He turned to her, put his hand on her arm, realizing that she had been watching him, not the train. “Colette…”

“I’m sorry, Paul,” she said, stepping away. “Look, go dance with your machine.” She turned to her parents and hugged them.

Mr. Lodrigue was pulling his arm. “Come on. They’re waving at us from the engine.” He towed Paul toward the head of the train, and after a minute he was standing with the engine crew, looking at a screaming pipe under the firebox of the locomotive.

The engineer, a smooth-faced blond man dressed in a new set of pinstriped overalls, yelled above the noise. “The agent says you can work on old stuff. Can you do anything with boiler injectors? We have to move out soon or they’ll let a slow freight past us and we’ll have to follow him to Texas.”

“What’s wrong with the injector on the fireman’s side?” Paul looked at the glossy black paint, the gilt and lacquer in the cab.

“We’re losing steam and water both through this one, and I don’t think we can keep the boiler fed.

Paul pulled on the grab irons and climbed up into a vibrating forest of gauges and levers, forgetting everything but the locomotive, ignoring the crew behind him. He checked the water level in the boiler and tried to turn off the steam valve that fed the injector, but the stem screwed all the way down, and the leak roared on. The fireman clicked the overhead light, and Paul knew what the problem was as soon as he saw the maker’s name and code cast into the side of the brass valve. He grabbed the engineer by an overalls strap and pulled him close so he would hear. “Whoever restored your engine put an eighty-year-old water valve in your injector line. Part of the valve disc’s fallen off and blown through into the injector. Get me a thirty-six-inch pipe wrench. You’ve got quick-breaking unions on these pipes, so I can get you rolling in twenty minutes if the injector’s not damaged.”

The engineer looked at the arcs of hot pipe, the enameled valves. “It’ll take hours to pull that assembly apart.”

Paul looked at the men around him carefully, at their new overalls. “Get me a big wrench from your kit or call a diesel to pull your train.”

The engineer looked at his watch. “We don’t have twenty minutes. Can you make the repair while I operate the engine? You can invoice us for whatever you want.”

Paul looked up at the brass face of the steam gauge. “We’ll see. Fill the boiler full as you can with the fireman’s injector, cut off the main appliance valve, and run slow. If I get the injector on this side fixed, I can jump at Patterson.”

“I’ll tell the agent to pick you up,” the engineer said, twisting the knobs of a radio bolted to the roof of the cab. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”