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Updated: May 1, 2025
"Well," said Ebenezer, "well...." and stood looking at him. Malcolm would have been his age, too. "Going down to the factory, are you?" Buff said. "Wait a bit. I'll hike on down ahead of you." He turned the snowplow down the factory road, as if he were making a triumphal progress, fashioning his snow borders with all the freedom of some sculpturing wind on summer clouds.
The bug-killer lifted his stick, snarling like a mongrel dog when a stranger tries to drive it out of the house; hurled the stick hysterically, as Big Medicine, rope in hand, advanced implacably, and, with a squawk of horror, turned suddenly and ran. After him, bellowing terribly, lunged Big Medicine, straight through the band like a snowplow, leaving behind them a wide, open trail.
Everything combined to form a hubbub of lowing and bellowing, horn clashing and fence creaking, whacking of sticks and shouting of people; while back and forth through all the confusion, with his horns high above all the other horns, went the big bull, like a great heavy snowplow, clearing the way.
Then, from far up the mountain side, there came the churning, grinding sound of the snowplow, and he hurried toward the station house to greet it. There on a spur, in the faint glow of an electric light, a short train was side-tracked, engineless, waiting until the time should come when the road again would be open, and the way over the Pass free.
And having put off this task from day to day and finding at last nothing more to dally with, he set out one morning for the ancient building down in that part of the village which was older than the rest and was where his business was conducted when it was conducted. It had snowed in the night, and Buff Miles, who drove the village snowplow, was also driver of "the 'bus."
I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snowplow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o'-clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen.
For above was Crestline even as the little Croatian settlement had been smokeless, lifeless. They had gone from here also, hurrying humans fleeing with the last snowplow before the tempest, beings afraid to remain, once the lines of communication were broken. But there was nothing to do but go on.
The two men were close beside him now. "Number one-eleven's kicked over the hill!" "One-eleven kicked over?" "Yes. Snowplow. They're wiring Denver, from Crestline. The second plow's up there in the snowshed with the crew. One of 'em's dead. The other's wait a minute, I have to piece it together."
He went behind Buff Miles and the snowplow as he always went as if space had been created for folk to live in one at a time, and as if this were his own turn. When he reached the bend from the Old Trail to the road where the factory was, he understood at last that he had been hearing a song sung over a great many times.
It's cheaper for them to shut down for six weeks than to try to keep running. That fifty thousand they lost on that snowplow just about put the crimp in 'em. It might cost a couple of hundred thousand more to keep the road open. What's the result? It's easier to quit. But I'll try 'em " He turned to the key and hammered doggedly. Only soggy deadness answered. He tested his plugs and tried again.
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