'Is it the same day, though?' I said to Bowman, as once more we half-walked, half-fell down the hillside towards river and railway line. The light was changing: a mysterious smokiness was brewing over the white-covered fields, but whether it was increasing or decreasing, I could not have said. Small particles of snow flew about us - just the odd one or two, racing each other or circling in a dance.
We walked as before, moving forward and down with each stride, looking back fearfully to the house that had held us. But there was no sign of Small David.
'I might have put his lights out for good,' I said.
'Let me get alongside you,' said Bowman. 'I can't see my way.'
The walking had warmed me somewhat, and I kept scooping up snow from the heather tops as we walked, drinking the stuff. That stopped me thinking of water while giving no satisfaction. I took Bowman's arm. He was shaking very violently with cold, and I thought his face was becoming the same colour as his eyes: a pale blue. I fumbled the gloves back to him as we pressed on.
'Wear these, and you'll be able to pick up snow,' I said.
'What time is it?' I asked, and he held up his watch for me to see.
It was coming up to five o'clock, which was, perhaps, no more surprising than any other time. It must be five in the evening; we had passed the entire day - a full twelve hours - in the deer shack. I looked down and saw a railway signal, with a small gangers' hut nearby.
'We've struck the line,' I said.
But the track was invisible under the snow, so that the signal, which was giving the all-clear to nothing, looked a very ridiculous article. In both directions, the line curved away into rolling whiteness.
Bowman stood at my side, breathing steam; and then I saw to my left, beyond him, what seemed to be snow whirling upwards - snow making a ghost of itself, and rising for a haunting.
Instead, it was an engine.
'See that, Steve?' I said, but the engine was in earshot now.
It was doing its beautiful work in a world of whiteness: white steam, white snow. It ran over tracks only dusted with snow, and was now, as we watched, running at the thicker stuff. The soft crash of the snow plough was almost silent, and then the plough ran on, through the snow, looking for a marvellously exciting few seconds like a boat moving through rough water. But then the snow checked it, and it began to reverse, ready for the next go.
We were stumbling down towards it now.
'It's the first time I've seen a proper snow plough at work,' I said to Bowman, who gasped out, 'I'm thrilled for you, Jim.'
I had before only seen the small wooden ploughs attached to the buffer bars of ordinary engines. This engine - of some Highland make unknown to me - pushed a snow plough vehicle: a hollow steel wedge on wheels, a great metal arrowhead - and there was a man inside, I saw now, for he was leaning out of it and waving, calling on the engine driver and fireman for another try. That man was part lookout, part team captain, for what he gave was encouragement.
I was moving ahead of Bowman now.
'Push on!' I called back to him. 'I want to be up there for the next run. If they break through, we'll be clear away from that Scots bastard!'
The driver and fireman first noticed our approach; then the caller-on who rode in the plough spied us.
'We need to come up!' I called, wading on through the snowy heather.
We approached the beating warmth of the engine, and driver and fireman stepped away for us to climb up, and just gawped at us for a while. The man in the plough was hanging out of his cab, monkey-like, watching us. Bowman warmed himself by the open fire door, and then he turned about, and said, 'I need to sit down.'
The driver pointed to the sandbox, where Bowman perched. He still looked very seedy.
'There's a lunatic on our tail,' I said to the driven while glancing over his shoulder to the darkening hill beyond.
But he didn't seem to take what I said.
'Where are you for?' he asked, just as though we were ordinary passengers
'We want to connect for Inverness,' I said. 'Do you reckon that's on? Tonight, I mean?'
'Don't ask me,' he said. 'Our job's to break through to Helmsdale.'
'Is it drifted all the way?'
He shook his head.
'We're at the worst of it now. Couple more goes and we should be through.'
He was a small, pale bloke, and he seemed to speak without force, and then the reason came to me: he was not Scots. He spoke with an English accent of no particular sort. Also, he seemed in a baddish temper. At first I thought this must be on account of our arrival, but he now turned and addressed his fireman, saying, 'Front damper's closed now, is it?'
If you left the front damper open while charging at snow - why, you'd put the bloody fire out. The fireman was not up to snuff, and the driver was out with him.
The snow plough man was calling to us from up front. He was Scots all right, to the point where I couldn't make out a word he said, but his meaning was clear enough. We were to get on with it.
The driver put on full back gear, and we reversed a little further; the fireman was labouring away all the time, swinging with his shovel between tender and fire door like a clock mechanism. A good thick layer of coal was needed, for each charge would suck a great hole in the fire. By the paraffin lamp that hung behind the gauge glass, I saw that we had our 220 lbs of steam pressure. The light was going fast, and it was already too gloomy to make out the height of the snow wall a hundred yards off that we were about to charge at.
The driver held on to the cabside; I gripped the mighty wheel of the hand brake, and motioned Bowman to do the same. The driver gave a tug on the regulator and we began to steal away, then there came a shout from the front man; the driver pulled harder, and we began to fly. We swayed backwards with the force of the speed. I tried to predict the moment of impact, but the smash came a couple of seconds later than I bargained for.
We were all thrown forwards, and we all checked the movement of our bodies, but the fireman flew on, and smacked into the fire- hole door; which he had (luckily for him or he'd have been clean through it) closed before the charge. He was down on the cab floor. I tried to give him a hand up, but he wouldn't have it. He sat bolt upright in the filthy cold dust and said, 'I've cracked my arm.'
I knew it was true, for he was dead white. The driver sat him on the sandbox that Bowman had lately occupied.
'Want me to take a look?' said the driver. He was not overly sympathetic.
The fireman shook his head. 'I can feel the bone - it's out. I don't want to see it.'
All the horror was under the sleeve, and that's where he wanted to leave it for the present. He just sat tight holding his right arm with his left.
'I can fire an engine,' I said to the driver.
He looked from me to Bowman, who said, 'And I can write about it, if that's any use.'
He gave a little grin, and tried to push his specs up his nose, only they weren't there. He'd had a couple of secret swigs from the driver's tea bottle, I'd noticed, and some of his high colour was now returned.
What the driver made of the pair of us, I couldn't have guessed, but I tried to put his mind at rest by taking up the shovel and opening the firehole door. The fire was thin at the middle, and the top left.