“Look here. Confidentially, that jam up there won’t be cleared for a little while. Why don’t you go down and wait at the bottom of the Pass? There’s a joint there where you can keep warm and get some coffee, and our friends,” he jerked his head toward the back-seat, “need some. Might save a case of pneumonia. I’ll have their car brought up to the Maintenance Station, and you can drop them there.”

“Sure, we’ll do that,” said the woman next to the window.

Then he saw the lights of the rotary, and stopped.

“Thanks, folks,” he said to the people who owned the car, and jumped out without ever explaining who he was. He crawled into the cab of the rotary, and gave orders fast. “Raise the plow, boys, and take me up the road as fast as you can. We’re all needed.”

Then he pulled the handle that elevated the aerial, and turned the current on, to warm up the tubes. The forty-five seconds they took seemed a long time tonight.

Usually it was a little like playing house, to have a rotary fully equipped as a radio sending-station, registered and everything, with its own call-number. But tonight it was all serious. Twenty seconds. Half a minute.

The swamper was working his levers hard, getting augers raised; the operator was backing the plow away from the snow-wall. Forty-five seconds—and there was life in the tubes.

“KRDM-4 calling KRDO-1; KRDM-4 calling KRDO-1.”

Already the operator was taking the plow up-grade as fast as he could push it. Then the Maintenance Station answered back through the storm. The Superintendent gave orders to the night-foreman.

“Halt all east-bound cars at the summit—quick! Telephone to halt all west-bound cars at the gates. Contact the Highway Patrol and tell them there’s a block at Windy Point. Send two of our men down there right away to handle traffic—pull them off the day-shift if you have to. And send down a push-plow besides.”

They were back at the parked cars. The Superintendent set another truck-driver with a flashlight to flag upcoming traffic. He put the operator of the rotary to work going along the line of cars assuring people that there was no danger and making certain nobody was killing himself with carbon-monoxide fumes. The swamper began clearing the left-hand lane below the block; that was comparatively easy, because you can usually back a car down-hill even in snow, but you may have a hard time backing it up-hill.