For two days and nights the desperate effort was pushed while the sky continued clear, with the crews of both camps attacking the iron earth and steadily forging closer.
Bryant scarcely slept during that time, or ate.

Toward morning, when the night shift went off, he would cast himself down fully dressed and drawing the blankets to his chin sleep restlessly for two or three hours, then again rise to drive the work.

The third day came sunny and quiet, but with heavy warmth in the air wholly strange to the season.
During the night both Lee and Pat had continually and anxiously watched the peaks of the Ventisquero Range for portent of the change imminent in the weather; and now on this morning they beheld about the crests long, low-lying layers of gray cloud.
Again McDonnell telephoned, but now with particulars of the storm.

It was general in character, covering the states from the Canadian line southward, with very low temperatures and raging furiously, destroying wire communications and blocking railroads, and at the moment was bearing down across Utah, Colorado, and Kansas.

The entire region from the Pacific coast to the Mississippi was in its grasp.
"Ten days is all that's left of our time," Lee said to the contractor, with a heavy heart.