“Well, it’s not my business. I fill the tanks, and I don’t ask ’em where they’re goin’.”

“Well, it’s a nice storm; there’ll be ski-ing at Mt. Rose after it’s over. I don’t see anyway why Max didn’t get back in time for work.”

12

The Assistant Divisional Engineer at Emigrant Gap and the Chief Trainmaster at Norden kept the trains going through on schedule. On this day they had no great trouble; the snow was falling thickly, but had not yet had time to pile up. First, the little plow on the front of each locomotive threw aside the newly fallen snow. When the ridges by the side of the tracks were a foot or so high, a flanger went through. Pulled by a locomotive and looking much like an ordinary caboose, the flanger carried a cleverly designed plow-share. When lowered, the plow-share had two projecting knives which scooped out the snow from the inside of each rail. Pulled along at thirty miles an hour it threw the snow well back from the tracks and piled up a long ridge. Every flanger had to have orders just like a fast through train or a heavy freight. Sometimes, when traffic was heavy, there was difficulty in finding a space to send one through between trains, or (the other way round) to get the flanger off the track in time for the other trains to get through on schedule. But the snow was not yet deep, and on the whole the day was an easy one.

13

The planes were going through. There were delays and a few cancellations of flights, but service was never really interrupted. The storm seemed to have settled down into a good steady rain—no severe turbulence, and ceilings sufficiently high everywhere. There was some icing over the Hump, but by keeping above twelve thousand feet the pilots could either avoid it altogether or fly through before it got serious.

14

The General had not gone to the office that morning, but had kept in touch by telephone. He gazed at the rain through his windows, and it looked very wet. He was sixty-four, and dampness was likely to arouse tinges of rheumatism. He himself saw the humor of his present situation. Retired from the Army, he had taken his present job, which had to do chiefly with rain; and yet the state of his joints was such that he must shun actual contact with rain.

The General was of that older generation which kept Collected Works in its libraries and looked upon Bret Harte as an important writer. After lunch, before going to the office, he pulled out the proper volume and again read what was to him, partly for professional reasons, a favorite passage: