Mercy climbed down from the seat upon which she’d been kneeling, and whirled into the aisle. Horatio Korman had been hanging about in the third passenger car, and the captain had been hanging about in the first one-or else, in the car with the gold, from which she’d been specifically forbidden from entering again unless directly ordered otherwise. With this in mind, she turned to the right and headed for the rearmost door, opening the latch and dousing the steam-warmed car with a torrent of frigid wind. She shut the door as fast as possible, tugging her cloak up around her head and pulling it tight over her ears, trying to filter out the worst of the blizzard as she felt about for the rail and the platform space over the coupler. She moved to the next car easily, despite the temperature and the wind that felt strangely dry, as if it belonged someplace hellishly hot and not this winter place covered in snow.

In the third car, she found a sight similar to the one in the second, where she’d left Miss Clay and Mrs. Butterfield-except here, most of the faces pressed to the windows belonged to men in uniforms. Horatio Korman stood against the far wall alone, arms folded. He glanced up at Mercy when she came blasting in, accompanied by the weather, and he gave her a frown that told her to shut the door, already.

She did so and approached him, cheeks flushed from even that brief exposure, and hands shaking despite her gloves. She said, “Is it them, do you think?”

“Yeah, I think it is.”

“Can they catch us?” she asked for what must’ve been the hundredth time.

He sucked on his lower lip, or on the gobbet of tobacco he undoubtedly stored within it. Then he reached for a window, lowered it, and spit quickly before closing it again. His mustache ruffled and his hat pushed back by the wind, he shook his head slowly and said, “Not ‘can they?’ but ‘when will they?’ We’re less than five miles from the pass, and once we’re in, it’s cliff face straight up and down, on both sides of the rails-an expanse that runs maybe a quarter mile wide, with about twelve sets of tracks running through it.”

Mercy tried to imagine it: a frozen corridor like a tremendous wagon track in the snow, with no way up or out to the left or right, no way to back up and go around, and a race to get through to the other side.

He said, “If we’re lucky, they’ll only trail us. They can shoot at the train’s rear car all day-ain’t nobody inside there gonna give a shit. Or if we’re lucky another way, they’ll be stuck on some track far over to the south, far enough that they’ll be hard-pressed to do us too much damage, because they won’t be close enough, even if they manage to pull up alongside us.”

Pierce Tankersly turned away from his window and asked the ranger, “And what if we’re not lucky? What then, Texian? What will they do?”

“If we’re not lucky?” He adjusted his hat, bringing it back down low enough that he could’ve grazed it if he’d lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “They’ll overtake us, and muck up the tracks, just like they promised.” Tankersly gave him a quizzical look implying the soldier knew precious little about trains, so the ranger clarified. “If they blow the tracks up there, this train will go off the rails. Literally. Most of us’ll probably die on impact. Some of us might live to get shot, or freeze to death.”

The private said, “Then what are you standing over here for, man? They may be your allies on the map, but you’ll get killed same as us if they manage to undo the Dreadnought! Take up a position-hell, go find the captain and see where he’d like an extra man.”

But Korman said, “No. I can’t do that. I won’t shoot at my own fellows, or fellows that might be mine. I wouldn’t do it even if I thought it’d make a lick of difference to whether or not they take this train. That just ain’t how it works, junior. And if the shoe were on the other foot, you’d probably treat the situation just the same.”

“It doesn’t matter what foot what shoe is on. I’d fight for my life, regardless!” the young man said.

The ranger replied, “Well, all right, maybe I’m wrong. But I’m not fighting for my life. There’s nothing I could do to slow down that train, and not much you could, unless you want to go up to our front cars and run those weapons she’s pulling down. Otherwise, best I could hope to do is keep them out of the passenger car. I don’t know how many of them are dumb enough to try to board us like a pirate ship moving at ninety miles an hour, but I’m willing to bet the answer is none too many.”

Closer, definitely closer, the whistle blew again-shaking the sheets of ice that hung off the mountain.

Tankersly said, “What the hell is wrong with you, man? What if they do board us? What if, somehow, they stop us and you survive it-then what?”

“Then nothing,” he replied, as easy as thanking the porter for a cup of coffee. “They know I’m on board, and they won’t shoot me.”

“Then maybe someone should!” The private swung his revolvers around and pointed both at the ranger, who didn’t move a muscle.

He only said, “You? You want to shoot me? I guess you could, and I could even see where it might make sense to you. But keep this in mind: I could’ve taken you down one by one, throwing your corpses overboard without thinking twice about it. For the last five minutes I’ve had a nice fat shot at a whole row of you dumb sons of bitches, all of you with your backsides ripe for the aiming at. But I didn’t shoot you, because I ain’t got no problem with you. I’d like to see you succeed. I’d like to make it to Salt Lake City in one piece, and killing you off won’t do anything to help me reach that goal.”

He looked like he wanted to spit again, but maybe he was out of tobacco, or maybe he didn’t want to pull down the window and get another blast of cold air in the face. “Hell,” he said instead. “I’ve said it since I got on board, and I’ll keep saying it until I get let off or get thrown off: I’m not here to fight against you, on behalf of the Confederacy or the Republic or anybody else. Y’all leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone, like I’ve left you alone all this time. And that’s the best offer you’re going to get from me.”

Somewhere beyond the window, the whistle blew again. Even Tankersly looked over his shoulder, sensing it was close. And since the ranger hadn’t drawn, and hadn’t budged, the private reluctantly turned away. But he said, “I’m watching you, Korman.”

To which the ranger said, “Knock yourself out. Maybe I’ll do a little dance.”

Mercy turned away from the conversation and went to a spare square of window in order to see outside. At first she thought the glass was going opaque from too many eager breaths being puffed upon it, but then she realized that the visibility was shrinking from outside, not within. A dusting of snow billowed down through the pass-which she could see, just barely, because of the way the track bent ahead and showed her the curve of the train.

There it was: a gap cut between the mountains. At this distance, it looked immense, though she knew that the ranger must be right, and it couldn’t be any wider than a quarter of a mile. Feeding into it were about a dozen tracks, all lined up side by side so they made a pattern of stripes squeezed into the narrow corridor.

And off to the south, she could see it now: the Shenandoah.

It streaked up to meet them, a bullet of a machine, drawing only four cars as opposed to the Dreadnought’s eight (if she included the snowplow fixture, which was of such terrific size and weight that she might as well). It was behind them, yes, and coming up from an arcing track that surely added more distance to their flight. But even from her spot on board the Union train, Mercy could see that the other engine was flying like lightning. Surely it was difficult to judge, but it couldn’t be her imagination that the Shenandoah was gaining ground, and as her eyes tracked the gap and the other engine’s path, she could’ve sworn that the ranger was right-it wasn’t a matter of if, but of when.