Louis was getting ready to pitch when they heard the train coming. It was still a ways down the track, but the sonorous, musical sound of its whistle, focused by the granite cliffs of the Narrows and softened by the cottonwood trees, washed over the pasture like a river and Hector, their second baseman, stuffed his mitt behind his belt and ran for the fence. Louis shouted at him to stay -- after all, the game had started -- but Hector shouted back, "Nuts to the game! I'm going to see the train come in!" The other players ran after him in a flurry of high-ankle boots, and Louis threw the baseball down in the dust before following them. Somehow, they always wound up doing what Hector wanted to do.

The boys stampeded along the dirt road towards town, dodging a Model T Ford truck that overtook them on the way. The driver cursed and yelled at them to stay outta the road on the curves, and they laughed. The locomotive's puffing and wheezing was much closer now and they ran harder to beat it. Louis' lanky, teenaged legs and arms flailed awkwardly, but he kept up with them and was even ahead somewhat when they rounded the last bend into Chama.

There wasn't much to Chama, not even a vaudeville or movie house, but it was a railroad town, and it had a roundhouse and machine shop and a tremendous, long railyard that was always full of freight cars. Louis' granddad was a carpenter who'd worked on the buildings when the railroad first came through, and he said that from Chama the rails climbed into Cumbres Pass -- the steepest and highest climb for any train in New Mexico, he reckoned. Hector had once said he'd been up there, partway. Louis never had.

They were running away from the road and up to the tracks when the cottonwoods shivered and the locomotive came roaring out, a colossal black tubular beast all covered in soot and piping, with a great yellow eye that was always looking straight ahead. Its drab green passenger cars flew along behind it, and some of the boys tried to run alongside them but gave up once the last car had rolled by.

Louis' crisp, white shirt was speckled with tiny black cinders from the engine, and he was examining it when Hector said, "What's the matter, afraid the girls won't like your outfit?" Everyone else laughed, and Louis forced himself to smile. He wanted to get back to the game, but the other boys found the train a lot more exciting and they wandered past the low, wooden station and down the yard, where the incoming train had vanished into a forest of railroad cars.

Hector led the way for a while, but Louis lengthened his stride and got ahead. He regretted it when Hector said, "Say, Louie, how long's it been since you took a dare?" It had actually been three weeks, and Louis had sworn off dares since the last one got him a bath in the swamp, but the other boys started throwing ideas at him -- put a snake through someone's mail slot, put Mrs. Valencia's big old tomcat up a tree. Louis batted them back as long as he could, but they started calling him yellow-belly, fraidy-cat, chicken, and then Hector stopped short. "Got it."

They all stopped. Hector pointed to a locomotive. "Climb up in the cab and blow the whistle. Dare you." It was one of the big new engines the railroad had just started running, coupled in at the rear of a train -- probably a helper to get it over the pass -- and the cab was clearly empty.

"You hear me?" Hector continued. "Goin' to take it?"

They all pressed in, looking hard at Louis' face. His hair and skin were very fair, but his eyes were dark, so dark that no matter how hard you looked into them, you'd never see any color, only your own reflection.

Louis bolted across the yard, bounding over the tracks and into the engine's cab with a flying leap. It was chock full of valves and levers and gauges, but somehow he picked out the whistle cord and pulled it. As soon as the sound rang out, he bolted for the way out and stopped just short of running into a man.

Louis looked up from the man's heavy bib overalls to his face, solid and square behind a brown mustache and the bill of a shop cap. The boy turned to run out the other side of the cab, but there was another man there, younger and stockier, with close-cropped dark hair. Louis was trapped.

The fire rumbled steadily somewhere inside the iron beast. The man with the mustache looked down at him with eyes that were still sharp and blue, despite the wrinkles that ringed them. Picking up a shovel, he held it out to Louis and ordered, "Stoke it."

Louis took the shovel in both hands and stood still, bewildered. He jumped when two small iron doors sprang open with a hiss and clatter and he found himself looking right into the locomotive's fiery heart. "Stoke it!" the older man repeated.

Louis plunged the shovel into the coal pile and staggered under the weight -- it was worse than a shovelful of rocks. He swung the shovel at the firedoor and missed, scattering coal all over the cab floor. "Try it again!" the older man barked. Taking another scoop, Louis looked into the fire and threw the coal right into the inferno. The younger man took his foot off a pedal and the doors clanged shut.

The older man -- probably the engineer -- sat down on one side of the cab, exchanged a few whistle signals with the lead engine and then Louis realized the train had started. He thought briefly that he could jump before they picked up speed outside the yard, but the doors sprang open again and the younger man, the fireman, said, "Put this one on the back corner, this side."

While Louis tossed coal into the corner of the firebox, the fireman turned to the engineer. "How far are we gonna take him?"

The engineer glanced to the side. "However far he lasts."

"Well, he won't last much longer. Climb to Cumbres will break him in two. Hey, kid, put some more on that back corner."

