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

Chapter 19

1607 1/9/1981 – 2018 1/9/1981:
C&SL Snowplow Extra One

Joe McGuinness, the accountant and fireman from Spearfish Lake, was sitting in the diner bus in Warsaw, trying to get around a cup of coffee and a plate of something that vaguely resembled stew and vaguely resembled garbage. This was the first real break he had taken since the two-and-a-half inch blast of water knocked him off the woodpile in Yard 4. Back then, Masterfield had sent him to the rest train for a break, but it hadn’t been much of one. It wasn’t long before the Spearfish Lake chief had to call all his people back to help out in the shorthanded effort to keep the growing fire in Yard 4 out of the houses along Winter Street.

That had been hours before. The battle for the houses had long since been given up, and the fire line had fallen back to Plains Street. Now, McGuinness sat in the diner trying to mentally put the furious night and day in order, and wondering about how his friend Rod Turpin was doing. He hadn’t heard a word about Rod since the train hauled him off to the hospital in Spearfish Lake the day before.

Somewhere in the back of his head, McGuinness realized that there must be all sorts of tax work piled up on his desk in the two days he had been away from it. After all, it was getting near the fifteenth of the month, and there were closings that had to be done.

He’d wanted a little break from books and taxes, and what a break it had been! Almost from his arrival in the stricken town, he had been on the go worse than he had ever been in the accounting business. It had started off easily, soaking down Yard 4 to keep the fire from spreading to it, but when Spearfish Lake turned its attention from the yard fire to helping try to save the paper plant, things had been busy.

By the time he had gotten back from his rest break after the incident in Yard 4, Spearfish Lake was fighting a totally different fire, for the pulp yard was fully out of hand and getting hotter every minute. With the limited help available – at that point, just people from Hoselton, with no equipment – McGuinness couldn’t see how Masterfield could have decided what to do next. The fire had been blazing away madly in front of them, blowing all sorts of smoke and unpleasant fumes right over them, setting spot fires in the houses along Winter Street.

He’d been in position to work on about four of those fires. They had ranged from a few shingles on one house to a fully-involved detached garage on another. At no time had there been enough people and enough water available to really do the job the high wind made necessary.

In spite of that wind and the snow and the cold, the Spearfish Lake men had done the best they could. The wind blew sparks all over everywhere, and it blew streams of water into unexpected places – McGuinness knew that better than anyone. It was hard to keep water on a blaze, and everything around the place where the stick was directed got pretty well soaked, too. Then, once the water had done its job, it tended to stay around, rather than running off. Active fire areas soon became massive morasses of ice and slush.

At least the Spearfish Lake crew hadn’t had to move much, because moving was a massive amount of trouble. Moving the apparatus wasn’t much fun, either. There were places where the Warsaw fireman’s bulldozer had to tow a truck into position, and then tow it out again an hour or so later. If a department had its hoses out for very long, they were soon buried, or sometimes even worse than that. Every move cost them hose, lost or buried in the ice. Everyone was glad that they’d thought to bring with them all the old and spare hose the department owned, since they wouldn’t be seeing some of their hose until spring. He’d heard that Lynchburg was low on hose, and Albany River, with their frequent moves, desperately so. Even if a department did get a hose out of a snowy grave, the couplings would usually be frozen; they had to be thawed so the hoses could be uncoupled and coiled up.

The diner bus was nearly empty, and McGuinness was sitting alone at a table, thinking his thoughts. A door opened, and four people came in. He thought he recognized some of them, and then it came to him: these were people from the railroad. McGuinness was aware as anybody that if it hadn’t been for the railroad’s regular arrivals with firefighters and equipment, there wouldn’t be a town here at all. Thanks to them, there might be something left afterward. He motioned them over to the empty seats near him.

“Walt, what’s been happening since the last time we were up here?” the haggard-looking, balding middle-aged man asked. “I can see that they lost the plant. That’s kind of strange. Time before last, it looked like normal, except for some smoke coming off the north side. Last trip, it was just a helluva bonfire. Now, it’s more like an ash pile.”

