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

Chapter 17

1353 1/9/1981 – 1607 1/9/1981:
C&SL Snowplow Extra One

“Ed,” Bud yelled. “What happened?”

“Don’t know,” the mechanic replied in the now-dark cab.

“Could those shorting trucks have burnt out the generator?”

“Whatever happened, that ain’t the problem,” Sloat replied, rather more calmly than Bud could manage at the moment. “The goddamn fucking diesel stopped! Whatever’s wrong, wet traction motors couldn’t have had anything to do with it. We’re still getting juice from the battery. You’d better radio Spearfish Lake and let them know we’re dead before we lose that, too.”

“Don’t know what good that’ll do,” Bud replied, beginning to think clearly again. “But at least I guess they won’t be worrying about us. I guess I’ll have to ride one of the snowmobiles into town and get the Rock, while you stay here and drain this thing. Useless as it is, we don’t want it freezing up. At least the ambulance cases we’ve got this trip won’t die on us if it takes another couple hours.”

Fortunately, the Burlington had died up on the pine flats within radio reach of town, and John Penny proved to be near the Rock’s radio. “Don’t screw around with the snowmobile,” Penny suggested. “I’ve got the Rock warming up, and ten more minutes should take care of the cover plates. I’ll run her out to you.”

Bud was a little leery of the idea. Penny may have known how to run the Geep, but he wasn’t that experienced with it. Still, he had done all right in the drifts a few hours before.

A few hours before? That was early this morning!

Bud had been on the go almost continuously since then, with only a couple of little breaks. Suddenly, he realized that he didn’t want to ride the snowmobile into town; what he mostly wanted to do was sleep.

“All right, John,” he said into the microphone. “Just take it real easy. Don’t get in over your head. If you come up on something that you don’t know about, stop and give us a call. There’s at least one more bad cut between you and us. I can ride out on the snowmobile if you think you need us.”

“Will do,” Penny replied.

“We’ll put out some fusees a couple hundred yards ahead of us, so you’ll know where we are,” Bud added. He hung up the microphone, and turned to Sloat. “Might as well think about draining this thing, Ed. Say, about twenty minutes to a half hour, go out and put out some fusees. If you need me, or John calls, I’ll be back in the way car. There’s nothing for me to do until he gets here, so I might as well get some sleep.”

In the way car, there was some concern about being stalled out in the middle of nowhere. Bud explained that they had some engine trouble, and that the spare engine from Spearfish Lake would be out soon to take them the rest of the way in. “It needed its turn at servicing,” he told the anxious passengers as neutrally as he could, “So we took this one. It was a little risky, but we knew that we could get picked up at either end. How are you people doing back here?”

He was told that the injured men were doing the best that could be expected under the circumstances. Bud quickly found a bunk and was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.

The Burlington was cooling rapidly. Ed had the engine drained and had set out the fusees. He was warming as best he could in what heat was left in the cab when the Rock’s headlight slowly pierced through the snowstorm. He picked up the microphone and radioed, “Ah, there you are.”

“The Rock to the rescue,” the lone “engineer” in the blue Geep replied. “Tell Bud that the last cut wasn’t too bad. Didn’t have to add much power to get through it.”

“Bud’s sleeping in the way car,” Sloat replied. “If you think you and I can make it back to Spearfish Lake without trouble, I’d be inclined to let him sleep.”

“Did he get any sleep since he left here the last time?” Penny asked.

“Maybe twenty minutes up in Warsaw. No more.”

“Hell, yes. Let the poor bastard sleep. God knows he deserves it.”

The bustle of unloading the ambulance patients in Spearfish Lake woke Bud up. Something seemed subtly wrong to him, until he came more awake and realized that the way car was sitting outside the office. He glanced at his watch, and figured that he must have slept for an hour. He knew he could sleep more, but for now, there was work to be done.

He swung out of the bunk and went outside. The engines were nowhere to be seen. He shrugged and went into the office.

Betty looked up as he came in and said, “Oh, you’re awake after all. I’ll call over to Rick’s and have them add an order.”

