Chapter 17

1353 1/9 - 1607 1/9: Plow Extra One

"Ed," Bud yelled. "What happened?"

"Don't know," the mechanic replied in the now-dark cab.

"Could those shorting trucks have burnt out the generator?"

"Whatever happened, that ain't the problem," Sloat replied, rather more calmly than Bud could manage at the moment. "The goddamn fucking diesel stopped! Whatever's wrong, wet traction motors couldn't have had anything to do with it. We're still getting juice from the battery. You'd better radio Spearfish Lake and let them know we're dead before we lose that, too."

"Don't know what good that'll do," Bud replied, beginning to think clearly again. "But at least I guess they won't be worrying about us. I guess I'll have to ride one of the snowmobiles into town and get the Rock, while you stay here and drain this thing. Useless as it is, we don't want it freezing up. At least the ambulance cases we've got this trip won't die on us if it takes another couple hours."

Fortunately, the Burlington had died up on the pine flats within radio reach of town, and Penny proved to be near the Rock's radio. "Don't screw around with the snowmobile," Penny suggested. "I've got the Rock warming up, and ten more minutes should take care of the cover plates. I'll run her out to you."

Bud was a little leery of the idea. Penny may have known how to run the Geep, but he wan't that experienced with it. Still, he had done all right in the drifts a few hours before.

A few hours before? That was early this morning!

Bud had been on the go almost continuously since then, with only a couple of little breaks. Suddenly, he realized that he didn't want to ride the snowmobile into town; what he mostly wanted to do was sleep.

"All right, John," he said into the microphone. "Just take it real easy. Don't get in over your head. If you come up on something that you don't know about, stop and give us a call. There's at least one more bad cut between you and us. I can ride out on the snowmobile if you think you need us."

"Will do," Penny replied.

"We'll put out some fusees a couple hundred yards ahead of us, so you'll know where we are," Bud added. He hung up the microphone, and turned to Sloat. "Might as well think about draining this thing, Ed. Say, about twenty minutes or a half hour, go out and put out some fusees. If you need me, or John calls, I'll be back in the way car. There's nothing for me to do until he gets here, so I might as well get some sleep."

In the way car, there was some concern about being stalled out in the middle of nowhere. Bud explained that they had some engine trouble, and that the spare engine from Spearfish Lake would be out soon to take them the rest of the way in. "It needed its turn at servicing," he told the anxious passengers as neutrally as he could, "So we took this one. It was a little risky, but we knew that we could get picked up at either end. How are you people doing back here?"

He was told that the injured men were doing the best that could be expected under the circumstances. Bud quickly found a bunk and was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.

The Burlington was cooling rapidly. Ed had the engine drained and had set out the fusees. He was warming as best he could in what heat was left in the cab when the Rock's headlight slowly pierced through the snowstorm. He picked up the microphone and radioed, "Ah, there you are."

"The Rock to the rescue," the lone "engineer" in the blue Geep replied. "Tell Bud that the last cut wasn't too bad. Didn't have to add much power to get through it."

"Bud's sleeping in the way car," Sloat replied. "If you think you and I can make it back to Spearfish Lake without trouble, I'd be inclined to let him sleep."

"Did he get any sleep since he left here the last time?" Penny asked.

"Maybe twenty minutes up in Warsaw. No more."

"Hell, yes. Let the poor bastard sleep. God knows he deserves it."

The bustle of unloading the ambulance patients in Spearfish Lake woke Bud up. Something seemed subtly wrong to him, until he came more awake and realized that the way car was sitting at the office. He glanced at his watch, and figured that he must have slept for an hour. He knew he could sleep more, but for now, there was work to be done.

He swung out of the bunk and went outside. The engines were nowhere to be seen. He shrugged and went into the office.

Betty looked up as he came in and said, "Oh, you're awake after all. I'll call over to Rick's and have them add an order."

"Were's Ed and John and the engines?"

"They're all out in the engine shed. They guys are poking through the Burlington, trying to see what went wrong with it."

"I think I'd better wander out there and see how they're coming," Bud replied. "When the food gets here, give us a call."

Bud walked down Track One to the engine shed. It was still blowing as hard as it had been a day and a half before, but now the wind had gotten around more to the north, so he walked with his back to the wind. The snow was still coming down as hard as ever; only by cleaning things out with the big plow now and then, along with a lot of work by Tefke and the pickup truck had kept the yard clear to the point where it was possible to get around.