“They flat-assed lost, Bud,” the older man with the flushed face and the reddened eyes said. “I really don’t know for sure what’s going on. It’s been too far away to see, and I’ve been trying to stay near the Milwaukee. Last I heard, they were having a hell of a time over on Winter Street.”

“We gave up on Winter Street,” the fireman broke in. “Every house on the block between Second and Third is a total loss. We’ve pulled back to Plains Street. They were trying to keep the houses on the east side of the street from going when I left.”

Bud turned to the firefighter. “I know I know you, but I’m too tired to think, right now.”

“Joe McGuinness from Spearfish Lake. You know, Dalhart-McGuinness Bookkeeping. I talked to you a few months ago about doing some accounts for you.”

“Yeah, should have remembered,” Bud said. “What’s happening over near the fertilizer plant? You been near there recently?”

“Right next to it. The department is over on Third between a house fire and Northern Fertilizer. The building is still standing, sort of, but it won’t be any good after the fertilizer burns out of it. They’re not trying to do much with it. The word I got is that if they use too much water on it, it’ll screw up the village water table, so they’re just treating it as a controlled burn.”

“I heard they got the fire in the hopper cars out since I was up here last,” the long-haired younger man said.

“Yeah,” the firefighter replied. “John Penny, isn’t it? I see you over at Kelty’s Tavern every now and then.”

“Right.”

“I was over by them, Bud,” Frank Matson put in. McGuinness wondered what the banker was doing here with the railroad people. “You were right. The ties had burned out completely under a couple of those cars. They had to be stuck to the axles. It’s not surprising that you couldn’t move them.”

“They had to have been stuck,” Ellsberg said. “The two Geeps should have been able to skid those four cars out of there, brakes or no brakes, loaded or not loaded.”

Walt commented, “I see you didn’t bring the Burlington.”

“You didn’t hear about that piece of shit? It crapped out on us east of the 919 crossing. John here had to come out with the Rock and tow us in. As far as I’m concerned, that’s it. We’re going to lose traffic because of this fire, so we were going to have to get rid of an engine, anyway. It makes it real simple to figure out which engine. How’s the Milwaukee doing?”

“No better, no worse,” Walt replied. “Frank and I ran out about five miles light to try and knock down some of the drifts for you. After that, we felt like we were kind of pushing our luck. So what’s the next step?”

“Nothing’s the next step,” Bud said. “There aren’t any fire departments waiting in Spearfish Lake to come up here, and I’m beat. We came up with the plow pointing west, and we’re going to sit right here with you in case you need help, unless there’s a load of departments accumulated to come up, or there’s an ambulance run that can’t wait.”

“If there’s a need for another run soon,” Walt said, “Why don’t you let me make it, for once? You look like the Jolly Green Giant stepped on your head.”

Bud shook his head. “I still think you can get more out of the Milwaukee than I can if we have to use it. But for the next couple hours anyway, I’m so beat that I’m willing to take the risk.”

“Tell you what,” Walt said. “I scrounged up a cot and stuck it in the cab of the Milwaukee. It’s a hell of a lot better for sleeping than it is in those bunk buses. There’s people coming and going all the time, and you don’t get much sleep.”

It sounded irresistible to Bud. “As soon as we get done with our coffee here, let’s go out and get those heaters onto the Rock’s trucks. It does seem to help. Maybe a few hours will get rid of the rest of whatever’s causing the shorting.”

“How was it running?”

“Only fair,” Bud admitted. “John got a good start at drying it out, but we had to have him break off to come out and get us. It really wasn’t up to par on the way up here. I figure we’ve got to keep heat on her whenever we can, just to try and stay even.”

“You in good shape, John?” the banker asked.

“Yeah, I flaked out at Spearfish Lake for a while.”

Matson nodded. “If Walt has to make a run back there, why don’t you figure on going with him instead of me. I wouldn’t mind getting some sleep myself. After being up all night, I spent the day with Bruce Marshall. He’s taking losing the plant real hard.”

“Aren’t we all?” Bud interjected, shaking his head. “Aren’t we all?”

