linder on the radio, “I can maybe break free a couple tankers for you, Fred, and a few more hands.”

“I don’t need the tankers just now,” Linder replied. “Hands would be welcome. Send all you can spare.”

Masterfield had already sent the Hoselton department and a half-dozen hands of his own, but now he sent ten more firemen to back up Warsaw. He now had just one half-strength department to do the work three had been doing an hour earlier.

Conditions were wild down in the lot between the main plant and the warehouse. It was filled with shouting men, roaring pumpers and shrieking hoses. The air was filled with an ice fog that settled on everything and instantly hardened. Ice was all over everywhere, and it was almost impossible to see anything in the whiteout of water fog and darkness and flying snow and the still-pungent smoke from the burning fertilizer cars.

The last may have well been the worst. The Albany River crews were now in the thick of the fertilizer smoke, near the source, where it was worst. They were already using their reserve supplies of air. Cliff Sprague had deadlined the compressor on his grass truck a couple of hours before, and whatever headway the straining air compressors in the Warsaw fire hall had made was almost instantly depleted. Despite the icing and the difficulty of working in the Army gas masks, Linder had to dictate that only they be used outside the plant, to husband the limited supply of compressed air for inside the plant.

Joe McGuinness was working a Walsenberg one-and-a-half-inch line inside the plant behind Rod Turpin, when the logger suddenly staggered and fell to the floor. The accountant gained control of the lashing hose and yelled, “Man down!”

A couple of Albany River firemen dragged Turpin’s inert form out of the building and called for an ambulance. The ambulance took Turpin out of the smoke cloud and stopped to work on him.

Linder rode up on his snowmobile and yelled, “Did he have an air pack on?”

“Yeah, this one here,” one of the ambulance attendants replied, pointing to the air bottle and mask lying on the floor of the ambulance. On it, Linder could read WALSENBERG V F D. Without saying a word, he stormed off to see Sprague.

“I thought you valved off all those polluted air packs!”

“Goddamn it, we did,” the Walsenberg chief yelled back.

“Well, one of those valved-off tanks just got a Spearfish Lake guy!” Linder tuned on his heel and left. Mostly, he wanted to punch out the Walsenberg chief, but that could wait for later. Right now, he needed his equipment and people too bad.

Assuming that they didn’t kill someone.

Even in his four-wheel drive pickup, it was a tough slog for Jim Horton to make it over to the town pumping station, next to the fire station and the water tower. Jim suspected that this was a pointless errand, anyway.

Warsaw had three main pumps in the pumping station. Two were fairly new – they had only been installed ten years or so ago – and normally, only one was in use at a time. If the level of the water tower dropped too low, an automatic switch kicked the second one in.

The third pump had about one and a half times the capacity of one of the other ones, but it was maybe seventy years old. For many years, it had been the town’s only pump, but now it had been retired to standby duty, used only in case of maintenance of one of the other two pumps. Horton had driven over to the pumping station to switch on the old pump shortly after Walsenberg’s arrival, when he suspected that the two main pumps wouldn’t be able to keep up with six pumpers.

With the third pump on line, he knew that there wasn’t much else that could be done to increase the water pressure. Perhaps a valve might be opened a bit farther, but that wouldn’t count for much. Still, as hard as the three pumps were working, it wouldn’t hurt to check on them.

He got out of his truck and went over to check the standby generator. It had been powered up hours before, and would automatically kick in to power the pumps and the fire house should the storm knock line power out. The generator was idling gently, and its tank was still nearly full.

It seemed warm inside the pumping station, after having been out in the wind, but with three pumps and their electric motors going hard, it wasn’t very quiet. Horton checked the various valves, and could see that they were all wide open – there was nothing to be accomplished there.

He turned to check the pumps and their motors, although there wasn’t much to look at. The two newer pumps and motors seemed to be running normally, and the older one was humming along, somewhat more loudly – but that was normal too. Still, Horton inspected it somewhat more carefully than the other two, considering its age.

Plastered with fertilizer smoke for a day, Horton wasn’t sure what he was smelling, but something didn’t smell right. Something seemed to be running hot. He began to check more carefully, then almost burned his hand on one bearing cap of the motor.

While trying to cool off, Linder decided that he’d better check on the injured man at the impromptu ambulance-hospital that had sprung up near the standby train. The Spearfish Lake man was still alive, and in no worse shape than any of the men that had been felled by the foul bottled air earlier. “How’s the oxygen holding out?” he asked the doctor.

“We’ve got enough for a while,” the doctor told him, “But I sure hope the train gets in soon. I want to get these guys out of here before they use up all we’ve got.”

