Eq Renaissance Part 21 (Ed)

   Braeburn stretched, reaching out his hand into empty space, touching nothing.  He dug his heels in a little harder.  His horse underneath him, Calico, pushed on just a little faster.  The train glided smoothly and effortlessly, a contrast that made it all the harder to grasp from pounding, galloping horseback.
   Braeburn’s fingers touched the bar, then fell back.  It moved to his second knuckle, then he fell away again.  He managed to curl his fingers around it, but it still wasn’t enough.  He pulled with his left hand, somehow actually pulling Calico just a little bit closer.  He threw his right arm over and grabbed a hold of it with both hands.
   He had half a heartbeat to make the decision, and he chose to go through with it.  He pulled his feet from the stirrups, and leapt from the saddle, knowing full well if he didn’t manage to keep his grip, he’d most likely be killed.  For a second, it felt like his hands, strong as they were, would give way under his weight.  Then he got a foothold, and before he could consciously think his way through it, he was up and over the railing.
   The air was knocked from his lungs as he landed flat on his back on the small platform at the rear of the caboose, but he was quickly on his feet again anyway.  Then he took in the view behind him, and the train.  Calico, now riderless, was already falling behind.  Coming up fast, just behind Calico, was Little Strongheart, riding the great black stallion, formerly belonging to the sheriff.  It was a good horse, if you could ride it, but it couldn’t match Calico for speed.
   Strongheart was trying to catch the same train.  She looked into Braeburn’s eyes as he looked back at her.  Braeburn watched as her eyes lowered, now looking at his hands.  By all rights, his hands should have been turning the brake, slowing the train and allowing her to catch up.
   Braeburn wouldn’t be stopping the train.  Strongheart wouldn’t be catching this one.  With any luck, he thought, the train would keep moving without a stop all the way to Palomino Junction, hours away.  With any luck, Little Strongheart would turn around and just go home by herself, like he asked her to do so many times.
   Braeburn knew that Little Strongheart must know that by now; that he wasn’t going to stop for her.  He tried to watch the reaction on her face to tell her thoughts.  He expected it to contort into wild fury at his betrayal.  Strongheart could be a force of nature when scorned, and very dangerous.  She didn’t show any sign of that, and Braeburn was surprised.  She only showed a hurt look of worry and resignation.  He watched her recede away until she disappeared behind a bend, still driving that horse as fast as it could run.
   Home, Braeburn thought, I’ll see her again once I finally get home.  Then he turned around and went through the door, having business to attend to.
   The old brakeman, hunched over his little wooden desk, jumped in surprise when an unexpected visitor came in through the wrong door.  Braeburn glanced down at the man as he walked through the caboose, but didn’t say anything, still being out of breath.  He thought, given the open Tijuana Bible on the man’s desk, it would be best not to say anything at all.  The embarrassed brakeman, though, thought he should at least say something, anything, that might sound like he was doing his job.  “Is this about the safe?” he asked, just as Braeburn reached the door.
   “Safe?” Braeburn hesitated, and turned to ask.
   “Sure,” the brakeman asked.  “Is this a robbery?”  Braeburn pulled his vest back a bit, revealing the sheriff’s star pinned to his shirt.  “Well then it must be a robbery,” the man said, “if you’re here.”
   “I don’t know anything about a safe,” Braeburn said.  “There’s an outlaw on board, and I’m after him.”
   “Sure you don’t know about the safe?” the man asked.  “It’s up in the Pullman car.  Don’t nobody know about it but me and the engineer and the six Pinkertons that brought it on board.  Dunno what’s in it, but it must be full of greenbacks or bullion or sumthin worth a fortune.  Maybe your outlaw’s after it?”
   Braeburn briefly considered it.  They hadn’t learned why Rover had boarded this train, only that he had. “Stay here,” he told the brakeman.  “Don’t stop the train for anything.  I want to get the drop on him.  Understand?”  The man nodded, and Braeburn was through the door at the front of the caboose.