“Where’s Ed and John and the engines?”

“They’re all out in the engine shed. The guys are poking through the Burlington, trying to see what went wrong with it.”

“I think I’d better wander out there and see how they’re coming,” Bud replied. “When the food gets here, give us a call.”

Bud walked down Track One to the engine shed. It was still blowing as hard as it had been a day and a half before, but now the wind had swung around from more to the north, so he walked with his back to the wind. The snow was still coming down as hard as ever; only cleaning things out with the big plow now and then, along with a lot of work by Tefke and the pickup truck had kept the yard clear to the point where it was possible to get around.

Room in the parking lot had diminished in size as Tefke had run out of places to pile snow, but Bud noticed that what was left of it wasn’t empty. The trucks of yet another fire department were waiting, covered with snow as if they had been sitting there for hours. There was no telling what department it was, but that wasn’t important, just now.

It was chilly in the engine shed, for the big furnace hadn’t had time to regain the ground lost when the big doors had been opened. The big green Geep sat lonely in the middle of the shed, but there was some activity around it. Muttered cursing could be heard from deep within its internals.

“Got any idea what the problem is, Ed?” Bud called.

“Which problem? The weak motors, the air compressor failure, or the dead diesel,” the mechanic replied. “Or just the fact that it’s the biggest piece of shit left in existence since they scrapped the Amberjack?” Ed had been glad to see that boat go to its reward.

“What I want to know is why the diesel crapped out so suddenly,” Bud said, walking closer.

“Good question,” Sloat admitted. “It was pretty logical that something had to be wrong with the fuel system when it died out there, but I wasn’t sure what. Now, I’m pretty sure that the injector pump is crapped up, but something’s funny with its drive shaft, too.”

There were a lot of things wrong with the Burlington. “How soon do you think we could have this thing back on line?”

“Long time,” Sloat replied. “Could be days. At least a day on the traction motors. A day at least on the air system. The injector pump and drive, I don’t know. Might be something fairly simple. If it turns out that we need a new injector pump, that’s pretty easy to change, but we don’t have one in stock.”

For the moment, then, the Burlington was turning into a lost cause. “How about the Rock?” Bud asked the two men. “I take it that it’s running all right.”

“Pretty well,” Sloat replied. “I still don’t think that the motors are putting out a hundred percent. I wish we had been able to keep her on the heaters longer.”

“The hell with this thing,” Bud replied. “Let’s go up to the office and have some coffee before the food gets here. We’ve got to figure out what the next move is, and I don’t think it’s going to involve this scrap heap.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Penny replied. The three of them walked back through the storm to the office and clustered around the desks and chairs, coffee in hand.

“Betty, soon as things die down a little, call around and see what the scrap prices are doing,” Bud told her. “I’m beginning to wonder if it’s going to be worth the effort to throw any more time or money at that piece of shit. Matson and I had a little talk up in Warsaw, and I kind of doubt that after the last couple of days that we’re going to be needing two Geeps any longer. We’re going to have to pull in our belts real tight without the paper plant traffic.”

“Aren’t you going to want an engine set for pulling the rock trains out of Summit?” Ed asked.

“Don’t know, yet. It might be easier to just run day and night instead of just days, and figure on doubling the hill out of the pit all the time. We’d get better engine utilization that way.”

“It’d cost more for crews,” Betty observed.

“Six of one, half dozen of the other. Ed, assuming that we can fix the Milwaukee easily, how much trouble would it be to rig her up to mate with the Rock? I assume we could steal some parts from the Burlington.”

“Probably wouldn’t be that big of a job. It’d take a few days, and there’d be some parts we couldn’t cannibalize or rig up. What you got to look at there is how much it’ll cost to fix up the Milwaukee, but there might be some stuff we can use off the Burlington there, too. But the thing that you got to remember is that with the Milwaukee, you can’t run her much faster than about twenty-five.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Bud replied. “There aren’t that many sections of track where we can run much faster than that, anyway. But that’s a decision we don’t have to make today. Once they get the fire out and we all can get a couple good nights’ sleep, we can assess what it’s going to take to keep this outfit going. Right now, we’ve got to figure out what the next move is. What have we got to take this trip, Betty? I noticed another fire department out in the parking lot, but I didn’t catch which one.”

