Page:Ralph on the Railroad.djvu/1063

Rh "If we can only make it—oh, we've got to make it now!" he shouted at Ralph.

There was a sharp run of nearly an hour. It was along the lee side of a series of cuts, and the snow was mainly massed on the opposite set of rails. Ralph glanced at the clock.

"We're ahead of calculations," he spoke to Fogg.

"We're in for another struggle, though," announced the fireman. "When we strike the lowlands just beyond Lisle, we'll catch it harder than ever."

Ralph was reeking with perspiration, his eyes cinder-filled and glazed with the strain of continually watching ahead. There had not been a single minute of relief from duty all the way from Westbrook. They struck the lowlands. It was a ten-mile run. First it was a great snowdrift, then a dive across a trembling culvert. At one point the water and slush pounded up clear across the floor of the cab and nearly put out the fire. As No. 999 rounded to higher grade, a tree half blown down from the top of an embankment grazed the locomotive, smashing the headlight and cutting off half the smokestack clean as a knife stroke.

Ralph made no stop for either inspection of