On a half-run, as fast as he could go, the Superintendent hurried along between the two files of cars. He glanced right and left as he ran. From windows lowered just a few inches he saw one pair of eyes after another staring out stupidly, looking a little perturbed but just waiting for somebody else to straighten things out. Yet as he hurried on, he met two men bending forward into the gale, plugging through the storm, ahead. The Superintendent felt a quick warmth within him; those snow-covered figures let him know that Americans weren’t all soft with civilization; some of them still piled out into the gale and the snow, and marched to the front, to see if anything could be done—and do it. The blood of the frontiersmen hadn’t yet gone altogether thin.

Again he had to stop to warn people about closed windows. But the next time he stopped, it was because the door of a car was standing open. He looked in—nobody there. He thought of the two men he had met, but they would have shut their doors to keep the snow out. And there—of all things—were some gloves lying on the front seat, a woman’s gloves!

He hurried to the next car, and beat on the window-glass. Another pair of stupidly wondering eyes looked out at him.

“What happened to that woman in the car ahead?” shouted the Superintendent.

“Her?” came the word from an invisible mouth below the level of the glass. “She and the old man was with her—they started t’walk down the road. She yelled in—said we was all goin’ t’ get buried in by the snow and froze. Just like somebody named Donner, she said. Think we’d better start walkin’ out like she said?”

“God’s sake, no! When did they leave?”

“Oh, maybe five minutes.”

The Superintendent really ran now. Five minutes! But a hysterical woman and an old man could not move very fast. Crazy! There ought to be a law against books about the Donner Party; but he had known it to happen even when people had never heard of the Donners.

At the end of the line another car was pulling in. The Superintendent yelled through at the driver: “See a man and woman down this road, walking?”

“Yes. We wondered—”

The Superintendent opened the door without asking leave.

“Slide over,” he said, “and give me the wheel. You got chains on?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t argue then.”

The Superintendent flipped the wheels to the left, and drove the front bumper into the snow-wall. He reversed, spinning the steering-wheel. He felt the back tires slip, but the chains bit and held her. He flung her into low again, steered left, just grazed the snow-wall with the bumper and was off—downgrade.

“How far away did you pass those people?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” said the man. “Quite a way.”