“It’s Meeker, sort of,” Betty explained. “They and Perrysburg each sent half a department, so they’d leave some protection at home. They’re all under the Meeker chief. The bigger units are already loaded on the flats you left here last time, but I had them holding up on the smaller units until we saw if anybody else got here. They’ve been here for hours, now.”

“What do you hear from McPhee and Plow Extra Two?”

“Haven’t heard a thing for hours. I called down to Moffat about noon, and they left there before dawn. Then, I called Meeker, and there was no sign of them. So they’ve got to be having a bad time there by Thunder Lake.”

“How about the Decatur and Overland people they’re sending over the Kremmling branch?”

“That’s what got me to calling around about Ralph. We had a call from the D&O that they had trouble with their plow, but they’d gotten to Rochester.”

“Shit,” Bud said, “If it’s taken them till now to get to Rochester, it’s going to take them till spring to get here. There went a pot full of money we damn well could use elsewhere. Maybe I can talk Marks into just forgetting about the whole thing.”

“It was a hope,” Penny observed. “Maybe some good will come out of it yet.”

“I doubt it like hell, now,” Bud replied. “The thing is that we don’t have a clue as to what our next move is. The way I see it, there are three things we can do. The first is that we can just sit here and get some sleep, like we talked about after the last trip, put the Rock back on the heaters, and let the situation develop for a while. The second is that we could make another run up there with the Rock, and take the Meeker people with us. The third is to head south and collect Ralph. It’s the same situation we had this morning, except now we don’t have an engine to back us up. I’m open to suggestions.”

“Much as I hate to try it, Bud, there’s points for sitting right here,” Ed put in as the door flew open, and Rick arrived with the food. “You need sleep. If you were to sleep, even for, say, four or six hours, then we could have heat on the Rock’s trucks for that long. That would help a lot. By then, we might have some idea of what’s going on with Ralph.”

“You’ve got a point,” Bud replied, cutting into the steak that Rick had brought. “But I don’t like the thought of doing nothing. I don’t think I could sleep if I knew that we could be doing something useful and we aren’t. The thing that worries me the most is the Milwaukee and the scram train. If the wind gets around much further, or if the oil company goes, Walt is going to need help bad, and he’s going to need it fast. If we go to Warsaw again, maybe Walt could come back with the Rock for a trip, and I could risk staying with the scram train.”

“Do that and it runs right back into the problem of moving the scram train,” Penny said while struggling with a plastic package of ketchup. “You said yourself that Walt can get more out of the Milwaukee than you can. We could leave Walt there and make it easy on you. Maybe we could put Ed up in the plow, and you and me in the Rock. I could run it through the easy stretches, and wake you up for the hard parts.

Ed disagreed. “Given a choice, I’d rather not risk the Rock at all until the motors are more dried out. If we have to do something, maybe the thing to do is to head south and try to help out Ralph. That would give us some reserve engines and the people to do something with them. Any one of those three engines added to the Milwaukee would protect the scram train more than it needs to be. We could put the other two on the Warsaw turn and leave the Rock here to dry out, because by the time we get back from a run to, say, Meeker, it may well need it. Going the other direction, you could probably get in a run to Warsaw all right. I’m not sure about the one after that.”

Bud scratched his head, then sliced off another hunk of beef. “The big problem with heading south is the fact that it gets us even further away from Walt, if he needs us.” He sipped his coffee, and went on. “The farther away we are, the longer it’ll take us to get there. God knows, we’re too far away now if he needs us quick. Say we head south. We’ll have the plow pointed south. We get down to, say, Blair, and Ralph is near Meeker, somewhere. Then Walt needs us. We’d have to back up to here with the plow on the wrong end before we could turn it around and head for Warsaw, and then, with the wind getting more out of the north, it’d be slow going to Warsaw. The track could snow in behind us before we got back here, too.”

