What shapes the legends of the Wickiup? Is it because in the winter

night the wind never sleeps in the gorge above the headquarters shack

that despatchers talk yet of a wind that froze the wolf and the sheep

and the herder to marble together? Is it because McGraw runs no more

that switchmen tell of the run he made over Sweetgrass the night he

sent a plough through eight hundred head of sheep in less than a tenth

as many seconds? Could the night that laid the horse and the hunter

side by side in the Spider Park drift have been wildest of all wild

mountain nights? Or is it because Gertrude Brock and her railroad

lover rode out its storm together that mountain men say there was never

a storm like that? What shapes the Wickiup legends?

For three days Medicine Bend did not see the sun. Veering uneasily,

springing from every quarter at once, the wind wedged the gray clouds

up the mountain sides only to roll them like avalanches down the ragged

passes. At the end of the week snow was falling.

Not until the morning of the third day when reports came in of the

unheard-of temperatures in the North and West did the weather cause

real apprehension. The division never had been in such a position to

protect its winter traffic--for a year Callahan, Blood, and Glover had

been overhauling and assembling the old and the new bucking equipment.

But the wind settled at last in the northeast, and when it stilled the

mercury sunk, and when it rose the snow fell, roofing the sheds on the

passes, levelling the lower gulches, and piling up reserves along the

cuts.

The first trouble came on the main line in the Heart Mountains, and

Morris Blood, with the roadmaster of the sixth district and Benedict

Morgan, got after it with a crew together.

Between the C bridge and Potter's Gap they spent two days with a rotary

and a flanger and three consolidated engines and went home, leaving

everything swept clean, only to learn in the morning that west of the

gap there were four feet of fresh snow clear to Rozelle. From the

northern ranges came unusual reports of the continued severity of the

storms. It was hardly a series of storms, for that winter the first

storm that crossed the line lasted three weeks.

In the interval Bucks was holding to the directors at Medicine Bend,

waiting for the weather to settle enough to send them to the coast.

The Pittsburg party waited at Glen Tarn for Mr. Brock's word to join

him. At the Bend, Gertrude made love to her father, forfending the

awful moment of disclosure that must come, and the cause of her hidden

happiness and trouble strenuously made love to her.




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