Carrigan wiped the moisture from his ears and harkened.
"That's the Limited coming, and making no stops," he remarked. "Get in!"
They entered the little building. The office contained the engineering staff and several others. Tobacco smoke lay thick in the room.
Outside, the faint whining sound was growing steadily in volume until at last it deepened into a roar very like that of an approaching express train, as Pat had suggested. Followed a smart blow on the shack. Then it reeled and the night was filled with a howling tumult that deafened the men inside; the blizzard had burst upon the mesa. Through the windows one could see nothing, for the air had become a black maelstrom of whirling snow and darkness where a choked roar persisted as steadily as the bass thunder of Niagara. The warmth had vanished; a cutting cold, as if striking direct from arctic ice, minute by minute drove the mercury in the thermometer on Bryant's wall downward with unbelievable swiftness. If anything, the fury of the storm seemed to increase as time passed, swelling to such terrible violence that one imagined nothing could withstand its force, its mad blasts, its deadliness.
"Those mess tents and horse tents," Lee said to Carrigan, anxiously.
"They're safer under their lee of hay than is this little paper box we're sitting in," the contractor replied. "I've been through blizzards before, and know how to meet them."
From by the stove one of the engineers spoke.
"But we'll never see some of those little tents any more. There are several travelling toward Mexico by now."
"And my new flannel shirt!" cried another, suddenly. "Washed it this noon and hung it out on a line and forgot all about it. Oh, Lord, where is it now?"
"Good-bye, little shirt, we'll never see you more!" said the first, sentimentally. "You'll be hanging on the Equator by morning."