The next morning, Emily stood on the platform, feeling the warmth of the summer wind and smelling the sagebrush. She tried to glimpse what was going on behind the heavy drawn drapes of The Boss’s private car, but all she could see was part of a silver inkstand and the edge of a newspaper. After the train left Reno, however, and began to climb through the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, The Boss appeared outside of his Pullman car more frequently. Emily made a few brief notes about the winding railroad track and the perseverance of the Chinese labourers who had built it, and about how high above sea level they were; but her attention was fixed on the last car of the train, and on the way its single occupant came out for an hour at a time to smoke and drink and stare at the uneven white line in the blue summer sky that marked the snowy peaks of the Sierras.

It was almost noon by the time the train had climbed at last through the stifling darkness of countless snowsheds and had emerged among the blue-green pines that surrounded Donner Lake, close to the very summit of the mountain pass that would take the train into California. Emily wrapped her beaver coat around her and stood in the open, separated from The Boss’s private car by nothing more than a few feet of chilly mountain air and a greasy coupling.

The Boss stayed inside, his curtains drawn, right up until the moment when the labouring locomotive hauled the twelve-car train to the summit. Then, quite abruptly, his door opened, and he emerged, wearing a fawn coat with a dark fur collar, his face paler than usual, his eyes tired. He acknowledged Emily with a look that could have been anything from a wince to an unrealised smile, and then he went immediately to the rail, to look out over the Sierras.

At Colfax, after a long and winding descent through the mountains, the train stopped to take on water. It was warmer here, although the air was still quite crisp. Many of the passengers stepped down from the train to stretch their legs, but Emily stayed in the parlour car, writing up some of her notes. She had almost finished, and was blotting the last page, when the parlour door opened and The Boss walked in.

Emily sat up straight and tugged at her bottle-green travelling jacket. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said, in a high, curious voice. She hadn’t really meant to sound so inquisitive, but The Boss didn’t appear to notice, or mind. He looked around the car as if he were searching for somebody else, somebody whose face and whose memory somehow eluded him.

‘I’m Collis Edmonds,’ he said slowly.

‘Yes,’ she replied.

‘And you …?’ he asked her.

‘Miss Emily Van Brugh, from New York.’

Collis Edmonds nodded. His eyes still searched around the parlour.