of clay and human bodies and wet
clothes and horses, who talked and laughed and waited restlessly. The
pair waded around examining guy-ropes, stakes, the protective walls
raised of hay bales. They took advantage of a sudden dropping of the
wind to go among the small tents, thrusting their flares within each
and having a look, to make certain no sleeper of the day shift had
been overlooked. Then at last they stumbled up the street to Bryant's
shack.

The wind now had utterly died away. The snow had resumed its thick,
silent fall straight to earth. Carrigan was kicking his boots clean
against the door-sill when Lee exclaimed, "Listen to that, Pat!"

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 f