“Don’t forget to be sure that they’ve got enough to make it to Spearfish Lake,” Linder told him. “I know they’ve got some in the caboose, but I don’t know how much. Make sure that you have a three-hour supply for each man. More, if possible.”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” the doctor admitted. “If we have to provide the whole supply, that’ll just about clean us out. Can you try and get us some more?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Linder said, heading back into the snowstorm. As he got onto his snowmobile again, he noticed a familiar looking railroad car hooked to the front of the Milwaukee. He looked again, and smiled; at least something was going right. That was a hopper car, and it had to have been one that Kuralt and the crew from the fertilizer plant were trying to fill. Well, it must be full, now.

That was something. He hoped the other one was about full, too.

The VHF crackled, “Bud, do you smell something funny?”

Bud wasn’t prepared to say. The Rock had smelled funny since the morning before, when he had stuck the plow and the front end of the Geep into the hopper car fire, but Ed might not be used to the pungent odor. Bud stuck his head out of the window, and wanted to yank it back in; the speed of the wind and speed of the engine into it almost made his ears want to drop off. Sloat was right; something did smell funny outside, and if Sloat could smell it, it couldn’t be coming from the engine behind him.

Bud looked again as they came to the Hoselton bridge. Here the railroad pointed straight at Warsaw, and the wind was coming straight down the tracks. Once across the bridge, Bud brought the engine to an idle and let the train roll to a stop. Telling Sloat that he’d be back in a minute, Bud stepped down from the engine and went to the caboose directly behind, where a few Lynchburg and Blair firefighters were telling tall stories or taking naps. “One of you guys got a radio to your units?” the engineer asked.

“Sure,” one of the firemen responded. “What’s up?”

“Pass the word. The wind has shifted, and it’s blowing that fertilizer smoke right down the tracks. It’s either air packs or gas masks from here on in.”

“Our air packs are almost all on the trucks.”

Bud looked at his watch. “You’ve got five minutes. I’ll hit the horn in four.”

Linder was at the fertilizer plant when the familiar bellow of the Rock’s air horn pierced the snowstorm. Kuralt was driving the front loader now, and even Halsey admitted that the Cat skinner was better at it than he was. Nevertheless, the caked-up DAP in the second car was moving slowly, and there was still one full bin and most of a second to go. There was no way that this car of ammonium nitrate was going to be leaving this trip.

“See you later,” the fire chief yelled at Halsey. “I’d best go see what they brought this time.” In seconds, Linder’s snowmobile was off again.

Bud had cut off the flatcars by the time Linder was arriving at the loading ramp. As the fire chief rode past the flat cars, it seemed to him that there were more pumpers on the train than one department would have. Closer inspection proved him right: there were two departments! Blair and Lynchburg, neither of them particularly large, but between them, mustering four precious pumpers!

While the flatcars were being backed up to the ramp, Linder did some fast calculating. With his current situation, he really needed the two departments on the north side of the plant, but the departments already committed there were already using all the water available. Their situation was adequate, but just barely. There was a four-inch booster pump on one of the grass trucks, and that would support a pumper from Fourth Street like Albany River was doing, and the grass truck support line could be re-established. Maybe another support line could be run from Fourth Street with a two-and-a-half-inch booster, too, but that pumper would have to have tanker support as well. The fourth pumper would have to get along on tankers.

Linder had met Vern Houghton, the chief of the Blair department, at conventions and other meetings, and saw him standing next to a utility truck on the flatcar. Linder got off the snowmobile and jumped onto the slowly moving train.

“Hi, Fred,” the Blair fire chief called. “You guys really have a mess here, don’t you?”

“Sure do,” Linder replied, getting right down to business. “We’ve got a well-developed fire in the main paper plant. Do you know where the other chief you brought with you is?”

“Right here,” came a voice from behind. “Ron Webb’s the name.”

The Warsaw Chief quickly sketched out the situation and warned the chiefs that masks had to be worn downwind of the hopper cars, “And, for God’s sakes, tell your people not to use ANY Walsenberg air packs. I know the air situation is bad, but now that they’ve pulled the patrols out of the paper plant, we’ve got some gas masks to hand out.”

“Darn shame we had to use some air on the way up here,” Webb commented, and explained the smoke on the tracks.

“Couldn’t be helped,” Linder replied as the train jolted to a stop. The firemen from the two units were already at work removing chains from the fire trucks. “Look, we haven’t got time to screw around,” he went on. “We’ve got a water problem. Vern, you’ve got the four-inch booster on your grass truck, right? I want you on the east side of the plant south of the Albany River pumper. Run a four-inch line to the hydrant that Walsenberg’s grass truck is hooked up to, and run a pumper off of that. The other one is going to have to live off tankers until you can get a support line set up. Webb, I want you on the north side. One of your pumpers is going to have to be on straight tankers, but we can set up a two-and-a-half-inch support line real quick for the other one. That’s the best we can do for right now, but we’ve got a couple tankers we can spare from the yard fire. Maybe that’ll help some. Get a move on. I’ll see you a bit later. I’ve got to talk to the driver of this rig.”