“He’s fought and lost,” Matson said. “The rest of us are still fighting. I’ll tell you this much, though. I doubt that the bank is going to be very much help to the Camden and Spearfish Lake for a while. I’m pretty scared that we’re going to drop a bundle up here before it’s all over with, what with jobs being burnt out, and people just saying to hell with mortgages to get the hell out of town. I’m scared that we’re going to be eating a lot of it.”

“That’s something to be scared about,” Bud agreed. “I guess it makes the railroad seem like small potatoes.”

“This fire is hard,” Matson said, after upending his coffee cup. “But the aftermath is going to be just as bad, if not worse.”

“With that cheerful thought in mind,” Bud replied sarcastically, “I’m going to say the hell with it and crap out for a while.”

“How long have you been going?” Walt asked.

“Since early yesterday morning. I’ve got maybe two hours sleep in that time, total. Most of it was when John and Ed were towing the Burlington into Spearfish Lake.”

“There’s people up here that are getting along on less,” Walt said absently.

McGuinness agreed as he rose to leave. “Yeah, some of those guys from Warsaw are really zombies. They’ve been going that long without a break, and Walsenberg and us aren’t very far behind. They’ve tried to rotate people out for rest breaks, but it seems like every time they do, a fire breaks out somewhere else. I’ve been away long enough myself. I’ll see you guys around.”

“Anybody hear what the weather’s going to do?” Bud asked.

“More of the same,” Walt said. “At least through tomorrow morning.”

Bud shook his head again. “That means even longer if those lying bastards run true to form. How much snow have we had, anyway?

“A hell of a lot,” the bookkeeper said, pulling on his turnout coat.

“I heard three feet down in Camden,” Walt said. “That’s a hell of a bunch for down there. The town is all plugged up.”

“We’ve sure as hell got more than that here,” Bud replied. “A lot more.”

McGuinness headed out the door and walked back past the nearly burnt-out plant to where the Spearfish Lake department was doggedly trying to keep the end house on Plains Street from burning. It was an uncomfortable position for the department, since it was backed up against the burning fertilizer plant, which was giving off immense clouds of evil-smelling toxic fertilizer smoke. Normally, the wind kept the smoke from them, but still men fought the fire with gas masks close at hand.

Masterfield was getting as worn out as anyone else. He was sitting in the open door of a truck, half asleep, when he noticed McGuinness approaching. “Back so soon, Joe?” he asked.

“I’ve had more rest than some people.”

“Yeah, when you were knocked on your ass yesterday. Well, I guess if you want to stay at it, I shouldn’t stop you.”

“What’s been happening here?” McGuinness asked.

“We’ve been able to hold on so far, but a few minutes ago Albany River had a big spot fire that got out of hand. Linder pulled Hoselton down to help them, and then pulled Lynchburg down to cover Hoselton. It’s looking like we’re going to fight this one out here for a while.”

“What do you need me to do?”

Masterfield shrugged. “Why don’t you take over one of the booster lines on the city pumper?”

The one-inch line job proved to be dull, but necessary. McGuinness found himself spraying water over a house on the east side of Plains Street, trying to give it a sparkproof outer coating of ice that might protect it from flying embers. Most of the rest of the department was still trying to knock down the fire in a house on Winter Street, working between the houses on Plains.

For the bookkeeper, it wasn’t that the job was dull, but that it had to be done in the middle of an icy mist from the hoses upwind. The mist settled everywhere, creating ice instantly on everything it landed on. McGuinness’ footing was treacherous, especially fighting the snaking of the hose. The ice got all over everything; in a few minutes, he was caked with it. In the last day and a half, the firemen had become used to it, and hardly noticed.

Now that the fire was pretty much concentrated on a front along Plains Street, Fred Linder’s roving was now a straight line and much simplified. He was back to snowmobiling, now. Once he had satisfied himself that all the apparatus that he could send to the growing spot fire was working on it, he realized that he hadn’t checked with Kremmling or Blair for hours. Now that it was beginning to grow dark, he’d have to check soon, or he wouldn’t be able to have a daylight view of their situation, so now was no worse a time than any other to steal away from the main event and see what was happening elsewhere.

Still, the situation at Blair or Kremmling couldn’t have been too bad, or he would have heard about it. Still, he headed his snowmobile south.

Kremmling was still protecting the Warsaw Oil Company from the fire at Northern Fertilizer and from Yard 4. Their situation was stable. They hadn’t been pumping a lot of water, but had confined their efforts to patrolling, and an occasional light soaking through the open doors of the fertilizer plant.

“We could get that out if we were to work at it,” C.J. Green, the Kremmling chief, said. “But it would use a lot of water.”

“Don’t want much of that shit to get into the water table if we can help it,” Linder replied. “So long as we don’t let it get too bad, that son of a bitch isn’t really hurting anyone.”

“I wasn’t complaining,” Green told him. “It’s just that it’s kind of dull over here. We’ve been sending a lot of our people over to pitch in with you.”

“I noticed them,” Linder nodded, “And thanks. But just remember, you’ve got potentially the most dangerous position of all to deal with. If the oil company starts burning, we’re going to have a hell of a mess. There’s no way we can get rid of their stuff, either. The railroad doesn’t have tank cars to haul it in, or storage capacity elsewhere, at least that’s what the gal in their office told me. We’re just going to have to keep it from burning. What scares me is, if we keep losing ground in town, I can see the block between Main and Herkimer Streets going just about the time the wind gets around to the north.”

“If that happens, we’re going to be in shit,” Green agreed. “What’s your chances of holding it?”

“I don’t know,” Linder said. “I think we’re losing the west side of Plains Street with that fire Albany River and Lynchburg and Hoselton are dealing with now. If the wind will get its act together, we can hold whatever fire lane we’re at. Until that happens, I think we’re going to lose ground sooner or later.”

Green nodded. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “Chip Halsey was just over here. He says all of the ammonia is gone from the tank. There may be a little more in it, but it probably won’t come out unless the tank is heated. He’s closed the valves for now, but he says that he’ll check later and pop them for a while if any pressure builds up.”

“Well, that’s something,” Linder said. The toxic gas from the fertilizer smoke was bad enough, but the ammonia could cause skin damage as well. It was only luck that no one had had to work downwind of the tank, and that the plume from the tank head had dissipated a lot by the time it reached the railroad tracks. Now, with the wind out of the northeast, there wasn’t much besides the railroad tracks and the school that would be in the toxic smoke. There were some houses between Warsaw and the river, but Linder had seen to them being evacuated hours before. Beyond the river was a state forest; the next habitation was a good many miles downwind.

“I’ll pass that on to Blair,” Linder told the Kremmling chief. He got on his snowmobile and, wearing his gas mask, rode down through the cloud of toxic smoke to the school.

Things seemed positively dull at the school, and Vern Houghton, the Blair chief, agreed. “I think we can pick up here for the time being,” he said. “The fire at the main plant is pretty well out, and it’s been a couple hours since anything serious has come this way. My crew is pretty well rested. What I’m thinking is that we’d leave our grass truck here, just in case. That would give you our main apparatus to do something with.”

“We can use you,” Linder replied. “I’d like to put you in line on Plains Street, but we’re using all the water off the mains that we dare, and there’s no more room to get tankers in there. At least we’ve got some water in the tower again for a real emergency. Warsaw and Meeker have been dealing with spot fires on the south part of Main Street, and there’s been flames trying to get past them. I guess what I’ll have you do is go over to the corner of Herkimer and Third. Put a pumper up each street and run lines out as far as you dare. Keep up protection patrols. You’ll be right next to the oil company there, so if Kremmling has any trouble, you’ll support them. If we fall back that far, you’ll be in the center of things.”

“We stay on tankers, right?”

“Right,” Linder replied. “If the main fire lane gets to you, then you go on mains.”

“Hope it doesn’t get that far,” Houghton said. “That’d put us right between the fire and the oil company.”

“You and me, both.” Linder fired up his snowmobile and headed back to the fire on Plains Street.

In the next hour or so, the outbreak of fire on the west side of Plains Street spread. As each house became fully engulfed, it was necessary to pull back from working between that house and the one to the south, and protecting the southerly houses was nearly impossible.

