The head and broad shoulders of the foreman pushed up. Lon shook snow out of his hair, eyes, and ears.
The others exchanged bulletins with him. He was, he said, as rampageous as a long-legged hill two-year-old.
“Mr. Hollister!” Betty quavered.
The engineer was nowhere to be seen. They called, and no answer came. Betty’s heart dropped like a plummet. She turned upon her father anguished eyes. They begged him to do something. He noticed that her cheeks were blanched, the color had ebbed from her lips. His daughter’s distress touched him nearly. He could not stand that stricken look.
“I’ll find him,” he promised.
Jammed between two trees, upside down, with one end sticking out of the snow, they found the wagon bed at the bottom of the ravine. Forbes spoke to Reed in a low voice, for his ears alone.
“Not a chance in fifty of findin’ him in all this snow, an’ if we do, he’ll not be alive.”
“Yes,” agreed the ranchman. “If a fellow knew where to look. But no telling where the snow carried him.”
“Might still be under the wagon bed, o’ course.”
“Might be.”