“Yeah,” Penny said around a mouthful of potato. “But there’s several places where we could run around him. That’d give us three engines behind the little plow, which would be pointing north over tracks we’d recently have been over.”

“That’s only if we meet him,” Bud pointed out. “We don’t know where Ralph is, or what he’s doing. If he was stuck in California Cut, say, or even somewhere down by Blair, the obvious thing to do would be to go and get him. If he’s still somewhere down by Meeker, then that’s a whole different story, and we just don’t know what it is. My guess is that he’s still south of Meeker, as hard as the going probably is by Thunder Lake. God knows the people and the engines he’s got would be welcome, but unless we hear that he needs help, I think that Ralph is old enough to be left out on his own. I really think that Walt and the scram train are the biggest problem we’ve got right now.”

“You’ve got the Meeker Fire Department here, too,” Betty added. “They probably would be welcome in Warsaw.”

“I’m not too sure how welcome they’d be,” Sloat said. “Frank said they were short of water up there. They were having a hell of a time trying to find enough water to supply the departments they already have.”

“Yeah,” Bud replied, “But we’d look like shit if we left a fire department here that they needed, while we headed off south.”

Penny stared at the ceiling for a moment, his dinner forgotten, then said, “You know what really bothers me about the Warsaw runs we’ve been making? We’re running the whole damn operation backwards.”

Bud thought that was a curious statement. “How do you mean that, John?”

“Just that. We shouldn’t be plowing eastward at all. It just started out that way, and we’ve kept doing it since because it was the obvious way to do it. Look, you guys wouldn’t have come back from Warsaw at all last trip if the plow had been pointing west, would you?”

“We probably wouldn’t have,” Bud agreed. “But we couldn’t let ourselves get snowed in up there with the plow pointed the wrong way.”

“Right,” Penny went on. “You and I did at least one trip where it would have been good if we’d hung around longer. And twice, we’ve left here, knowing a fire department was on the way, but not wanting to screw around for what might well be hours before they did arrive.”

Bud nodded. “I still don’t see what you’re getting at, John.”

“What I’m saying is that if we go back to Warsaw, we should bull our way up there on the aprons and drag the plow behind us, pointing west. Then it doesn’t matter how long we stay there. We could sit there as long as we had to, and Walt would have the extra power at hand. Then, we could come down here when we need to, like for an ambulance run, or when we know that there’s going to be a fire department ready to load.”

“I think you may have something there, John,” Bud replied. “We could take the heaters, too, and throw heat on the trucks about as well as we do here. Then, if we get word that Ralph needs help and is within reach, we can go off and get him.”

“That still worries me, Bud,” Sloat commented. “If Ralph is in trouble, maybe we ought to think about going and getting him, anyway,” Sloat put in.

Bud thought about this for a moment. “If he’s close and he’s in trouble, that’s one thing. If he’s still down by Thunder Lake, that’s another. If he was close, I would think that we would have heard about it by now. The real issue is whether to back up Walt or not. I think what we’ll do is to go and protect Walt, John’s way, at least while we finish drying out the Rock. Then, if Ralph is in real trouble, we can consider a trip down to him, if the danger in Warsaw eases off a bit. I could be wrong, but I’ll bet that if Walt has to scram, it’ll be soon.”

While they had been eating, Rick had been standing quietly in the background. Now, he asked, “Are things up there really that bad?”

“They are,” Bud replied soberly. “The way things are right now – or at least were when we left – they could lose the whole town. You’d best get back over to the café, and tell those people from Meeker to get the rest of their equipment loaded and to get their butts on the train.”

“Will do, Bud,” the little man said as he headed for the door. “Good luck.”