An hour after sunset, three houses on Plains Street were burning. Although the spread of the fire was being fought stubbornly, there was little hope for the east side of the street.

Then, for a brief moment that no one there would ever forget, the darkness on Plains Street was turned to light.

For the last day or so, Walt Archer had been the most bored man in Warsaw. There hadn’t been much for him to do, other than make a few cautious runs out toward Hoselton with the Milwaukee to keep the drifts knocked down, in case the scram train was needed, and the short burst of snowplowing earlier that day. While he would have liked to have been doing something more constructive, he’d realized that he was just as happy being bored.

After all, he fervently hoped that he wouldn’t have to do the job he was there for: a desperate attempt at using the sick NW2 to evacuate the remaining residents and firefighters there in Warsaw if the need arose. He knew if he had to try that, he could confidently expect a major disaster.

So far, there hadn’t even been a minor scare, but with the fire working closer to the oil company, the possibility was getting stronger.

Besides, he felt like shit. He almost constantly had a driving headache, so stiff that he could hardly see. He could hardly breathe, and was hacking and coughing all the time. Most of his time in Warsaw, he had either been asleep, or busy with something that had to be done. He hadn’t seen much of the fire, but didn’t intend to get very far away from the Milwaukee.

Bud had been asleep for a couple of hours when an Emergency Medical Technician rushed into the dining bus, where Walt was drinking coffee and trying to hold his head up. “There you are,” he said. “What’s the chances of getting an ambulance run off to Spearfish Lake?”

“Pretty good,” Walt replied. “Take us about half an hour to get ready to go, though. What’s the problem?”

“Propane tank exploded at a house up on Plains,” the man replied. “We’ve got three guys burned pretty bad.”

“Get ’em in the way car,” Walt said, getting up, with the prospect of constructive action overcoming him for a moment.

As he headed for the Rock, sitting well beyond the Milwaukee, he realized just how bad he felt. His joints were aching so bad he could hardly walk, and the couple of hours he had been awake had been more than enough. Could he stay awake the four or five hours it would take to get to Spearfish Lake and back? “Well,” he thought, “Bud’s had a couple hours of sleep. I guess I had better ask if he wants to make this run.”

It was hard to wake up Bud, but once accomplished, he agreed that he’d better take the run. The four railroad men turned to getting the heaters off the Rock, and getting it buttoned up for another trip.

If there had been any hope left for the east side of Plains Street, the explosion of the propane tank doomed it. It almost doomed the west side of the street, as well, for the explosion had blown burning boards and other wreckage clear across the street. Only quick work by Lynchburg, supported by hoses run through houses and stores from Main Street had saved the buildings affected.

It was a miracle that more people hadn’t been hurt when the tank blew up. There were three serious burns, two on Lynchburg men, and one on a Kremmling man, but there were seven other people for the ambulance train to take, those with burns of varying degrees, all too severe to deal with in Warsaw.

For the next few minutes, it seemed as if the tired firefighters in Warsaw were holding the line, but virtually everybody was heavily engaged, even the departments downwind of the main fire line. It was generally agreed afterward that the most desperate firefighting of all was in the hour or two after the propane tank exploded on Plains Street.

The men from Blair, for example, well downwind of the main fire line, fought a roaring garage fire that was made worse by the presence of a couple of drums of snowmobile gas. The department had to fight the fire without water from the mains, depending on tankers bringing water from the pumping station at the river. They had no help, except for a hose line run from a distant Kremmling truck. What made this fire doubly worse was that it was right across the street from the oil company; if this one got away from Blair, there wouldn’t be much of a town left.

In the end, the garage was a total loss, but Blair was victorious: the oil company stood unharmed.

Yet, that was only one of several desperate struggles that evening, all made more desperate by the fact that everyone was tired, and several departments had men who had been hauled off to the Spearfish Lake hospital and were therefore irretrievable and irreplaceable.

