At the central pump station two miles away, Aldous Swift-Current hauled backward on the master steam control valve with both hands.
“Engage all cylinders,” Aldous shouted into the speaking tube. “Open the steam bypass. Bring the flywheels to ninety revolutions.”
Sixteen massive forged-iron connecting rods surged forward. He drove the duplex mud pistons into their cast-steel fluid barrels.
The ground around the pump house groaned as thirty-two thousand gallons of water and high-pressure steam pounded through the pipe hubs.
Foreman Corbin Cross slammed the heavy firebox doors shut on Boiler Bank Three. He shouted over the rhythmic, ear-splitting crash of the steam strokes.
“Pressure gauge is climbing through twenty-eight hundred pounds, Aldous,” Corbin yelled. He wiped black soot from his forehead. “The draft blowers are screaming.
We’ve got full head on all eight engines.”
In the storage tank yard, the five one-hundred-thousand-gallon pressure tanks shuddered as their tightly packed-air bladders swelled. That forced fifty-seven thousand tons of thick, sweet white mud into the thirty-six-inch master collector header.