“Thanks, Rick,” he said to the departing figure, then turned back to the group. “We’ve been long enough. We’re going to have to hurry if we’re going to go back to Warsaw without the plow. The wind is more out of the north and it’s really going to crap up those tracks. John and Ed, get the Rock out and get it serviced. Load on all the heaters you can find, and the portable generator, so we can run the heater blowers. I’ll be out to help in a couple minutes. Kate, get hold of Roger and get him over to direct the loading. We’ll still leave the bus here. Betty, get a message to Walt, I guess through the fire department in Warsaw, to plow out to the west as far as he dares. That’ll help us when the going gets thick. After that, call Joe Upton and tell him what we’re going to do. We’ll come back for more departments only when a full load of major units has accumulated here. You might tell him that it might not be a bad idea to consider another try on 919, since this could be our last trip up there if the Rock acts up at all. John, you and I will go this time. Ed, you stay here, get a little sleep, and then start poking around in the Burlington, to see if there’s any chance to get her going in the next day or so, no matter how jury-rigged it might be. While you’re doing that, though, kind of think about taking parts off it for the Milwaukee.”

Ed and John had their coats on by now. “Will do, Bud,” John replied. “How long before you’ll be out?”

“A couple minutes,” Bud replied, nodding his head in the direction of the bathroom. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

After they’d gone, Kate asked, “Couldn’t you just send them on this trip? Bud, you look terrible!”

“I admit, I don’t feel real well,” he replied. “But, while John does know how to run the Rock, he isn’t experienced enough at it, and this is going to be the toughest trip yet. We weren’t risking anything that wasn’t already potentially bad when he picked us up a little while ago. This is different. Besides, two hours, three at the most, and we’ll be sitting up in Warsaw, and I can get some sleep.”

“I don’t like this,” she protested.

“You don’t have to.”

“How many trips does this make?” John asked. “I’ve lost count.”

Bud yanked on the whistle cord as the County Road 919 crossing approached in the darkness. “Let’s see, there was the trip for the hopper cars, then there was the trip up with the Spearfish Lake department, and back with the evacuees. Then we went up and left the scram train, that’s three. Then Ed and I made a trip and chased right back here for oxygen. Then, Ed and I took the Burlington. That makes five. This is the sixth trip up there since yesterday morning.”

“A busy day and a little bit more,” John replied absently.

“Yeah, and no end in sight,” Bud replied. “I hope you got a good sleep while you were back at the office. It might be a while before you get another one like it.” The mere mention of sleep made Bud sleepy.

“I did,” Penny said, hesitating before he went on. “I know this is a hell of a time to bring this up, but up in Warsaw last night I got the impression that you thought that this railroad was going to go bust if the plant burned. You didn’t sound like that in the office, just now.”

“John, I just don’t know,” Bud replied sleepily. “There’s still a good chance of it, but Jerusalem Paper wasn’t all our business. After you guys left, I checked some figures back in the office, and I’m having Betty put some more together for me. We’re doing more business than Matson and I figured on when we started this thing. That’s been good as we don’t have our backs to the wall in debt. It’s just that there are so many new ifs, ands, and buts. I’m thinking that if we scale down to just the Rock and the Milwaukee and run the Camden end of the operation from Spearfish Lake, like we used to, or maybe leave the Camden operation alone and just keep the Rock up here and work her more hours, we might still be able to keep going.”

“I don’t know how to say this,” Penny replied. “There was a letter waiting when I got back to my apartment. Conrail wants to call me back.”

“Well, that’s good,” Bud replied. “You’re not going to be out of a job, anyway.”

“I’m not so sure how good it is,” the brakeman replied slowly. “I could get laid off again real easy. But Bud, I miss living in a city. I’m not a country boy like you guys. I’ve been kind of lost out here in the woods. But if there’s anything I can do to help you keep this operation above water, I’d like to stay.”

This left Bud at a loss for words. All he could ask was, “Why?”

“Damned if I know, Bud. I guess when you work for a big operation like that, it’s just a job, and whether you do a good job or a bad job doesn’t seem to make much difference. Here, I can see the effects of what I do and I’m thanked for it. I kind of like all that.”