Things did not go as well on the main fire line. While the railroad men were still getting ready for their ambulance run and the way car was being loaded, Linder got a report that there was a major fire on the east side of Plains Street. He roared over to the scene on his snowmobile to find Lynchburg and Hoselton again fighting a fire in the house they thought was under control.

“Must have not got it all,” Borck reported, “And nobody checked the place for a while. Then, when we noticed smoke coming out of it, we found the interior fully developed.”

“Too bad nobody checked,” Linder said glumly. If the east side of the street was any indication, with the wind more northerly, the west side of the street was in trouble. “I’ll have Warsaw run some hoses through the buildings again to help. We’ve got to stop this thing here, and everybody else is fully engaged.”

Linder gave the necessary orders over his radio. As soon as he had finished speaking, another call followed. “We need an ambulance for a Spearfish Lake man,” Masterfield’s voice said. “He’s hurt bad.”

The Warsaw chief picked up his radio and ordered, “Any unit at the standby train. If the ambulance train hasn’t left yet, tell them to stay here until we see how bad this is. If they’ve left, have the standby train engineer hold them up.” As he was speaking, Linder boarded his snowmobile and began to race the length of Plains Street.

Spearfish Lake had been fighting the fire in the corner house on the east side of Plains Street. It had taken longer for this house to ignite, but once alight it burned as fiercely as the other houses on that side of the street had just a little while earlier.

Joe McGuinness had been in the thick of the firefighting. The icy structure that he had built over the big brick house with the one-inch booster had managed to hold off flying sparks and embers from the Winter Street houses, but even the brick structure hadn’t been able to stop the fire from spreading from the house to the north. McGuinness had been on and off the booster line for a couple hours, alternatively running the hose and warming himself in the nearby rescue van.

He’d just taken over the hose again, and was perhaps a little closer to the fire than he should have been, when a floor collapsed inside the house. As it came crashing to the ground, the shock shook the structure, and the south wall of the old two-story house collapsed.

McGuinness was outside the danger zone of the falling wall, but somehow it didn’t fall right. Something caused it to break up and scatter as it fell, with loose bricks flying through the air and falling all over the place. The one-inch hose lashed as the accountant was felled by a shotgun blast of flying bricks.

The Rock was idling nicely, and the train was set to go, when a fireman ran up to the waiting engine. “They want you to hold up,” he said. “They’ve got another bad injury.”

“What happened this time?” Bud asked.

“A wall fell on a guy from Spearfish Lake,” the fireman said. “He’s hurt bad.”

“We can wait,” Bud said, and turned to Walt, standing beside him, and said, “Look, I don’t know if we’ll be right back or not. A lot is going to depend on how the trucks on this thing hold out, and whether Betty’s heard anything about Ralph. I wouldn’t be a damn bit surprised to find out that he’s permanently stuck down by Thunder Lake somewhere.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Walt said. “With Ralph, you never know.”

A few minutes later, Masterfield came up to the cab. “Sorry to hold you up,” he said, “But Joe’s in bad shape. Head injuries, crushed ribs, possible spinal damage, and a broken hip.”

“Ouch,” Bud said. “Joe?”

“Joe McGuinness. You know, the accountant.”

“Shit,” Bud commented. “We were sitting here talking with him a couple hours ago. Get him loaded, and we’ll get this thing rolling.”

“They’re working on it,” Masterfield said, turning to leave. “I’ve gotta get back.”

“What’s happening now?” Bud asked.

“We’re losing ground again, this time on the west side of Plains. We’re getting too damn close to the oil company for comfort.”

Once again, Plow Extra One was on the way westward for Spearfish Lake. Things had changed a bit since the last trip, only a few hours before. The wind had swung around to the north a little further, so the first leg down the tracks from Warsaw hadn’t drifted up much. This was just as well, for this was the section where fertilizer smoke was still being blown down the tracks.

Once the tracks bent to the west, Plow Extra One was out of the danger from the smoke, but new dangers came from the wind. It was now nearly dead across the tracks, and Bud was glad that he didn’t have to try to make it down to Spearfish Lake on just the Rock’s apron. The drifts were no trouble for the big old plow in front of the Rock, however. The big blade exploded them, sending clouds of snow downwind into the dark.

