With a feeling of dreadful foreboding, I struck the third flare forcefully against the rail, almost broke it, felt it whoosh, stood waving it beside the track, beside the other flare stuck in the wood

The Canadian came straight on. I couldn't bear it, couldn't believe it. It was almost impossible to throw the flare through the window… the window was too small, too high up, and moving at thirty-five miles an hour. I felt puny on the ground beside the huge roaring advance of the yellow bulk of the inexorable engine with its blinding lights and absence of brain

It was there. Then or never. There were no faces looking out from the cab. I yelled in a frenzy. 'Stop', and the sound blew away futilely on the bow wave of parting air.

I threw the flare. Threw it high, threw it too soon, missed the empty black window.

The flare flew forward of it and hit the outside of the windscreen, and fell on to the part of the engine sticking out in front, and then all sight of it was gone, the whole long heavy silver train rolling past me at a constant speed, making the ground tremble, extinguishing beneath it the second flare I'd planted in its path It went on its mindless way, swept round the curve, and was gone.

I felt disintegrated and sick, failure flooding back in the pain I'd disregarded. The trains would fold into each other, would concertina, would heap into killing chaos… In despair, I picked up the torch and began to jog the way the Canadian had gone. I would have to face what I hadn't been able to prevent, have to help even though I felt wretchedly guilty… couldn't bear the thought of the Canadian ploughing into the Lorrimores’ car… someone would have warned the Lorrimores… oh God, oh God… someone must have warned the Lorrimores… and everyone else. They would all be out of the train, away from the track… Nell… Zak… everybody.

I ran round the curve. Ahead, lying beside the track, still burning, was the flare I'd thrown. Fallen off the engine. The first flare that I'd planted a hundred yards ahead before the next curve had vanished altogether, swept away by the Canadian.

There was nothing. No noise, except the sighing wind. I wondered helplessly when I would hear the crash I had no idea how far away the race train was, how far I'd run.

Growing cold and with leaden feet, I plodded past the fallen flare and along and round the next bend, and round the long curve following. I hadn't heard the screech of metal tearing into metal, though it reverberated in my head. They must have warned the Lorrimores, they must… I shivered among the freezing mountains from far more than frost.

There were two red lights on the rails far ahead. Not bright and burning like the flares, but small and insignificant, like reflectors I wondered numbly what they were, and it wasn't until I'd gone about five more paces that I realized that they weren't reflectors, they were lights… stationary lights… and I began running faster again, hardly daring to hope, but then seeing that they were indeed the rear lights of a train… a train… it could be only one train… there had been no night-tearing crash… The Canadian had stopped. I felt swamped with relief, near to tears, breathless. It had stopped… there was no collision… no tragedy… it had stopped.

I ran towards the lights, seeing the bulk of the train now in the torch's beam, unreasonably afraid that the engineers would set off again and accelerate away. I ran until I was panting, until I could touch the train. I ran alongside it, sprinting now, urgent to tell them not to go on.

There were several people on the ground up by the engine. They could see someone running towards them with a torch, and when I was fairly near to them, one of them shouted out authoritatively, 'Get back on the train, there's no need for people to be out here.'

I slowed to a walk, very out of breath. 'I… er…' I called, 'I came from the train in front.' I gestured along the rails ahead, which were vacant as far as one could see in the headlights of the Canadian.

'What train?' one of them said, as I finally reached them.

'The race train.' I tried to breathe. Air came in gasps. 'Transcontinental… mystery… race train.'

There was a silence. One of them said, 'It's supposed to be thirty-five minutes ahead of us.'

'It had…' I said, dragging in oxygen, 'a hot box.'

It meant a great deal to them. It explained everything.

'Oh.' They took note of my uniform. 'It was you who lit the fusees?'

'Yes.'

'How far ahead is the other train?'

'I don't know… Can't remember… how far I ran.'

They consulted. One, from his uniform, was the Conductor. Two, from their lack of it, were the engineers. There was another man there; perhaps the Conductor's assistant. They decided-the Conductor and the train driver himself decided to go forward slowly. They said I'd better come with them in the cab.

Gratefully, lungs settling, I climbed up and stood watching as the engineer released the brakes, put on power and set the train going at no more than walking pace, headlights bright on the empty track ahead.

'Did you throw one of the fusees?' the engineer asked me.

'I didn't think you were going to stop.' It sounded prosaic, unemotional.

'We weren't in the cab,' he said. 'The one you threw hit the windscreen and I could see the glare all the way down inside the engine where I was checking a valve. Just as well you threw it… I came racing up here just in time to see the one on the track before we ran over it. Bit of luck, you know.'

'Yes.' Bit of luck… deliverance from a lifetime's regret.

'Why didn't the Conductor radio?' the Conductor said crossly.

'It's out of order.'

He tut-tutted a bit. We rolled forward slowly. There was a bend ahead to the right.

'I think we're near now,' I said. 'Not far.'

'Right.' The pace slowed further. The engineer inched carefully round the bend and it was as well he did, because when he braked at that point to a halt, we finished with twenty yards between the front of the Canadian's yellow engine and the shining brass railing along the back platform of the Lorrimores' car.

'Well,' the engineer said phlegmatically, 'I wouldn't have wanted to come round the corner unawares to see that.'

It wasn't until then that I remembered that Johnson was somewhere out on the track. I certainly hadn't spotted him lying unconscious or dead on the ground on the return journey, and nor obviously had the Canadian's crew. I wondered briefly where he'd got to, but at that moment I didn't care. Everyone climbed down from the Canadian's cab, and the crew walked forward to join their opposite numbers ahead.

I went with them. The two groups greeted each other without fuss. The race train lot seemed to take it for granted that the Canadian would stop in time. They didn't discuss flares, but hot boxes.

The journal-box which held the near side end of the rearmost of the six axles of the horse car had overheated, and it had overheated because, they surmised, the oil inside had somehow leaked away. That's what was usually wrong, when this happened. They hadn't yet opened it. It no longer glowed red, but was too hot to touch. They were applying fresh snow all the time. Another ten minutes, perhaps.

'Where's George Burley?' I asked.

The race train baggage handler said no one could find him, but two sleeping-car attendants were still searching for him. He told the others that it was a good thing he'd happened to be travelling in the horse car. He had smelled the hot axle, he said. He'd smelled that smell once before. Terrible smell, he said. He'd gone straight forward to tell the engineer to stop at once. 'Otherwise the axle would have broken and we could have had a derailment.'

The others nodded. They all knew.

'Did you warn any of the passengers?' I asked.