   Here he hesitated once more.  The cars weren’t meant for passengers to travel between them while in motion.  There was only the narrow metal coupling device connecting them.  He could easily see the rails and ties flying below at speed.  Crossing from one car to the other wouldn’t be as dangerous as catching the caboose from horseback, but still, a false move here could get him killed.
   He steeled himself, and leapt, planting his feet solidly on the next car.  With his hand on the gun on his belt, he went through the door.  This car, he found, was filled with shipped goods and luggage.  It would be unlikely that Rover would be hiding out in this car, but Braeburn stepped cautiously anyway. He had to bend and wind around some of the heavier chests.  This car was just as filled with smells as it was with packages.  There was the aroma of old leather, and old wood, and their polishes.  Spices, coffee, mothballs, perfumes, and things Braeburn couldn’t place.  There was a caged bird that squawked noisily when it saw him, and it made him jump with surprise.  Other than the bird, there was no other living being in the car, and he went forward to the next one.
   The leap from the second to the third was easier than the last jump, and that worried Braeburn.  It wasn’t the sort of thing a person is supposed to get complacent about.  This looked like a passenger car, likely third class.  When he opened the rear door, he found it the opposite of the car he had just come through - it was packed with people, full like a can of sardines.  It wasn’t just the poor that rode third class, but anybody on a budget: working men, business men, large families.  They had filled the seats and were standing in the aisle, even some of the women and children.
   Is that...?  Braeburn couldn’t tell.  He thought he saw somebody moving way on the other side of the crowded car, up at the front, getting up from their seat and... stepping through the next door?  It was impossible to tell through the mob, but no regular passenger would be moving between cars.  Had he been spotted?  Already?
   Braeburn started making his way up the aisle.  It was slow going, even though he was trying to rush.  These people had been packed here for hours already, and they didn’t appreciate Braeburn trying to shove his way through them, even though he offered everyone his apologies.  He tried to look at each one, just in case Rover was still sitting right here.  He saw a lot of frowns and grimaces, but no outlaw that he could recognize.
   There was still no sight of him by the time he had gotten to the front of the car.  Braeburn tried to ask the people there if they had seen a man pass through the door.  Unfortunately they were foreigners, and neither he nor they shared a common tongue.  He couldn’t even tell what language they were angrily muttering at him.  Spanish?  Portuguese?  Quecha?  He was in no position to find out.
   The train seemed to be moving faster when he leapt between cars this time.  It could have been his imagination, or his nerves.  This looked like another passenger car, likely either third class or second.  He almost pulled open the door, but his sense of caution made him pause briefly enough to reconsider.  That really could have been Rover after all.
   Braeburn stood to the side of the door.  He gripped his revolver in his right hand and turned the knob with his left.  He had barely gotten the door ajar before there was a tremendous clap, and the door jam, inches from his face, exploded.  A splinter grazed his cheek before he moved back behind the wall again.  No doubt about it now, this was suddenly a gunfight.  Then the passengers in the car started to scream.
   There was no telling how thin the wall he was using as cover could be.  Rover might be able to shoot right through.  This was a second class car, with fewer passengers.  He had a glimpse of the bench seat on the opposite side of the door.  Braeburn pulled his gun and took off his hat, waving it through the open door as a feint.  It worked well enough to draw two more shots.  Then he dove for the empty bench, getting off one shot of his own, straight down the aisle, and somehow managing to avoid another that came his way.
   Braeburn landed awkward, and hard.  He hurt bad enough to go see a doctor, if there wasn’t a fight to be fought.  He had his first real life glimpse of Rover though.  An ugly looking man, and mean as hell.  He was at the front of the car, just off center from the aisle.  Braeburn didn’t know, but he was pretty sure his one shot had missed.  He was ready for another, and sprang his body straight across the aisle, firing as he flew, then landed on the floor.  Rover got a couple more shots too, all misses so far.  There were a lot of screams and confusion.  He could see under the seats, all the way to the front of the car.  There were plenty of feet and ankles, two of which must belong to Rover, but there were too many to attempt to fire again; there was no clean shot.
