“Just the other side of the big bend,” said the woman who was sitting crowded against the other door.

“Thanks.” It was funny; sometimes a woman had better sense about such things than a man did.

It was a fine big car; he put it into second and went down around the Horseshoe as fast as he dared; and that was about twice as fast as any ordinary driver would dare. Out of his eye-corner he saw that the man beside him was scared, pea-green.

He met a car going up; it was a knife in his ribs to think that another car was going up there to add to the clutter, but he had to see to this other matter first, even if it lost him the road. In theory the Highway Patrol handled traffic and people, while he took care of the snow. But there might not be an officer within ten miles, and so he had to look after everything, all at once.

He slowed down. “Keep a look-out on the other side for those two people, will you, please?” he said to the woman. She lowered the window a little. The snow came with a blast in her face, but she kept looking. She was a good one.

The Superintendent was thinking fast. There must be a rotary working close to here. He would stop and see if the operator had seen these people walking, and they could set their radio working to bring up help. Perhaps, he kept hoping, one of the men who had enough courage to get out into the storm would also have the sense to start flagging cars and keep them from piling into the jam on the lower side.

Then he saw them—two figures scurrying awkwardly to the side of the road as the car-lights hit them. He threw on the brakes.

“I’ll have to bring them into your car.”

He was afraid that the woman might be hysterical, but ten minutes in the storm had taken the fight out of her. She was middle-aged, and the man must be close to sixty. They were a miserable-looking pair, plastered with snow, not too warmly dressed. The woman’s gloveless hands were blue with cold already. And it was five miles down the Pass before the first house.

He bundled them into the back seat of the big car. The woman in front gave them a steamer-rug. The Superintendent climbed in again behind the wheel, and started again downgrade toward where the rotary must be working. He had saved life; now he must get his road open. He spoke quickly and quietly to the man beside him.