Linder jumped off the flat car, reboarded his snowmobile, and drove it to where the Rock sat idling. “Jesus, Fred, what happened?” Bud asked. “I thought you were getting ahead of this.”

“We were,” the fire chief replied, happy to unload his burden on a non-fireman, non-Warsaw friend. “But that idiot from Walsenberg screwed up. Now, we’re up to our asses in it. Damn glad you brought two departments this time. We can use both of them.”

“Anything we can do for you while we’re here?”

“Not a lot. We’ve got one of the ammonium nitrate cars ready to go, and I’d be happy if you take it with you. I don’t want to keep you around here this trip. We’ve got about half a dozen guys with toxic smoke poisoning that we need to get down to the hospital in Spearfish Lake. They’re living on oxygen, and we haven’t got much to send with you. Three hours is about all we’ve got to send, and when you come back, try to bring all the oxygen you can lay your hands on.”

“They don’t have much in Spearfish Lake. You know about that train we’ve got coming up from Camden. They’re supposed to be bringing some.”

“When are they going to get here?”

“Don’t know. The track south of Spearfish Lake is pretty bad, and they haven’t got that much power. I don’t expect them before dark, if at all.”

Linder shook his head. “We need it sooner than that. Do what you can.”

“What brought on all this toxic smoke poisoning, anyway?”

The fire chief briefly told Bud about the air compressor shortage, and how it had led to disaster from the Walsenberg compressor. “So that’s something else. I need any high pressure, high capacity air compressors you can find. Isn’t there a diving shop down there in Spearfish Lake? They ought to have one. I’ll get Joe Upton to get it for us, and have him yank the one out of the Spearfish Lake fire barn, too. Maybe you can think of something.”

“I’ll try,” Bud said. “Good luck up here, Fred.”

“Good luck to you. Better get a move on. They’ve probably got your caboose loaded by now. You’ve only got three hours to get to Spearfish Lake.”

Linder headed for the door, got on his snowmobile, and charged off to set up the grass truck support line again.

Bud reached for the VHF microphone. “Anybody awake over at the Milwaukee?” he asked.

“I’m here, Bud,” Sloat replied. “Just getting set to tear into this thing.”

“Is Matson there?” Bud asked.

“Nowhere to be seen. He’s probably watching the fire, or corked off in one of those buses back there. Have you seen the setup they’ve got?”

Without Matson around, Bud would have to take Ed back with him this trip. “No,” he replied. “The Milwaukee is going to have to wait for another trip. We’ve got to make a fast trip back.”

Within a few minutes, Plow Extra One had added the hopper car, and was once again on its way toward Spearfish Lake, with Sloat now in the cab and a grimly determined Bud at the throttle. Half a day before, Plow Extra One had hauled nearly five hundred people out of danger. Now, very literally, six lives rode with Bud’s skill.

Lynchburg wasn’t doing well. “We’re just not getting enough water,” Webb told Linder. “We can pump like hell for a couple minutes, but then we’re out of water, and we have to sit and wait for a tanker. The support line is helping, but not much.”

It was a familiar situation to Linder. Every fire they had to fight away from the hydrants was like that; the pumpers could pump faster than the tankers could carry water. The Warsaw department had two tankers for those instances, but at almost every rural fire, tankers were the critical shortage, not pumpers.

“Let me see if I can do something about that,” Linder replied, and called Harry Masterfield at the yard fire. Masterfield was now on the south side of the fire, where the danger seemed greatest, and it seemed to the Spearfish Lake chief that the situation was deteriorating.

It took a few moments to get the Spearfish Lake chief on the radio. “A little while ago, you said you could spring a couple tankers. Do you think you still can?”

There was a long silence. Finally Masterfield replied uncertainly, “I think I can. But if I need them back, I’ll really need them back.”

Shortly after the two fresh departments arrived, Masterfield pulled back most of his own people that had been sent to help out the Walsenberg department. He set several of the returnees to patrolling the rows of pulpwood in Yard 4. Since he didn’t have enough water to keep the yard soaked, the fire had to be fought on a spot basis.

Joe McGuinness was one of the firemen patrolling Yard 4. It was pleasant work, compared to trying to fight the fire inside the east end of the factory building in the midst of all the toxic fumes. Here, the yard was out of the fertilizer smoke, and it was possible to breathe fresh air even with the smoke from Yard 3 blowing overhead.

