Easily pushing Silas’s hand away, Karl shook his head in resignation. He was forgetting how he had gotten here, how he had come to a place where he caused pain with the stab of a word and the use of a phrase.

“This is nineteen hundred. You were never a slave, nor was your father, yet you think you still are. You can only see yourself as a slave.” Was his eventual reply.

“What do you know about it?” Silas stood at Karl’s side as the engineer tapped the steam pressure gauge with a gloved hand.

It was always history. So many people wanted to know what experience had given Karl this ability to see the truth; he was tired of the past and of people. It was easier to hurt them than to live with them.

A chill coursed his spine as Karl considered telling another person his past, the cold touching his resolve and plucking the words from his mouth. Karl stood and pushed Silas aside.

The relief valve; it was worth one more look to be on the safe side.

Silas moved to his side of the cab and cleaned his window with a rag, uncertain of what the hell was going on in the Swede’s mind.

Reaching up, Karl opened the hatch, once again pulling his head into the savagely icy wind. A slight stream of pure white steam still trailed from the valve. It was disappointing; a limit to the speed Karl could reach, with the throttle wide open. Was it worth climbing out on the boiler at fifty miles an hour to tap the brass fixture in hopes it would seat? Not if he sheered the brittle metal and lost all hope of getting to Cloquet.

For the briefest of time, Karl wondered if his determination to get the train to its destination was because he wanted to be a hero. Or was it because it might wash away the sins of his past?

Peering into the storm ahead of the train, Karl could almost see the faces of the men he had tormented in Sweden. The deaths that had driven him from his home to this strange new land. A long time ago, he had read a story of a man who had assembled from dead men. The creature had been called Frankenstein, and it was a monster incapable of humanity. It was the word monster that had claimed Karl; like that monster, he had lost his humanity. Unlike Frankenstein, Karl knew what he had lost.

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Everything sacrificed to a political expediency. Death to socialists, stripping the corruption from within parliament in the government’s name. What he had become, what could he become, but a man fastened to the truth in a manner like no other, his life vested to salvation if only he could forgive himself.

Karl did not feel the cold as the thoughts flew across his consciousness.

Maybe that was why he could not savage Silas. Despite his errors, the fire-man was trying to understand a world that had abused him in a manner like Karl’s own deeds. He was a man asking for truth in a world of lies. At the very least, Karl could respect the man’s bravery to face the truth.

Before he could decide what to do about Silas, a shout from within the cab distracted Karl. His instinct was to look forward in the wavering cone of light that revealed tracks and snow.

Leaning left to see around the smokestack at Karl saw a man standing on the tracks. As the locomotive rapidly closed on the man, he stepped calmly aside and became a vague blur in the night. When he was even with the cab, he seemed to look up directly at Karl, the light of the train playing a trick and making the man’s eyes shine red. A flush of warmth came to the engineer’s cheeks as he slipped and dropped back into the cab.

The incredible cold had taken the voice from Karl, the pain dropping him to his knees. His nose and lips cracked and bled, frostbite setting in and turning skin white. He was wailing, but Karl did not care; the pain was everything as he placed his gloved hands on the face of the boiler.

“What the hell was that?” The demand from Silas remained unanswered as Karl stared at the warm glow coming from the firebox, knowing he should have felt heat on his face. Pulling his gloves from the boiler, he fumbled for a rag and wiped his face. He was cold, colder than he could ever remember; as if the wind had cut through the thick clothes he wore and tried its best to stab his heart. With shaking hands, Karl grasped his coffee and sipped the bitter fluid. He had been cold from the first foray into the night air, but this was much worse.

Karl replied, eventually with a stutter. “I couldn’t see his face.”

Bending down, Silas lifted Karl from the floor and pushed him into his chair. Blood was flowing from the engineer’s damaged nose and lips. There was fear in the man’s eyes.

“Did you see what he was wearing?” Ice dripped from Karl’s beard into the coffee cup. “I swear that was an old Buffalo skin coat. I have not seen one of those since I arrived in America.”

“All I saw was a blob in the window,” Silas reached up and closed the vent. “I thought it was a cow. We can live with the smoke for a few minutes. You need to warm up.”