By now he was in the shadow of the Pass. The ground was thinly snow-covered; little windrows of snow thrown aside by the plows (remnants of the November storm) lay at each edge of the pavement. Beyond the gates, the grade began. He passed the six-thousand-foot marker and turn-out. The road clung to the side of the gorge, curve after curve. A heavy truck came down, back-firing. Too fast, that fellow. He passed a jalopy—ARKANSAS. It was steaming hard from the radiator. Migrant-laborers they looked like, not many on this road, in winter anyway.

He went by Big Shot where the road had been blasted out of a great granite cliff—a bad place here for snowslides. The snow was getting deeper as he ascended, but still the ridiculous-looking orange stakes stood up high, even where the plows had piled snow against them.

Rocky Point brought a puff of wind, and then he swung back into the quiet of the little hollow around which the road swung in the Horseshoe. He was right beneath the crags now; high above, he saw the Bridge. He heard the mutter of a plane overhead; a locomotive whistled from somewhere. ILLINOIS (had that one already); COLORADO; MICHIGAN.

Windy Point always lived up to its name—some trick of the slopes around it probably. From the Point he saw the snowsheds of the railroad, and the line of many-wired telephone poles which plunged right down the face of the Pass without needing to twist and turn like the road. He was almost above timber-line now; trees were stunted and grew only in sheltered spots.

Between Windy Point and the Bridge he passed men working along the road. He tooted his horn gently, and waved at them as he went by. In the rear-view mirror he noted that they did not hurry to return to work, but stood talking and lighting cigarettes. No matter. They knew as well as he that shovels would never keep Donner Pass open. Still, you couldn’t just let men sit around the bunk-house all day, playing poker—had to make a gesture of keeping them at work. Let them loaf a little while they could. They’d work hard when they needed to.

He came to the Bridge. Two cars had halted at the turn-out, and some women were oh-ing and ah-ing at the view of the lake and of the road twisting down the face of the Pass. UTAH again, and TENNESSEE.

He swung around the last loop, drove through a cut deep-blasted in granite, and came to the big garage of the Maintenance Station. The building was chiefly an immense, high-pitched roof of corrugated iron designed to resist snow. It looked ridiculous now, like the snow-stakes. Not more than three feet of dirty-looking old snow was piled up under the eaves.