Bud wasn’t paying much attention to the snow, for his eyes were fixed on the gauges. Having had plenty of examples in the past day, he could tell from the needles what was happening. The Rock was shorting; it reminded Bud all too much of the last trip he had made with the Burlington. Apparently the heaters in Warsaw hadn’t done as much good as he hoped, or maybe the Geep hadn’t been sucking heat from them long enough. He spent a lot of time worrying, hoping the Rock wouldn’t get sick as quickly as the green Geep had earlier.

Despite the best efforts of three fire departments, the house fire on the east side of Plains Street was a lost cause by the time Linder made it back from the scene of the Spearfish Lake man’s injury. Worse, two more houses to the south of it were burning, in spite of desperate effort to stop the spread of the flames.

Things got worse in the next two hours. The first house got past the peak of the fire and started to burn out, but by then the next two houses were fully involved, and more houses down the street were starting to go. Only the house at the corner of Third and Plains was still untouched, and it was clearly only a matter of time before it would join its neighbors. It certainly was getting too hot for some of the departments on Plains Street; and it was time for Linder to think about falling back again.

He couldn’t call a conference again; the departments engaged in the middle of Plains Street were in positions much too precarious for that. The best he could do was to call a radio conference.

“Sooner or later, we’re gonna have to abandon Plains Street,” Linder said over the radio. “If we do, let’s do it in an orderly manner. We’ll continue to work the houses on Plains Street by running through buildings from Main, when we can. As the need arises, we’ll pull Lynchburg, Hoselton, and Albany River off to the north in that order. Spearfish Lake and Walsenberg will come off to the south in that order. Warsaw, Meeker, Blair, and Kremmling will hold their positions.

“When Lynchburg disengages, it’ll go over to Herkimer Street south of Third to cover the downwind exposure. Hoselton will go over to Herkimer, north of Blair. Albany River will just pull up onto Second and try to prevent the spread of the fire northward. We’ve saved some houses on the north end of Plains; if it spreads to Main, maybe we can keep it farther to the south.

“Spearfish Lake will take up and move to Third and Main, and be prepared to join the effort on Main or assist in protection of the oil company. Walsenberg stays on Third, between Plains and Main for the moment, so they ought to be able to keep their present connections.

“A lot of people saw that propane tank explosion a little while ago. I just want to remind everyone that dead downwind of the main fire right now there’s a propane tank at least a hundred times that size. If a fully developed fire threatens that tank badly, we’ll keep hoses on it with a minimum of volunteers and pull everybody else back. If that goes, it’ll take the rest of the town. Let’s not let it go.”

Plow Extra One had made it up onto the pine barrens where the Burlington had died earlier. The Rock was still running, and pretty well, in comparison to the previous trip, but the engine obviously wasn’t well. Bud had worried about it every inch of the way, but now it looked like he was going to make it in. Bud didn’t have to have a conference with Penny or Sloat this time; there would be no more runs to Warsaw, no going to rescue Plow Extra Two, without letting the trucks dry out. The scram train? About all that could be said was that he hoped it wouldn’t be needed for a while. Maybe it would, and maybe it wouldn’t, but getting the Rock back to Warsaw without a thorough drying was going to be a very iffy proposition.

With the worry easing a bit, he began to think about the injured firemen back in the way car. Bud didn’t know any of the Kremmling or Lynchburg men, and didn’t know McGuinness well, but he knew he was a good egg who had taken hold in Spearfish Lake. Bud was doing all he could for him, and that didn’t feel like enough. He’d get Joe to the ambulance at the loading dock and would then just have to hope for the best.

Would the ambulances be at the loading dock? Bud had been so worried about the Rock that he hadn’t made his usual radio call from near Hoselton, and busy as Linder was, he might not have called Upton to tell him the train was expected.

Maybe it wasn’t too late to call now. Bud picked up the microphone.

“Spearfish Lake,” he called, “This is Plow Extra One. We’ve got critical ambulance cases on board, so have both ambulances waiting. We’ll be in shortly. We’re about half a mile west of the 919 crossing.”

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