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."