THE IMPERIAL ENGINEER (20 page)

"It's vitally important we reach Hailey as soon as possible," a well dressed fellow
said. From his accent, he was British.

"Not much I can do about that," the Station Master said. "We've no spare engine,
so another train can't be made up. And it wouldn't do no good anyhow, with the cuts
snowed in like they are."

Some of the passengers raised a fuss, demanding to know why the train hadn't
been kept running while the snow was falling, so the line would stay clear. Tony, having
experienced the winds that often swept across the undulating plain between here and the
Wood River, kept quiet. He seriously doubted it would have done any good. There was a
good chance it would have resulted in the train being marooned somewhere in between,
which would have endangered its crew. At least in Bellevue, they had a place to stay.

The two British gentlemen were particularly incensed, because they had some sort
of business dealings that had to be concluded before the end of February. They
immediately went to the telegraph office. Tony, knowing the lodging situation, went to the
hotel to make arrangements for rooms for himself and Lulu. They might have to share
them later, if enough Hailey-bound travelers showed up before the line opened, but at least
they were sure of beds.

She was sitting in the station, wrapped in her quilt, when he returned. "Here. I got
you a room at the hotel," he said, handing her a key. "You might as well go on over there
and settle in. I doubt we'll see a train before day after tomorrow. They'll not even try to
open the line until the snow stops."

"I didn't..." She shook her head. "Thank you. I'd like to refuse, but the thought of
a real bed is irresistible. How much do I owe you?"

"We'll settle up when we get home. Mr. Eagleton has an account at the hotel, since
he comes through here often."

She frowned, as if suspicious, but said only, "Thank you," again.

He wanted to offer to carry her valise across the street for her, but refrained from
offering. She'd probably throw it in his face.

* * * *

After supper, a meal taken family style in the hotel, the men sat around the small
lobby, conversing desultorily or reading books or magazines. The only woman among the
stranded passengers, Lulu went to her room. Tony rather imagined he was far warmer than
she, for the upper floor of the hotel was heated by a single chimney. Her room was at the
opposite end of the hall.

Morning brought an end to the snowfall, but no train. Lulu refused to stay in her
room. She joined the men for meals and staked out a chair in the corner of the hotel lobby
for her own. Fortunately the drugstore in town sold writing paper, so she was soon working
on an article she hoped to sell to
Harper's Weekly
or
Appleton's Journal
.
She did her best to ignore Tony's ubiquitous presence. Even so, she felt him watching her,
and found concentration difficult. Each time she looked up from her work, it took her
longer to force her thoughts back to the article.

Writing could not occupy her every hour though, particularly since she no longer
experienced the terrible lethargy that had plagued her these past several weeks. Each day
she took a vigorous walk, exploring the small town that had grown up with the coming of
the railroad. Shoshone was a wide open town, its main street lined with more saloons than
anything else. Because there were few other cleared roads, she walked the length of the
main street early each morning, before the saloons were operating at full spate. No one
accosted her, probably because she was never really alone.

Much to her disgust, Tony followed her every time she left the hotel. He always
stayed a block or so behind, which was the only reason she let him live. Rather than give
him the satisfaction of knowing he made her furious, she ignored him.

Except for one time. She had been working for several hours, struggling with an
argument that seemed weak. The words simply would not come, and finally she threw her
pencil down in disgust. The lobby was empty, although she knew Tony was somewhere
nearby. She simply could not escape his vigilance. She hoped he was amused by all the
waiting about he was doing.

Perhaps some fresh air would clear her mind. She closed her portfolio and set it
under her chair before pulling on her coat. It was snowing again, she discovered when she
stepped outside, harsh, icy snow blown along by a gusty wind.
Isn't it supposed to be
warmer when it snows?
Lulu tied her scarf more tightly about her head and started out
on her usual route. For a change, she didn't see Tony, but the weather was too miserable
for her to enjoy her temporary solitude. After walking for about five minutes, she gave it
up and headed back to the hotel.

Head down, bending into the wind, she might not have seen him had she not
slipped on an icy patch. With a wild windmilling of arms, she managed to keep on her feet,
one of them planted in the deep snow beside the path. As she pulled it free, she saw
motion, and turned her head in that direction.

He was like a ghost in the white world, dancing across the snow, his arms and legs
moving with an almost feline grace, his face blank and serene. She recognized his
movements as the same she'd seen before, in the barn at Christmastime. Like a dance, but
also as if he fought an invisible enemy, both of them caught in some thick substance that
slowed every movement.

He circled away from her, then back. When he was facing her, he came to rest,
legs still bent, hands upraised. His eyes opened...

And gazed directly into hers. Lulu shivered, unable to look away. Passion
shimmered in the icy air between them, an almost intangible heat, warming her from the
inside out. Time seemed suspended, until a door slammed and a man's voice called out.
Tony clasped one hand over the other fist and gave her a slight bow. Automatically Lulu
curtseyed. Without a word he followed her into the hotel lobby, where she went to her
corner and he threw himself into a chair in the opposite one. Neither spoke, then or
later.

Once she had her article in good shape, Lulu borrowed a book from one of the
British gentlemen, brothers named Palmer, and forced herself to read it, a scholarly tome
about the British campaign in Spain and Portugal in the early part of the century. It put her
to sleep often, but she kept reading. It was that or do nothing, which she was
constitutionally incapable of.

The lobby was heated by a coal stove in its center, an inefficient monster that had
certainly been designed by someone more suited to designing locomotives. It used the
same sulfurous coal that the trains did, and whenever new fuel was added to its firebox, it
gave off choking fumes for several minutes. Once in a while the gas would build up until it
exploded, blowing the door open and filling the lobby with black smoke.

