Using a long pole, Karl scraped the ashes of the firebox to even the bed for a better burn; using every trick he had learned over the past two decades to get the boiler as hot as he dared. The cab was no longer cold as he worked; the ice of the attack gone and pools of water quickly evaporating. Pulling the steel rod out of the flames, Karl kicked the doors shut, then reached up and cracked the access hatch slightly. An eerie echo of the actions he had taken only an hour earlier.

Bracing himself with a hand in his chair, Karl craned to look out the front window. If by the storm or the demon he was no longer certain he would see the lights of the stations they passed to Cloquet. Certainly, they had been pushing fifty miles an hour long enough to see the lights of three towns, but the night remained dark and storm wracked.

Outside the cab, hidden from Karl, the snow and ice accumulated on the sleek Baldwin steam locomotive was melting despite the intense cold. Icicles draped the catwalk along the side of the boiler above the massive drive wheels.

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At the front of the train below the boiler, where the heat of the engine did not reach, the cowcatcher and deck accumulated a mix of snow and ice that sculpted itself to the direction of the wind, giving the appearance of a huge beard.

Atop the fifty-foot-long engine, three pressure relief valves made of brass topped the steam dome. The largest of the three valves, leaking a constant wisp of steam to the wind, suddenly snapped shut.

Karl felt the change, a sense of pressure where it had been weak. Looking up from the cord he was cutting with a knife, he watched the pressure in the boiler rise sharply to just above the red line. Smiling to himself, Karl continued to cut the cord holding the tarp in place until only two partially cut knots held the tarp to the cab.

Stepping back from his handiwork, Karl admired the trap, simple and effective if he was right.

Silas had to be at the caboose by now. Karl pulled the throttle back to slow the train and give the fire-man a better chance to reach the cab.