The car that Bob was driving was in the lead, and as they neared this dangerous place the disabled chauffeur gave him a word of advice.
“Open ’er wide, son,” he counseled. “We’ll have to buck drifts maybe two feet deep or more, and if we once have to stop, it means we’ll stay there until somebody comes and digs us out. Give ’er all she’ll take, and hold her on the road if you can.”
Bob nodded, and opened the throttle little by little, while the chauffeur held his foot on the muffler cut-out pedal, in order to relieve the engine of all back pressure. Just before they reached the Pass, by some freak of the wind the road had been swept clear of snow for several hundred feet, and this gave the car an opportunity to gather speed.
Faster and faster it flew, until the speedometer needle registered fifty miles an hour. Then through the driving snow the entrance to the Pass loomed ahead, and the chauffeur gave an exclamation.
Before them was a snowdrift that looked almost as high as their car, stretching solidly across the road and leaving Bob not the shadow of a chance to dodge. He set his teeth, opened the throttle to the limit, and gripped the wheel with wrists braced strong as steel bars.
The heavy car hurtled into the drift with the force of a projectile shot from a big gun, throwing clouds of snow in every direction as it bored resistlessly through. The car skidded and twisted in every direction, and it was a supreme test of Bob’s strength and skill to keep the powerful machine on its course. Big rocks lined the road, and more than once they shaved past these with only inches to spare.
Resistless with its initial momentum, the big car was nevertheless gradually losing speed as it penetrated further into the drift and the passive but deadly resistance of the snow began more and more to make itself felt. The engine began to labor, and Bob was on the point of shifting speeds, when suddenly the car broke through the farther side of the drift, seemed to shake the clinging flakes from it, and began to pick up speed again.
Those composing the little party never forgot the gruelling battle against odds that followed. The blustering wind had piled the snow in great drifts in some places, and in others had swept the road so clean that the frozen brown earth was visible for some distance.
On these stretches they would pick up speed, and then charge into the drifts and repeat the former battle. Over and over they did this, Bob driving like a master, with steely blue eyes fastened grimly on the road ahead, jaws set, and a face that looked ten years older than it really was. Those in the car spoke words of encouragement from time to time, but he was too busy and concentrated on his task to answer with anything other than a brief nod.
For what seemed like an age they ploughed through one huge drift after another, with the high rocky walls of the Pass frowning down at them till at last the rugged hills fell back from the road, the air lightened, and they were through the Pass, with less than two miles between them and the warmth and shelter of the hotel. The road now ran along a high ridge, which the wind had swept clear of snow, and Bob stopped the car and relaxed with a great sigh.