Everyone then trooped outside until the smoke cleared, leaving the doors open so
that the lobby lost what heat it held. After a while they trooped back in again, and sat in
relative comfort until the stove grew red hot and drove them into the cold once more. After
this second exodus, they returned to a frigid room and dying coals. So the whole rigmarole
began again. Lulu almost welcomed these regular distractions, and wondered what other
small events she might find amusing if she were to be stuck here for a week or more.

Tony returned from the station as they were emerging around ten in the morning
of their sixth day in Shoshone. "Here's good news," he cried as he approached, waving a
telegram. "Listen to this. 'I will arrive at Shoshone with a snow outfit tomorrow morning,
and clear the branch to Hailey in the afternoon.' It's from Dodderidge, the railroad
superintendent."

The men all cheered. Lulu clapped. What a relief it would be to get home. Once
settled, she would find just the right time to tell Tony. Guiltily she admitted that she had
had numerous chances to inform him of his impending parenthood, but had kept putting it
off. She knew what his reaction would be. That was a battle she wanted to fight on her own
terms and her own territory.

The promised snow outfit arrived on schedule. It consisted of six units, an engine
bearing an enormous snowplow, two smaller engines, two cabooses fitted up as
bunkhouses for the laborers who would wield picks and shovels as needed, and last of all,
an elegantly appointed private car belonging to Mr. Dodderidge. The superintendent
recognized Tony and immediately invited him to travel in his private car. After a brief
conversation, he extended the invitation to Lulu and the two Misters Palmer. The rest of
the northbound passengers would follow in a regular train that had arrived behind the snow
outfit. He assured everyone that they would be in Hailey before the day was out.

Thank goodness
. This morning Lulu had been unable to button her jacket
over her waist.

The traffic over this new line, through a thinly populated district, is, of course, small,
and consequently the company were only running one train a day each way. This train used
to go up in the morning to Hailey, the terminus, fifty-six miles from Shoshone, and return
in the evening, and it was the only rolling- stock available. The previous day, while we
were running through the snow between Granger and Pocatello, the storm had caught the
train up at the far end of the line, and there it was still.

"Snow Bucking" In The Rocky Mountains
The Living Age
, Vol. 104, Issue 1342

~~~

The first twenty miles of the journey was uneventful. A couple of brief warm
spells during the week had allowed some of the snow to melt, so the line was all but clear.
The enormous snowplow on the first engine of their train seemed superfluous for the first
few miles, but Tony knew that the worst was to come. He'd seen cuts half-filled with snow
when he came down the line three weeks ago, and with the blizzard of last week, he could
imagine just how well packed they were now.

"You'll want to hang on whenever you hear the whistle," he warned the others.
"When we hit the drifts, we'll hit hard. It can get pretty rough." He looked at Lulu, who sat
in an armed chair a little apart from the rest of them. "You'd be better off in one of the
secured seats. It wouldn't take much of a jerk to tip over that chair."

For the past week she'd spoken to him only when she couldn't avoid it, and this
morning was no different. "Thank you," she said in a voice as icy as the air outside, and
moved to one of the upholstered benches in the dining area.

They started hitting drifts just short of Tikura. Tony could see that they were deep
ones, some almost as high as the window he looked out of. The slight thaws of the past
week had done more harm than good here, for they had caused a thick crust of ice to form
on top of the snow.

The whistle sounded, and a moment later the train gave a great, rattling jerk, as it
hit a drift and burst through. No sooner were they past it, then the same thing happened
again. And again. Sometimes the intervals between drifts lasted several minutes;
sometimes they came one after another, until he wondered how they could possibly break
free.

When the train stopped for water, the younger Mr. Palmer said, "Are we at Tikura
yet?"

"No, not yet. A few miles more, I think." Identifiable landmarks were concealed
by the snow, and he really had no idea where they were.

Soon they were underway again. The whistle sounded a series of blasts as the train
built up speed. "Hold on tight," Tony warned the others, just before the plow struck. The
entire train shuddered, slowed, but didn't stop. They could hear the engines laboring
mightily. It crept ahead, yards, then feet, and finally inches, until it came to a full stop.

On both sides all they could see was a wall of white, although to the west a narrow
line of gray sky showed above the snowdrift. "Let's go see," Tony said, heading toward the
observation platform at the rear of the car. The others followed.

Looking backward, they could see how the drift sloped steeply away from the
train. The elder Mr. Palmer stepped to the ground, saying, "I imagine one could climb to
the top and see what has occurred."

They could, for the thick crust easily held their weight.

The great snowplow and the other two engines were all but buried, covered with
blocks of ice and gobbets of snow thrown up when the plow forced its way through the
enormous drift. As they walked along the top of the great mound of snow, they found they
were standing higher than its tall smokestack.

"Look," Lulu said, pointing. "We almost made it through."

The drift petered out only yards beyond the nose of the plow. Even now the crew
from the two cabooses were digging and hacking away at the snow piled up around the
engines' wheels. At the same time, the engine of the following train, now free of its cars,
had inched forward and hitched onto the private car and the two cabooses and was pulling
them back so the snow and ice that had piled up under them could be cleared.

Noon came and went before the line was cleared enough for another run. Tony
and the others retired to the private car to partake of an excellent lunch, prepared by Mr.
Dodderidge's chef.

As they dined, Lulu chatted cordially with the Palmers, discussing the music of
Messers. Gilbert and Sullivan. She had seen their operetta, "The Pirates of Penzance" in
New York the previous year. Tony added little to the conversation, afraid that if he were to
join in, she would retreat into silence again.

It was close to one o'clock when they started again. One after another, the great
snowplow conquered the drifts, but at a cost of long delays and much fuel. Tony felt
battered and bruised, just from the jolting and jerking they'd endured in relative comfort.
He could only poorly imagine what the trainmen and the pick-and-shovel crews must be
enduring.