   How many rounds had Rover fired?  Six?  Braeburn wasn’t sure, but this was going to have to end, and fast, before some bystander got hurt.  He lunged back into the aisle, gun pointed and ready to fire.  The door on the other end of the car swung shut, just as Rover had passed through.  Braeburn fired a shot through the closed door, but had no idea if it had hit.  He started to walk down the aisle, quick enough in pursuit, but slow enough to replace four more cartridges into their empty chambers.  The passengers had enough sense to keep out of his way.  They were huddled down into their seats, pressing into the walls.  They were panicky, though, and a panicked person could do anything.
   He hesitated again while opening the front door of this car, in case Rover had another ambush on his mind.  The door to the next car, another passenger car, was left ajar.  He caught a glimpse of Rover retreating down the aisle.  Braeburn leapt for it.
   While in mid-air, he saw Rover duck into a seat and get down.  Still while in mid-air, he saw two more men burst through the door at the end of the car.  They were armed to the teeth.  Both were carrying shotguns, both had revolvers on their hips, and both had belts of ammunition around their shoulders. Pinkertons.  The moment Braeburn landed on his two feet he heard them bellow, “There he is!” then level their guns.  At him.
   Braeburn made it into a seat and got his head down before the world around him exploded.  The Pinkertons had heard firing, maybe the screaming, so they had come, guns blazing, thinking there was a robbery.  Great chunks of wood were being blasted off the bench in front of him, and the wall behind him.  They likely cared as little about the passengers as Rover did.  They were in it for the money.  They were being paid to protect that safe, they weren’t justices of the peace.
   “I’m a sheriff!” Braeburn tried to yell over their roaring guns.  “Hold yer fire!”  They weren’t holding their fire.  They were unloading everything they had, leaving nothing to chance.  They were coming down aisle, hoping to catch him stuck in the seat so they could have a clean shot and blow him to hell.  “Look out for Rover!” Braeburn shouted.
   Too late.  There was horrible gut wrenching scream as Rover surprised the Pinkertons from behind.  The second man screamed, shortly after, and Braeburn jumped into the aisle, hoping to catch Rover in the act.  Instead, he found one of the Pinkerton’s standing there.  His hands were empty, his guns fallen.  His eyes and mouth were open in shock.  He was also being pulled backwards on his two feet.  There was a set of fingers, filthy looking, in the man’s hair.  Rover was using him as a human shield.  Braeburn could just see glimpses of him.  He saw Rover’s hand reach up and pull the revolver from the stricken man’s holster.  Blood was falling from the Pinkerton’s open mouth.  Braeburn ducked back into a seat again before Rover fired all the rounds off in his direction
   There was crash of broken glass.  More screams.  When Braeburn looked, the aisle was mostly clear and Rover had vanished.  He hustled up to Rover’s first victim.  This poor man was clearly dead.  His neck had been cut with a knife, almost clear through.  Rover’s knife must be razor sharp.   The second man, the one Rover had used as a hostage, was still alive.  He wouldn’t be for long, though.  Rover had stuck him bad after he killed the first man, disemboweling him from behind.  There wasn’t anything Braeburn could do.
   “He went out the window!” somebody yelled at him.  When Braeburn looked, he saw a gaping hole where a window had been.  Braeburn rushed to it.
   “He jumped out?” he asked.  He tried to look down from the speeding train.  It would have been suicide.
   “Nah,” the passenger yelled.  “He’s up on the roof!”
   The roof?  There was a bar above the windows that ran the length of the car’s ceiling.  If somebody were strong enough, and agile enough, they might be able enough to swing and hoist themselves up onto the roof.  Maybe.  Was Rover really that slick?  The man didn’t seem human.  “Which way did he go?” Bareburn asked.
