Up at Windy Point the mechanics were working on the broken axle. It was a tough job. As darkness came on, they had to rig up extension lights from the battery. They staked down canvas all around the rotary. But twice the canvas blew loose, and all the time the wind whistled under and over it and through all the chinks until a man could hardly see or hear, and had to work mostly by feel. But in the end they pulled the pieces of the old axle, and fitted the new one into place.

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The men on the slide gave the rotary with the new axle a cheer when it came down the road. The Superintendent lined it up behind and to the left of the other rotary. With two arcs of snow flying the rate of progress picked up, and the scene was wilder-looking than ever.

Then suddenly there was a lot of yelling, and some of the men from the top slid down. Peters was just heaving himself out of the snow. They beat him on the back in triumph, and then dug in and pulled out. Swenson who was just behind. The two of them had got the shovels out of the back of the rotary, dug their way in to the rock wall along the inner edge of the highway, and then followed it, tunneling foot by foot, and using the rock wall as one side of their tunnel.

“I’ll send you right up to the Station, and you can get something to eat and turn in,” said the Superintendent.

“Ah, I’m all right,” said Peters. “Give me some webs and a shovel, and I’ll get up there with the boys on the slide.”

Swenson said nothing, but went along with Peters.

By this time it was eight o’clock, and the rotaries had not eaten ahead more than fifty feet into the two hundred feet of slide which lay upon the road.

At nine the cooks came down with coffee and sandwiches. Everybody felt a little better.

The men gave all they had, but there was something grim about it. You wouldn’t have called it a joyous fight. The men did a lot of swearing—at the job, and at each other. Superintendent and all, they knew they had lost the road. It would be in the papers: Donner Pass Closed. Just as if it might have been U.S. 50 over Echo Summit or the Sonora Pass road which nobody even tried to keep open.

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It’s a fine thing to go below (as the mountain people say) in the spring, and meet up with a fellow you know, in Sacramento maybe, or Marysville. And you go in for beers and he says, “Where you been all winter?”

“Oh,” you say, “I was up on the Hump with the snow-plows.”

“That so?” he says, and he’s kind of impressed.