The Rock plowed ahead into the snow while Bud tried to digest this news. “John, I’d love to have you stay,” he said finally. “But if I were you I think I’d go back to Conrail. There may not be much of a future here.”

“I don’t have to know right now. I can put off a reply for a few days. Maybe by then, you’ll have a better idea.”

“John, I can’t guarantee anything,” Bud protested.

“I can afford the risk,” the brakeman replied flatly.

“Look, even if this thing keeps going, I may not be able to guarantee anything; but I do know this: I won’t have Adam or Ralph or Harold forever. Before he left, this fall, Adam was making sounds like he wanted to stay in Florida, and both Ralph and Harold are as old as the hills. Even if there’s nothing right away, I could call you back when I need you.”

“That would be fine, Bud. The thing is, this is the critical time for you. If my being here at all will make any difference, I’d just as soon stay here.”

Bud shrugged. “We’ll know more when the fire is out and we’ve had a chance to assess what happens next. In the meantime, why don’t you run this thing for a while.”

“Be glad to,” the brakeman replied.

“Don’t push your luck too far. If you have trouble, wake me up. In any case, wake me before we get out of the swamp.”

At the same time Bud Ellsberg slept fitfully in the cab of the GP-7 with Penny at the engine controls, Fred Linder was also trying to grab a few minutes of sleep in the cab of a Spearfish Lake pumper.

Linder had been going steadily since the fire broke out, the morning of the day before. This was the first chance he had to sleep in that time, for until he reorganized his defenses, there had been danger everywhere. Now, though there was still plenty of danger around, he had the strongest of his forces at the most severe point of danger, and he was there, right on call.

The fall back to the new positions had gone well, complicated only by the fact that moving equipment had taken longer than Linder liked, since many of the departments around the plant had gotten iced into position in their long struggle in one place. By now, everybody was in their new positions, and there was a lot less water being used – so much so that there was a small excess being pumped back into the water tower.

The tired and shorthanded Walsenberg department did a clean job of quenching the hopper car fire. If only it had been possible to do the same job a day before, it might have been possible to confine the fire to the now-ignored Shed 4, but at least now it was a fairly simple job. Two-and-a-half-inch hoses managed to drive the heat from the hot coals in the corner of Yard 3. From there on in, it was easy to open the hatches of the first hopper car, which had sunk into the mud as the ties underneath had burnt out. It took a few minutes to fill the first bin from a one-inch booster hose, but even before it was full the smoke from within was much diminished. Sprague sent another one-inch hose to the next bin. The whole operation moved like clockwork; as soon as it was cool enough to reach a car with a small hose, it was also cool enough to drag bigger hoses in to push the hot area further back.

By mid-afternoon, the hopper cars were no longer dangerous. An hour after that, the hard-working air gang at the fire hall found that they had filled every waiting air tank, and that no more empties had arrived from Blair or Kremmling just yet.

Over on the far side of the plant, Warsaw was only making a desultory effort to keep the flames under control. The paper plant that they had tried so hard to save was now almost fully engulfed in flame, and there was not much effort being made to keep the flame down. Indeed, there was little that one department could do. They kept a couple of hoses on the office building for protection, and were prepared to give that up to save the school if Blair called for help.

Mostly, the Warsaw firefighters were too tired and in too much shock at the sight of their livelihoods going up in smoke to do anything too effective. How much town would be left without the plant? There were only a handful of men on the department who didn’t work at the plant, or who didn’t live by it indirectly.

Linder was downhearted, himself. If it hadn’t been his town, he would have been happy to turn the whole operation over to Harry Masterfield and go cry with his bitter, despondent men; his job was burning with the plant, too. But his call to duty was too strong. He was incapable of letting someone else fight his fight for him.

Nevertheless, Linder couldn’t help but wonder how many of the Warsaw firemen would be willing to let their own homes burn in hopes of collecting enough insurance to get out of town to where there might be the hope of another job.

And the threat of homes burning wasn’t idle; it was very real.