   “How in the hell should I know?” the passenger replied.
   Forward.  Rover must have gone forward.  Braeburn hadn’t heard the man’s boots on the roof going backwards.  Of course Braeburn hadn’t been listening for them, but forward seemed the most likely direction.  He left the two dead men and the frightened passengers behind him, and left through the front door.  He looked up at the gap between the roofs of the cars.  He could follow Rover up onto the roof, or he could just catch up by going through the cars.  He almost leapt over to the next one before he realized it was a Pullman.  The Pinkertons and their safe were in a Pullman, and the brakeman had said there were six of them, not two.  They must have sent two men out and left the other four behind to guard the safe.  No doubt they were behind that door, and ready to blast to hell any man that stepped through.
   That must have been why Rover had taken to the roof.  It was either fight Braeburn, or be shot down by the Pinkertons, so the desperado had found a third way.  It seemed like Rover was two steps ahead of him, and Braeburn knew it.  It was a terrible feeling, knowing he was outgunned and outclassed by this outlaw, but if Rover had to win today, at least it would only be himself that would be hurt or killed, and not any of his men.  Not Little Strongheart.
   There was only one way up onto the roof from here, a ladder on the front of the second class car he had just come through.  If he climbed up onto that roof, that would expose his back to Rover, assuming Rover had indeed gone forward.  Sure enough, as soon as he got his hand on the top rung, there was a loud bang, muffled by the wind, and the terrifying noise of a bullet whizzing by just inches above.
   This left only one choice - a backward leap, gun drawn, from the ladder over onto the roof of the next car.  Braeburn had already committed and jumped before he even gave himself a chance to think of how stupid that was.  He made the jump, just barely, his gun generally pointed forward and his legs hanging down over the edge.  He saw Rover, but Rover wasn’t firing.  That was because Rover was pancaking himself down as flat as he could onto the roof of the Pullman.  If Braeburn had looked before he had leapt, he would have seen the tunnel they were barrelling into at high speed.
   He went through a mad scramble, getting his legs up so he could flatten down.  Then everything went pitch black.  The ceiling of the tunnel must have been only inches above his shoulder blades.  His hat was gone.  He couldn’t breathe either, his lungs were filled with burning smoke from the steam engine.  Glowing embers from the stack were racing past his face.  He knew he could be killed any second, and horribly, if the ceiling of the tunnel was uneven and lowered only a few inches.  This must be what hell is like, Braeburn thought.  He couldn’t imagine it being any worse.
   Then it got worse.  With his ear pressed down, he could hear the men in the Pullman beneath him.  “They’re on the roof,” one of them shouted, muffled but clear enough, “They’re on the god damn roof!”
   Light started to appear, not at the end of the tunnel, but from the roof Braeburn was hugging.  They were little shafts of vertical light, going upwards into the tunnel, about 0.45 inches in diameter.  They were newly made bullet holes.  The Pinkertons were firing up into their ceiling, hoping to kill whoever might be up there.
   Braeburn bit his tongue to keep from screaming; that would only give away his position at the end of the roof.  He tried to squirm around, but felt the ceiling against his shirt, and squeezed down all the harder.  There was more light now, and Braeburn managed to twist his neck just enough to look forward.  The exit was coming up fast.  He could see Rover, silhouetted against the light.  The bastard had more balls than him; he was actually crawling forward even in the tunnel.  Braeburn had a shot, but didn’t dare move his arm to take it.
   The second the Pullman roared out of the tunnel, Rover was over the front edge of roof and down.  There was another furious spat of rapid-fire shooting, none of it blasting up through the ceiling, and then a sudden, awful silence.
   Braeburn, deciding the roof wasn’t the place for him, edged backwards then dropped down onto the small platform at the back of the Pullman.   “Sheriff!” he hammered on the door with the butt of his gun.  “Hold yer fire!  I’m a sheriff, I’m on your side!”  He ripped off his badge, opened the door, and stuck it through to show them, fearing his hand might be blown off in the process.  It wasn’t.  Braeburn kicked the door open, still yelling at the men to hold their fire.
