It looked like the end of our run. What engineer would dare to dash on at such speed over a submerged track--possibly floated from its bed, possibly barricaded by driftwood? Was not the wave high enough to put out the fires and kill the engine? As we met the roaring eagre we felt the engine leap, as Schwartz's hesitation left him and he opened the throttle. Like knight tilting against knight, wave and engine met. There was a hissing as of the plunging of a great red-hot bar into a vat. A roaring sheet of water, thrown into the air by our momentum, washed cab and tender and car, as a billow pours over a laboring ship; and we stood on the steps, drenched to the skin, the water swirling about our ankles as we rushed forward. Then we heard the scream of triumph from the whistle, with which Schwartz cheered us as the dripping train ran on through shallower and shallower water, and turning, after a mile or so, began climbing, dry-shod, the grade which led from the flooded valley and out upon the uplands. "Come in, Mr. Elkins," said Corcoran. "You'll both freeze out there, wet as you are." Not until I heard this did I realize that we were still standing on the steps, our clothes congealing about us, peering through the now dense gloom ahead, as if for the apparition of some other grisly foe to daunt or drive us back. We went in, and sat down by the roaring fire, in spite of which a chill pervaded the car. We were now running over the divide between the valley we had just left and that of Elk Fork. Up here on the highlands the wind more than ever roared and clutched at the corners of the car, and sometimes, as with the palm of a great hand, pressed us over, as if a giant were striving to overturn us. We could hear the engine struggling with the savage norther, like a runner breathing hard, as he nears exhaustion. Presently I noticed fine particles of snow, driven into the car at the crevices, falling on my hands and face, and striking the hot stove with little hissing explosions of steam. "We're running into a blizzard up here," said Corcoran. "It's a terror outside." "A terror; yes," said Jim. "What sort of time are we making?" "Just about holding our own," said Corcoran. "Not much to spare. Got to stop at Barslow for water. But there won't be any bad track from there on. This snow won't cut any figure for three hours yet, and mebbe not at all, there's so little of it." "Kittrick has been asking for an appropriation to rebuild the Elk Fork trestle," said Jim. "Will it stand this flood?" "Well," said Corcoran, "if the water ain't too high, and the ice don't run too swift in the Fork, it'll be all right. But if there's any such mixture of downpour and thaw as there was along the Creek back there, we may have to jump across a gap. It'll probably be all right."