Masterfield’s men were hard at work at yet another spot fire along Winter Street when he returned from the meeting at the standby train. They managed to knock that one down, and two others that broke out in the time that it had taken Linder to supervise the pullback from the plant.

Winter Street was the hot spot, now. The fire in Yard 4 was getting hotter with every passing minute, burning wilder and wilder as more wood dried out and began to burn. The arrival of Lynchburg to bolster Spearfish Lake and Hoselton’s sagging line only kept the defense in pace with the growing strength they faced. Linder toyed with putting Walsenberg right into line on Winter Street, but decided against it. As the fire grew hotter, more and more burning brands could be blown downwind to land somewhere behind the struggling departments. With the wind this strong, he needed someone in the backfield.

All that had been before Linder had tried for a few minutes sleep. He managed almost an hour before Masterfield woke him.

“What’s up, Harry?” he asked groggily.

“One got through us. This is no spot fire. This house is fully engulfed. We had a spot fire in the attached garage on that blue place, and all of a sudden, the whole thing went ‘foom.’ That set the house pretty well on fire, too. Hoselton’s doing their best with it.”

Linder got out of the truck and went up the street to investigate. The fire turned out to be Skip Peterson’s house, and Linder could pretty well guess what had caused the garage to burn so quickly. Peterson rebuilt engines on the side, and Linder knew that inside the garage, there was usually a tub full of gasoline with parts lying in it. It was no surprise that the fire had spread to the whole house.

About all that they had to throw at the fire was the Hoselton pumper and a little attention from a Spearfish Lake pumper. There was no hope of saving the house. Poor old Skip.

Here was why Linder had kept a reserve. Walsenberg really was needed for deep defense, but he pulled them forward, anyway, to try and help Hoselton deal with the fire in Peterson’s house. For replacement defense, he then pulled his own department away from the paper plant, leaving Blair to defend the school and the plant office, with some help from Kremmling.

Despite all the efforts, the line was pierced. The three departments fighting the fire in Peterson’s house were unable to keep the fire from spreading to the adjoining houses. Though Peterson’s house had a large back yard, there was little hope of keeping the fire from spreading across it to the houses facing Plains Street, no matter how much the now fully-engaged Albany River department tried to halt it.

Within half an hour, Walsenberg gave up on Peterson’s house and was losing a battle to save the house to the south. Hoselton pulled back to the north, and with Lynchburg, they were losing that house, too.

Before very long, it was plain to all that all the houses facing Winter Street were gone. It was time to regroup again.

There was no time for a big meeting now. This one could be lost too quickly. Linder got Sprague from Walsenberg and Masterfield from Spearfish Lake to the radio at the Spearfish Lake truck, while he prepared to radio the other chiefs dealing with the town fire.

“Gonna have to pull back again, Cliff,” he greeted the dour Walsenberg men.

“Yeah,” Sprague agreed. “Maybe we’ve got a chance on the next street. At least it won’t be so close to that damn pulpwood.”

“Let’s get it over with,” Linder said, and picked up the microphone. “All departments, this is Fred Linder,” he radioed. “We’re going to abandon the effort on Winter Street between Second and Third Streets. I want Hoselton and Walsenberg to take up first, with Lynchburg and Spearfish Lake covering. Hoselton will support Albany River on Plains Street to the north of Albany River, Walsenberg on the south.

“Once they’re in place, Lynchburg falls back to Second Street and Spearfish Lake to Third, to try and cover the flanks. All the departments fighting the residential fires can use mains, and everybody else will have to be on tankers, along with Warsaw over on Main Street.

“Let’s try to hold this son of a bitch to one block. Any questions?”

“Yeah, Fred. This is Vern Houghton. The train just got in, and they’ve got the Meeker department with them. I’ll put them in place for you if you’ll tell me where you want them.”

Thank God, Linder thought. More help, just when we need it. Again.

He thought for another moment before replying, “Put them up on Main Street, but tell them not to get too tied down. They could get moved almost anywhere if we’re going to keep the whole town from burning down.”

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.