   He saw the carnage inside, and it was a nightmare.  Four men were down.  The door at the front was banging open.  Rover nowhere in sight.  All the curtains of the luxury car were pulled closed.  It was lit by a stylish chandelier, now swinging erratically from the ceiling and casting moving shadows.  Whether the chandelier was swinging from the shooting towards the ceiling, or some other violence, Braeburn didn’t know.  He proceeded forward.  Two of the Pinkertons had their brains blown out.  Another had taken a chest full of shot.  The fourth and last was still alive, for the moment, and sitting up against the front of the safe.  He had been holding a revolver, once, but now was holding his hands over his belly.
   He removed those hands when Braeburn kneeled over him, to show Braeburn the mess.  He was a young man, younger than Braeburn, and Braeburn couldn’t tell how many times he had been gut shot. There was too much blood, over everything, and the man was clearly as good as dead.
   “Help me,” he croaked.
   “I can’t,” Braeburn said.  “I’m sorry.  I’m after the man who did this.  He went forward?”
   “Yeah,” the boy sobbed. “He was so fast.  We couldn’t even hit him.  Oh god.”
   “Did he take any guns?”
   “No,” he cried.  “He didn’t even look at the safe.  He didn’t even kill us for the money.”
   Braeburn stood up and left the stricken kid.
   “I don’t want to die!” he cried.
   “I’m sorry,” Braeburn said, “I’m sorry.”  Then he leapt to the next car, another Pullman.  Rover had been through this one as well, and left pain in his wake.  There was an older couple, clearly well to do, hunched onto a couch.  The old woman, crying, was trying to stop the bleeding of her old husband’s face.  He had been sliced, deeply and badly, but the man would live, unlike the others.
   “Help me,” the woman cried, “please.”  Braeburn reached into his pocket and handed her his handkerchief, silently, and went on forward.  There was nothing else he could do.
   The next car, like the last two, was another Pullman.  This had an older gentleman, like the last, but he had apparently stayed out of Rover’s way.  Other than being confused by the unexpected guests, he hadn’t been harmed in any way.
   Through the next door, and Braeburn realized this fight was nearing its conclusion.  The next car was the tender.  Just a big box that’s pulled behind the engine and holds the train’s fuel, in this case wood.  Braeburn pulled himself up over the lip of the tender, and fell down onto the wood pile.  It was piled higher in the back, where the fireman hadn’t gotten to it yet, and Braeburn went rolling and bumbling his way down, cursing as he went.  Then he quickly got up on his two feet again.
   There was only one place Rover could be hiding: in the engine. It was obvious.  Braeburn could see the engineer and the fireman.  They were pressed back close to the boiler, exchanging glances between Braeburn, and something out of view in the corner, just beside the entrance.  Braeburn leveled his gun, Rover wouldn’t get the jump on him this time.
   Rover must have known his position had been given away, because he chose that moment to come spinning out of his hiding spot.  Braeburn was ready for him, and pulled the trigger.  All these shots fired nearly point blank, Braeburn had to hit something sooner or later, and he finally got lucky.  The slug hit Rover’s revolver directly on the side as he was swinging it outwards.  There was a brief yelp as the gun went spinning out of Rover’s hand.
   Braeburn would have expected that it would have caused Rover to hesitate just a little, but no.  Rover, who must have been a mad man, lunged at Braeburn instead, quick as a wink.  It wasn’t a direct lunge either, but a weird sort of diagonal, ducking lunge that was fast enough to avoid Braeburn’s second bullet.  It whizzed right past his ear.  Before Braeburn could pull the trigger a third time, Rover was right there, trying to grab the gun from his hand.
