They walked through a gap in the pines and stopped with a sense of awe on the edge of a great red furrow in the mountain.  The gash was fringed by shattered trees, and here and there a giant splintered trunk rested precariously among stones ground to fragments.  Far beneath, a vast pile of earth and snow dammed the river, and half-way up an overturned locomotive, with boiler crushed like an eggshell, lay among the wreckage.  The end of a smashed box-car rose out of the boiling flood.  For a hundred yards the track had vanished, but gangs of men were hurrying to and fro about the gap.  Farther back, there was clang of flung-down rails and a ringing of hammers.

“If they open the road again by to-morrow morning, they’ll be lucky,” Foster remarked, and stopped a big fellow who was going past with an ax on his shoulder.  “Is there any settlement not too far ahead?”

“There’s a smart new hotel at the flag station about six miles off,” said the man.  “You can make it all right walking if you keep to the track and watch out you don’t meet the construction train in the snowshed.”

Foster, who knew he would find waiting tedious, went back to the car for his small bag, after which he and Pete set off for the hotel.  They had some trouble to cross the path of the avalanche and then spent some time getting past the men who were unloading a row of flat cars.  The single-line track was cut out of the rock and one ran a risk of glissading down to the river by venturing outside its edge.  Once, indeed, a heavy beam, thrown too far, plunged down like a toboggan, and leaping from a rock’s crest splashed into the flood.  The men on the cars worked in furious haste, and it was difficult to avoid the clanging rails they threw off.

Foster got past, but did not find walking easy when he had done so.  The track wound among the folds of the hills, and where the sun had struck the snow there was a slippery crust, through which he broke.  Where it ran past tall crags and between the trees, the snow was dry and loose as dust.  They made something over two miles in the first hour and soon afterwards came to the mouth of a snowshed.  The opening made a dark blotch on the glittering slope, for the roof was pitched at a very small angle to the declivity and the snow passed down hill over it with scarcely a wrinkle.

It was only when they entered they saw signs of man’s work in the massive beams and stringers that braced the structure.  These were presently lost in the gloom and Foster stumbled among the ties.  Shingle ballast rolled under his feet; where he found a tie to step on it was generally by stubbing his toe, and once or twice he struck the side of the shed.

For all that, he pushed on as fast as possible.  The warning he had been given was indefinite, but it looked as if a train was shortly expected and the locomotive, with its outside cylinders, would not give them much room.  He imagined that refuges would be provided at intervals, but did not know where to find them.  Now and then they stopped to listen, but heard nothing.  There was deep silence, which was a relief, and they blundered on again as fast as they could.  It was rather daunting work and one could not make much speed, but when a faint, muffled throbbing reached them they began to run.