The parking lot had diminished in size as Tefke had run out of places to pile snow, but Bud noticed that what was left of it wasn't empty. The trucks of yet another fire department were waiting, covered with snow as if they had been sitting there for hours. There was no telling what department it was, but that wasn't important, just now.

It was chilly in the engine shed, for the big furnace hadn't had time to regain the ground lost when the doors had been opened for the Rock to push the dead Burlington inside. The big green Geep sat lonely in the middle of the shed, but there was some activity around it. Muttered cursing could be heard from deep within its internals.

"Got any idea what the problem is, Ed?" Bud called.

"Which problem? The weak motors, the air compressor failure, or the dead diesel," the mechanic replied. "Or just the fact that it's the biggest piece of shit left in existence since they scrapped the Amberjack?" Ed had been glad to see that boat go to its reward.

"What I want to know is why the diesel crapped out so suddenly," Bud said, walking closer.

"Good question," Sloat admitted. "It was pretty logical that something had to be wrong with the fuel system when it died out there, but I wasn't sure what. Now, I'm pretty sure that the injector pump is crapped up, but something's funny with its drive shaft, too."

There were a lot of things wrong with the Burlington. "How soon do you think we could have this thing back on line?"

"Long time," Sloat replied. "Could be days. At least a day on the traction motors. A day at least on the air system. The injector pump and drive, I don't know. Might be something fairly simple. If it turns out that we need a new injector pump, that's pretty easy to change, but we don't have one in stock."

For the moment, then, the Burlington was turning into a lost cause. "How about the Rock?" Bud asked the two men. "I take it that it's running all right."

"Pretty well," Sloat replied. "I still don't think that the motors are putting out a hundred percent. I wish we had been able to keep her on the heaters longer."

"The hell with this thing," Bud replied. "Let's go up to the office and have some coffee before the food gets here. We've got to figure out what the next move is, and I don't think it's going to involve this scrap heap."

"Sounds reasonable," Penny replied. The three of them walked back through the storm to the office and clustered around the desks and chairs, coffee in hand.

"Betty, soon as things die down a little, call around and see what the scrap prices are doing," Bud told her. "I'm beginning to wonder if it's going to be worth the effort to throw any more time or money at that piece of shit. Matson and I had a little talk up in Warsaw, and I kind of doubt that after the last couple of days that we're going to be needing two Geeps any longer. We're going to have to pull in our belts real tight without the paper plant traffic."

"Aren't you going to want an engine set for pulling the rock trains out of Summit?" Ed asked.

"Don't know, yet. It might be easier to just run day and night instead of just days, and figure on doubling the hill out of the pit all the time. We'd get better engine utilization that way."

"It'd cost more for crews," Betty observed.

"Six of one, half dozen of the other. Ed, assuming that we can fix the Milwaukee easily, how much trouble would it be to rig her up to mate with the Rock? I assume we could steal some parts from the Burlington."

"Probably wouldn't be that big a job. It'd take a few days, and there'd be some parts we couldn't cannibalize or rig up. What you got to look at there is how much it'll cost to fix up the Milwaukee, but there might be some stuff we can use off the Burlington there, too. But the thing that you got to remember is that with the Milwaukee, you can't run her much faster than about twenty-five."

"Nothing wrong with that," Bud replied. "There aren't that many sections of track where we can run much faster than that, anyway. But, that's a decision we don't have to make today. Once they get the fire out and we all can get a couple good nights sleep, we can assess what it's going to take this outfit going. Right now, we've got to figure out what the next move is. What have we got to take this trip, Betty? I noticed another fire department out in the parking lot, but I didn't catch who it is."

"It's Meeker, sort of," Betty explained. "They and Perrysburg each sent half a department, so they'd leave some protection at home. They're all under the Meeker chief. The bigger units are already loaded on the flats you left here last time, but I had them holding up on the smaller units until we saw if anybody else got here. They've been here for hours, now."

"What do you hear from McPhee and Plow Extra Two?"

"Haven't heard a thing for hours. I called down to Moffat about noon, and they left there before dawn. Then, I called Meeker, and there was no sign of them. So, they've got to be having a bad time there by Thunder Lake."

"How about the Decatur and Overland people they're sending over the Kremmling branch?"

"That's what got me to calling around about Ralph. We had a call from the D&O that they had trouble with their plow, but they'd gotten to Rochester."

"Shit," Bud said, "If it's taken them till now to get to Rochester, it's going to take them till spring to get here. There went a potful of money we damn well could use elsewhere. Maybe I can talk Marks into just forgetting about the whole thing."

"It was a hope," Penny observed. "Maybe some good will come out of it yet."