   Braeburn tipped over backwards against the woodpile, both of them fighting to point Braeburn’s gun at the other.  Rover wasn’t just faster than Braeburn, not just meaner, but stronger too.  Braeburn watched the barrel of his own gun coming closer and closer to his chin.  He still had his finger on the trigger, though, and knew he was going to lose this battle.  He fired off his four remaining rounds.  The blasts were deafening so close to his face, but then he heard the sound of the hammer falling with no more rounds to fire.
   Rover grunted and pulled them both back onto their feet.  He swung his right elbow, catching Braeburn right in the temple.  Then he swung his left, with the same result, and finally finished with a terrible headbutt that sent Braeburn reeling backwards.
   Braeburn saw Rover reaching for his knife, and he managed to fall backwards once more, the vicious blade whipping out in an arc that passed just under his chin.  Braeburn fell back hard onto the platform at the rear of the engine, his vision full of stars.
   Rover took off to the rear of the train, leaping catlike up that shifting pile of wooden logs.  Braeburn couldn’t think of why, at first, then he remembered that third Pullman, full of both guns and ammunition.  Rover was heading there to re-arm himself.  Braeburn’s only hope was to stop him before he got there.
   Instead of dropping down and going through the front door of the Pullman, Rover simply hopped over to its roof.  “Hands up!” Braeburn yelled, raising his gun at Rover’s figure.  “Freeze, or I’ll shoot.”  Rover actually stopped at the command.  He stopped, turned, and looked down at Braeburn.  He didn’t raise his hands though.  Instead he grinned an awful grin.
   Braeburn didn’t know if he should shoot now, or give Rover a chance to raise his hands.  It looked like he was planning something evil.  It only slowly dawned on Braeburn why Rover was pleased with himself.  The gun was empty.  Braeburn had fired off all the shots to avoid being shot himself during the struggle.  Maybe the blow to the head had been too hard.  His hand patted his pocket.  There should be more bullets in there, but it was empty.
   Rover laughed, and disappeared down the roof of the car.  Braeburn followed him.  It was a race now, back to that Pullman with the weapons.  It was one Braeburn seemed sure to lose.  He couldn’t even make it up the wood pile without tripping and stumbling.  Halfway up he realized he should arm himself.  He grabbed the biggest stick he could find.  It was huge, and heavy.  More than a stick, this looked like it had once been a railroad tie that had been split roughly down the middle.  No good for the railroad, it seemed they had thrown it into the tender for burning.  It was probably too big though, and likely would have been bouncing around in this tender for god knew how long.  Braeburn hefted it up, rebalanced himself, and made an awkward jump onto the roof of the first Pullman, swinging that chunk of wood for extra momentum.
   Rover had already made it to the second Pullman.  He could have gotten to the third, Braeburn thought, but for some reason had stopped.  He turned around and was coming back forward, as Braeburn was making his way back.  It seemed as if the outlaw wanted to actually talk.  Maybe he wanted to give himself up, Braeburn joked to himself inwardly.  He gulped, realizing that at a time like this, Rover was probably more dangerous than ever.
   They met face to face.  Rover at the front of the second Pullman, Braeburn at the rear of the first.  Rover had his bowie knife in hand, Braeburn clutched the split tie with both arms.
   “I guess I don’t know what I’m doing,” Rover laughed.  His teeth were rotted.  Braeburn could smell that disgusting breath from up here, upwind on a moving train.  “I was going back to get a rifle from the Pinkertons,” he gestured with his knife.  “Then I realized, what for?  I’ve already won!”
   “You’re under arrest,” Braeburn shouted over the wind.
   “What are you going to do?” Rover asked.  “Beat my skull in with that thing?  Look at you, you can’t even lift it.  What are you thinking, sheriff?  I can cut you to little pieces six ways from Sunday before you could take one swing of that thing.”
   “If you resist arrest, I’ll have to use force!” Braeburn threatened.
