Heat kicks Buster like a boot and he falls back, unable to reach the cherry-red engine door. The other engineer is dead or unconscious, and all Buster can see is tomorrow’s headline over pictures of wreck and ruin: Runaway Train.

Steel wheels scream as they take the turn along the canyon edge, and then Buster sees him. Impossible. An old wrangler, standing alone beside the tracks–

Chad leans back, lariat singing, and as his long and perfect cast settles over the smokestack he digs in his heels to stop the damn thing for good.

It does not work at all.