"I doubt it like hell, now," Bud replied. "The thing is that we don't have a clue as to what our next move is. The way I see it, there are three things we can do. The first is that we can just sit here and get some sleep, like we talked about after the last trip, put the Rock back on the heaters, and let the situation develop for a while. The second is that we could make another run up there with the Rock, and take the Meeker people with us. The third is to head south and collect Ralph. It's the same situation that we had this morning, except that now we don't have an engine to back us up. I'm open to suggestions."

"Much as I hate to try it, Bud, there's points for sitting right here," Ed put in as the door flew open, and Rick arrived with the food. "You need sleep. If you were to sleep, even for, say, four or six hours, then we could have heat on the Rock's trucks for that long. That would help a lot. By then, we might have some idea of what's going on with Ralph."

"You've got a point," Bud replied, cutting into the steak that Rick had brought. "But I don't like the thought of doing nothing. I don't think I could sleep if I knew that we could be doing something, and we aren't. The thing that worries me the most is the Milwaukee and the scram train. If the wind gets around much further, or if the oil company goes, Walt is going to need help bad, and he's going to need it fast. If we go to Warsaw again, maybe Walt could come back with the Rock for a trip, and I could risk staying with the scram train."

"Do that and it runs right back into the problem of moving the scram train," Penny said while struggling with a plastic package of ketchup. "You said yourself that Walt can get more out of the Milwaukee than you can. We could leave Walt there and make it easy on you. Maybe we could put Ed up in the plow, and you and me in the Rock. I could run it through the easy stretches, and wake you up for the hard parts.

Ed disagreed. "Given a choice, I'd rather not risk the Rock at all until the motors are more dried out. If we have to do something, maybe the thing to do is to head south and try to help out Ralph. That would give us some reserve engines and the people to do something with them. Any one of those three engines, with the Milwaukee, would protect the scram train all that it needs to be protected. We could put the other two on the Warsaw turn and leave the Rock here to dry out, because by the time we get back from a run to, say, Meeker, it may well need it. Going the other direction, you could probably get in a run to Warsaw all right. I'm not sure about the one after that."

Bud scratched his head, then sliced off another hunk of beef. "The big problem with heading south is the fact that it gets us even further away from Walt, if he needs us." He sipped his coffee, and went on. "The farther away we are, the longer it'll take us to get there. God knows, we're far away enough now if he needs us. Say we head south. We'll have the plow pointed south. We get down to, say, Blair, and Ralph is near Meeker, somewhere. Then Walt needs us. We'd have to back up to here with the plow on the wrong end before we could turn it around and head for Warsaw, and then, with the wind getting more out of the north, it'd be slow going to Warsaw. The track could snow in behind us before we got back here, too."

"Yeah," Penny said around a mouthful of potato. "But, there's several places where we could run around him. That'd give us three engines behind the little plow, which would be pointing north over tracks we'd recently have been over."

"That's only if we meet him," Bud pointed out. "We don't know where Ralph is, or what he's doing. If he was stuck in California Cut, say, or even somewhere down by Blair, the obvious thing to do would be to go and get him. If he's still somewhere down by Meeker, then that's a whole different story, and we just don't know what it is. My guess is that he's still south of Meeker, as hard as the going ought to be there by Thunder Lake. God knows the people and the engines he's got would be welcome, but unless we hear that he needs help, I think that Ralph is old enough to be let out on his own. I really think that Walt and the scram train are the biggest problem we've got right now."

"You've got the Meeker Fire Department here, too," Betty added. "They probably would be welcome in Warsaw."

"I'm not too sure how welcome they'd be," Sloat said. "Frank said they were short of water up there. They were having a hell of a time trying to find enough water to supply the departments they already have."

"Yeah," Bud replied, "But we'd look like shit if we left a fire department here that they needed, while we headed off south."

Penny stared at the ceiling for a moment, his dinner forgotten, then said, "You know what really bothers me about the Warsaw runs we've been making? We're running the whole damn operation backwards."

Bud thought that was a curious statement. "How do you mean that, John?"

"Just that. We shouldn't be plowing eastward at all. It just started out that way, and we've kept doing it since because it was the obvious way to do it. Look, you guys wouldn't have come back from Warsaw at all last trip if the plow had been pointing west, would you?"

"We probably wouldn't have," Bud agreed. "But we couldn't let ourselves get snowed in up there with the plow pointed the wrong way."

"Right," Penny went on. "You and I did at least one trip where it would have been good if we'd hung around longer. And twice, we've left here, knowing a fire department was on the way, but not wanting to screw around for what might well be hours before they did get here."