Louis threw in two more scoopfuls, his jaw clenched so tight he could feel the cinders grinding between his teeth.

The cottonwoods and the Narrows fairly flew by and they rolled out into the mottled green ranchland grasses. Louis was leaning out the side to get a look at the impossibly long line of freight cars ahead of them when the engineer called, "Keep back from that edge when we go over the trestle. Almost lost a fireman that way." As they crossed the trestle, the grasses plunged down into a wide, verdant ravine, the creek at its bottom just a glimmering, meandering brown ribbon.

The engine's light puffing noise deepened into something more serious, and the fireman reached out. "All right, kid, give me the shovel." But Louis clutched it with both hands, slammed his foot down on the pedal and threw in another scoop.

The engineer peered at the boy carefully. "Put the next one toward the front. She likes it deep up front." Louis threw the coal in as far forward as he could, thrusting the shovel so deep into the firebox that he could feel the heat rippling up his forearms. "Now put some in the middle!" the engineer added. "Keep the whole firebed good and thick!"

The engine noise deepened further, came louder and faster. "Watch that gauge!" the engineer shouted, pointing to a huge brass instrument with a face like a clock's. "That's the steam pressure! Don't let that gauge go down!"

The engine noise kept getting louder and faster till it was a continuous thunder, echoing through the hills and cliffs. The gauge was already dropping and Louis fought it, blindly pitching coal till the firebed was almost black and the fireman shouted, "Leave it! That's enough! Throw too much on and you'll kill it!"

Louis leaned against the swaying cab wall for a breather. Trees and rocks loomed up and whipped past, and the cars ahead of them dipped and weaved in and out of the hills in a line as meandering as the creek. Louis saw the gauge had started climbing again, and the fire went from black to orange to a furious white heat. "Now's your chance!" the fireman barked. "Go on! Stoke it!"

From then on Louis kept the fire burning so ferociously that he was afraid it would snatch the shovel right out of his hands. He kept shoveling like there was nothing beyond the coal, the fire and the brass gauge with its impassive mechanical face. He didn't even look up until the cab stopped swaying and the engine's thunder died down. Aspens and evergreens drifted lazily by, air brakes hissed and the whole train shuddered to a halt.

They had stopped on the crest of a hill. It was colder up here, even next to the firebox, and Louis could look miles into the distance and see the Rocky Mountains, austere blue giants towering over the low foothills around them.

Shifting in his seat and stretching his legs, the engineer asked, "How old are you, son?"

Louis looked away from the view. "Fourteen, sir."

"Well. The mighty Cumbres Pass just got bested by a fourteen-year-old kid."

"What next?" the fireman asked. "Cut her loose and run light back to Chama?"

"Yeah, they don't need a helper anymore." The engineer looked forward, toward the lead engine. Louis could see where soot had settled into the wrinkles on the man's face, highlighting them in black.

Turning back to Louis, the engineer asked, "What's your name?"

"Louis Shelby."

"Well, Shelby, if you'll keep steam up going back down the grade, I can give my regular fireman some practice on the throttle. He's up for the engineer's exam in a couple weeks."

The trip down from the pass was quick and quiet, with the engine just coasting and Louis tossing a handful of coal onto the fire every so often. The trestle over the creek rumbled beneath them and soon they were through the Narrows and rolling into the cottonwoods, the entrance to the Chama yard straight ahead.

"Shelby!" the engineer called, peering over the fireman's shoulder. "Those friends of yours up there?"

Louis leaned out the side and saw Hector and the whole bunch standing tensely next to the station, all their attention fixed on the solitary incoming engine. "Yes, sir, they are."

"They put you up to blowing that whistle?"

Louis nodded. The engineer's mustache curved upward in a smile and his eyes narrowed into two blue slits. Hastily, he shooed the fireman out of the engineer's seat and said, "Shelby, get onto that seatbox! Go on, get up there! Now there's the brake, stop us in front of the station and blow one short toot on the whistle!"

Louis could feel his friends' amazed eyes on him as the locomotive rolled past with him riding high in the cab window. A quick pull on the brake lever brought the engine to a stop, then he reached up and gave a single sharp blast on the whistle. The engineer took off his gloves and shook Louis' hand. "You ever want to come along on another Cumbres turn, just ask around for engineer Garrett, all right? Now go." Louis climbed down onto the station platform and the engine rumbled away.

Hector and his friends all stared at him. Louis' white shirt had been turned black by the cinders and soot, along with his skin and hair, and his eyes were dark as ever, but there was a sparkle in them that stood out against the grime.

Hector stepped forward. "What happened?"

A grin spread over Louis' face -- a long, silent, indecipherable grin. The sound of the engine drifted by from somewhere at the other end of the yard.

Louis suddenly swiped his hand across Hector's shirt, leaving a black, sooty streak, and bolted away from the yard, his longs legs carrying him forward faster and surer than ever before.

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