The accountant was near the middle of the yard when in he spotted smoke billowing from a pile of pulp logs. He ran around a couple piles of logs to get a better look in the low visibility. Sure enough, a pile of logs was fiercely ablaze.

He reported the fire to Harry Masterfield on his portable radio. “We’ll try to run an inch and a half in there from the north side,” the chief told him. “But it’s going to take a few minutes. You want to try that forward observer trick again? We can’t see where you’re talking about from here.”

“Let me back off a ways,” McGuinness replied. “I wouldn’t want to get hit with it. Aim off to the west, and I’ll walk you in on it.”

What had almost worked once almost worked again. The accountant worked the stream of water right onto the fire with a lot of luck, considering that the water was coming crosswind from quite a distance away in the strong wind.

McGuinness hadn’t quite counted on the fickleness of the wind, however. A gust took the water off of the fire, and sent it to the pile of logs where he was standing. He tried to run, but the ice covered logs were no place for it; he crashed to the ground as the water hit him.

Fortunately, the fall only knocked the wind out of him, but it was a couple minutes before he picked himself up and tried to call the chief. But the attempt was useless, for the portable radio he carried would never work again.

By the time the crew with the inch-and-a-half hose reached the fire, it had spread to two adjoining piles.

The fire departments of Warsaw and the other towns had fought the battle for eighteen hours without giving ground. Then, the left flank was pierced when the main plant caught fire, and they gave ground stubbornly. Now, without enough ammunition to win, Harry Masterfield had to hold off the crumbling of the right flank.

Though it might be hours before it would become necessary, it was time to start thinking about holding the line at Winter Street.

Plow Extra One rolled along eastward, with Bud’s heavy hand at the throttle, trying to keep the engine moving as quickly as he dared without exceeding the wind speed. This made for slow going on the first part of the trip, but once the track turned to descend into the Spearfish River swamp, it was effectively crosswind. Bud ripped the Rock down the long, shallow grade and out onto the fill over the swamp a good deal faster than the slow order on that length of track would normally allow. The track here wasn’t in the best of shape, and the Rock pitched and jolted and swayed as it hurried through the storm.

At least now, the blackness of the snow-blown night was turning to gray, and it was about as light as it would get all day, even if Bud couldn’t see much farther in the blowing snow than he had been able to before dawn. The grade out of the valley on the Spearfish Lake side of the swamp was still crosswind, and Bud was rolling right along as Plow Extra One climbed it. Then the track turned southwest across the pine barrens to the north of the lake, and the train was headed downwind again. It was time to reduce power so as not to be going faster than the wind speed.

Bud reached out for the throttle, and backed it off a couple of notches. The train slowed, but the engine roared on just as loudly as ever. The gauges didn’t look too healthy, either.

Bud kicked lightly at Ed, who was dozing on the floor in the corner of the cab. He came to and asked sleepily, “What’s up?”

The engineer replied with some degree of urgency, “I just throttled down, but I don’t think the engine transitioned back. It’s still putting out full power, but the motors aren’t drawing anything like that.”

The mechanic was instantly awake. They could melt down the Rock’s generator in minutes in that condition, and if that were to happen it would be cheaper to buy a new engine. “Drop off another couple of notches and see what happens,” he suggested.

The train speed fell off again, but there was no change from the diesel. Bud was worried. Why trouble now? Of all times, with all the hurry this trip? “Take her back up to where you were before,” the mechanic said, scrabbling around in the cab’s tool box. “Six will get you two it’s a relay.” With that, he went out onto the running board alongside the engine and opened one of the access doors.

In the cab, Bud was relieved to hear the diesel slow down. The gauges on the panel began to look about like they were supposed to. The relief hadn’t fully taken hold of him when Sloat was back in the cab. “Just like I thought,” he said.

“What did you do to it?”

“Standard U.S. Navy fix. Hit it with a hammer.”

Bud noticed the speedometer and the wind blowing past the engine. “We’re still going too fast.”

“Well, throttle her down some more and we’ll see what happens.”

The throttle came back again, and again the train slowed, but the engine roared on like before. Wordlessly, Sloat again took his hammer out onto the engine’s running board, and a moment later the diesel’s speed fell off again.

Once again back in the cab, Sloat told his boss, “You gotta hit that son of a bitching relay with a hammer to get its attention. You shouldn’t have any trouble throttling up, but it doesn’t want to throttle down worth a damn. I’d guess you’d better leave the throttle where it is until we can get it in. We’ve got a spare relay, and changing it is no problem. This guy’s about due for the shop, anyway. I’m not too happy about the current draw. Maybe the motors on this rig are getting a little wet, too.”

Bud was dismayed. “We’ve got to be able to throttle down! I’ve got to have more power to get through each drift we come to, but if I don’t power down afterward, it’ll run away on us.”

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