Midnight
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 . One glance told him what it was : the tarpaulin-covered , snow-shielded , bulky forms of his machinery , -- machinery that he now felt he could personally aid to its destination . For there was work ahead . Midnight found him in a shack buried in snow and reached only by a circuitous tunnel , a shack where men -- no longer Americans , but black-smeared , red-eyed , doddering , stumbling human machines -- came and went , their frost-caked Mackinaws steaming as they clustered about the red-hot stove , their faces smudged with engine grease to form a coating against the stinging blast of the ice-laden wind , their cheeks raw and bleeding , their mouths swollen orifices which parted only for mumblings ; vikings of another age , the fighters of the ice gangs , of which Houston had become a part . The floor was their bed ; silently , speaking only for the purpose of curses , they gulped the food that was passed out to them , taking the steaming coffee straight down in spite of its burning clutch at tender membranes , gnawing and tearing at their meal like beasts at the kill , then , still wadded in their clothing , sinking to the floor -- and to sleep . The air was rancid with the odor of wet , steaming clothing . Men crawled over one another , then dropped to the first open spot , to flounder there a moment , then roar in snoring sleep .