   Rover ignored him.  “You know, part of the reason I came back is because I want to kill you with my knife.  You’ve given me a damn good chase.  You’ve earned the privilege.  I can’t even remember how many weeks its been now with you on our tail.  You and that pretty little squaw of yours.”
   Braeburn turned an ugly shade of pale.  “I never wanted to do this, you know,” he shouted.  “I never wanted to kill anybody.  I only wanted to help Silverstar.”
   “Yeah?” Rover laughed.  “And who the hell is Silverstar?”
   Braeburn let go of the railroad tie.  It fell between the cars, struck the coupling mechanism, spun, then fell beneath the wheels.  Braeburn saw Rover’s eyes follow it as it fell.
   That’s all Braeburn saw, though, there wasn’t any time to see anything else.  There was the sickening crunch of wood being pulverized.  There was also a cataclysmic boom as hundreds of tons of train, which had been momentarily lifted a couple of inches off of the track, came crashing back down onto the rails again.
   Braeburn wasn’t listening to that, though.  When that tie fell beneath the wheels, the train jerked hard.  Braeburn was sent flying backwards onto the roof of the car.  He almost fell off the side, but managed to keep a hold, even a few seconds later, when the brakes were slammed on, and the train began to screech to a halt.
   It took hundreds of yards for the train to stop.  That was time enough for Braeburn to sit up and see that Rover was no longer there.  The inertia that had sent Braeburn falling onto his back and sent Rover falling forward, falling between the cars.
   Braeburn felt sick.  He was shaking from overexertion and overexcitement.  But he felt that the fight was finally over, and that he had won.
   He sat there until the train came to a complete halt, then got down onto the ground.  The engineer had also gotten off the train, and was working his way back to Braeburn,  cursing as he went, and bending at the waist to inspect the trucks.
   Braeburn took a look for himself.  There was blood on the wheels of the second Pullman, going back.  They likely wouldn’t be finding much more of Rover than that.
   “What the hell are you people doing to my train?” the engineer cursed as he approached Braeburn.
   Braeburn tried to fix the star back to his shirt.  “There are four dead men on that Pullman,” he nodded towards the third one.
   “Four dead huh?  Well damn near everybody on this train was damn near killed when we damn near derailed.”  He spat off a series of cusses as he resumed his inspections.  Braeburn followed him as he went.  Nervous men were coming out of the passenger cars.  “There are two dead men back here,” one of them hollered.
   “So it’s a robbery then, huh?” the engineer asked.  “They were after the safe?  Are they gone?”
   “Something like that,” Braeburn said.  “It’s over, but we have to press on.”
   “Bah,” the engineer spat.
   The old woman came out of the second Pullman.  “Won’t somebody help me?” she cried, “my husband’s been hurt!”  A couple of good samaritans boarded her car to see what they could do.  Unless they knew how to suture, Braeburn thought, the poor old husband would have to wait until they got into Palomino Junction.
   “We have to get moving,” Braeburn insisted.
   “Are you kidding?” the engineer said.  “We could have bent an axle. Worse.  Who knows what you’ve done to my train.”
   “There could be more of them,” Braeburn lied.  “We have to hurry.”
   The engineer swore to high hell, but kept working his way down the train, then back up the other side. While the engineer worked, Braeburn helped move all the dead men into that third morgue-like Pullman.  He tried to explain the situation to some of the men, and they seemed to help calm the passengers.
   There was a hiss of steam from the engine, the call of a whistle, and the train lurched forward.  Everybody reboarded, except for Braeburn, who waited until the caboose passed by before hopping onto the rear platform.
   The old brakeman was there, standing right by the brake wheel.  “I’m sorry, son,” he explained, “but I had to use the brake.  I thought we had derailed.”
   “That’s fine,” Braeburn said.  “That’s fine.  As long as we’re moving again.”
   Braeburn watched the track stretching back behind them.  It was lengthening, now that they were going forward.  There was nobody to be seen for as far as the eye could see.  There was no Little Strongheart.  She was away from him, but at least she’d be safe.