For a long time then, the three stood looking out the window, striving--merely for the sake of passing time--to identify the almost hidden buildings of the little town, scarcely more than a hundred yards away. At last the wire opened again, and the operator went once more to his desk. Ba'tiste and Houston waited for him to give some report. But there was none. At last: "What is it?" Houston was at his side. The operator looked up. "Denver asking Marionville if it can put its snowplow through and try to buck the drifts from this side. No answer yet." A long wait. Then: "Well, that's done. Only got one Mallett engine at Marionville. Other two are in the shop. One engine couldn't--" He stopped. He bent over the key. His face went white--tense. "God!" "What's wrong?" The two men were close beside him now. "Number one-eleven's kicked over the hill!" "One-eleven--kicked over?" "Yes. Snowplow. They're wiring Denver, from Crestline. The second plow's up there in the snowshed with the crew. One of 'em's dead. The other's--wait a minute, I have to piece it together." A silence, except for the rattling of the key, broken, jagged, a clattering voice of the distance, faint in the roar and whine of the storm, yet penetrating as it carried the news of a far-away world,--a world where the three waiting men knew that all had turned to a white hell of wintry fury; where the grim, forbidding mountains were now the abiding place of the snow-ledge and the avalanche; where even steel and the highest product of invention counted for nothing against the blast of the wind and the swirl of the tempest. Then finally, as from far away, a strained voice came, the operator's: "Ice had gotten packed on the rails already. One-eleven tried to keep on without a pick and shovel gang. Got derailed on a curve just below Crestline and went over. One-twelve's crew got the men up. The plow's smashed to nothing. Fifty-three thousand dollars' worth of junk now. Wait a minute--here's Denver." Again one of those agonizing waits, racking to the two men whose future depended largely upon the happenings atop the range. Far on the other side, fighting slowly upward, was a freight train containing flatcar after flatcar loaded with the necessary materials of a large sawmill. True, June was yet two months away. But months are short when there is work to do, when machinery must be installed, and when contracts are waiting. Every day, every hour, every minute counted now. And as if in answer to their thoughts, the operator straightened, with a little gesture of hopelessness. "Guess it's all off," came at last. "The general superintendent in Denver's on the wire. Says to back up everything to Tollifer, including the plows, and give up the ghost." "Give it up?" Houston stared blankly at the telegrapher. "But that's not railroading!"