The Long Winter (Little House 6)

He got right out there with the men again, and again they cleared the cut. It took longer that time because they had to move more snow. But he got the work train through, just in time to be snowed under by the next blizzard.

You had to admit that the superintendent had stickto-itiveness. He tackled the cut again and got it cleared again, and then he sat in Tracy through another blizzard. This time he ordered out two fresh work crews and two locomotives with a snowplow.

He rode out to the Tracy cut on the first locomotive. The cut rose up like a hill now. Between the snowbanks that he’d had thrown up on both sides of them, the blizzard had packed earth and snow, frozen solid, one hundred feet deep and tapering off for a quarter of a mile.

“All right, boys!” he said. “We’ll clear her out with picks and shovels till we can run the snowplows through.”

He kept them at it, double-quick and double pay, for two days. There was still about twelve feet of snow on the tracks, but he had learned something. He knew he would be lucky to get three clear days between blizzards. So on the third morning, he was going to run the snowplows through.

He gave his orders to the two locomotive engineers. They coupled the locomotives together with the snowplow in front and ran the work train out to the cut. The two work crews piled out and in a couple of hours of fast work they had moved another couple of feet of snow. Then the superintendent stopped the work.

“Now,” he ordered the engineers, “you boys back down the track a full two miles, and come ahead from there with all the steam-pressure you’ve got. With two miles to get up speed you ought to hit this cut at forty miles an hour and go through her clean as a whistle.”

The engineers climbed into their locomotives. Then the man on the front engine got down again. The men of the work crews were standing around in the snow, stamping their feet and beating their hands to keep warm. They crowded in to hear what the engineer was going to say, but he walked up to the superintendent and said it just the same.

“I quit,” he said. “I’ve been driving a locomotive for fifteen years and no man can call me a coward. But I’m not taking any orders to commit suicide. You want to send a locomotive up against ten foot of frozen snow at forty miles an hour, Mr. Superintendent; you can get some other man to drive it. I quit, right here and now.”

Pa paused, and Carrie said, “I don’t blame him.”

“I do,

” said Laura. “He oughtn’t to quit. He ought to figure out some other way to get through, if he thinks that way won’t work. I think he was scared.”

“Even if he was scared,” Mary said, “he ought to do as he was told. The superintendent must know best what to do or how would he be the superintendent?”

“He doesn’t know best,” Laura contradicted. “Or he’d be keeping the train running.”

“Go on, Pa, go on!” Grace begged.

“‘Please,’ Grace,” Ma said.

“Please,” said Grace. “Go on, Pa! What happened next?”

“Yes, Pa, what did the superintendent do then?” Mary asked.

“He fired him,” said Laura. “Didn’t he, Pa?”

Pa went on.

“The superintendent looked at that engineer, and he looked at the men standing around listening, and he said, ‘I’ve driven a locomotive in my time. And I don’t order any man to do anything I won’t do myself. I’ll take that throttle.’

“He climbed up into the locomotive, and he set her in reverse, and the two locomotives backed off down the track.

“The superintendent kept them backing for a good long two miles, till they looked smaller than your thumb, far off down the track. Then he signaled with the whistle to the engineer behind and they both put on the steam-power.

“Those locomotives came charging down that two miles of straight track with wide-open throttles, full speed ahead and coming faster every second. Black plumes of coal smoke rolling away far behind them, headlights glaring bigger in the sunshine, wheels blurring faster, faster, roaring up to fifty miles an hour they hit that frozen snow.”

“What… what happened… then, Pa?” Carrie asked, breathless.

“Then up rose a fountain of flying snow that fell in chunks for forty yards around. For a minute or two no one saw anything clear, nobody knew what had happened. But when the men came running to find out, there was the second locomotive buried halfway in the snow and the engineer crawling out of its hind end. He was considerably shaken up, but not hurt badly enough to mention.

“‘Where’s the superintendent? What happened to him?’ they asked the engineer. All he said was, ‘How the dickens do I know? All I know is I’m not killed. I wouldn’t do that again,’ he said. ‘Not for a million dollars in gold.’

“The foremen were shouting to the men to come on with their picks and shovels. They dug the snow loose from around the second engine and shoveled it away. The engineer backed it out and down the track out of the way, while the men dug furiously into the snow ahead, to come at the first engine and the superintendent. In hardly any time at all they struck solid ice.

“That first locomotive had run full speed, head-on into that snow, its full length. It was hot with speed and steam. It melted the snow all around it and the snow-water froze solid in the frozen snow. There sat the superintendent, madder than a hornet, inside the locomotive frozen solid in a cake of ice!”

Grace and Carrie and Laura laughed out loud. Even Ma smiled.