Billy and his uncle never knew what hit them. Nor did the Wells Fargo Express messenger in the baggage car, nor three friends who had been playing draw poker in the front of the derailed Pullman. But Zeke Taggert and Rufus Patrick, who understood the cause and nature of the nightmarish forces gathering like a tornado, actually felt the unspeakable pain of scalding steam for a tenth of a second, before the explosion ended all they knew forever.

WITH A CLANG OF cast iron on stone and the crackle of splintering ash, the Kalamazoo Velocipede tumbled down the railroad embankment.

"What the hell is that?"

Jack Douglas, ninety-two, was so old he'd started out as an Indian fighter protecting the first western railroad's right of way. The company kept him on out of rare sentiment and let him act as a sort of night watchman patrolling the quiet Glendale rail yard with a heavy single-action Colt .44 on his hip. He reached for it with a veined and bony hand and began sliding it with practiced ease from its oiled holster.

The Wrecker lunged with shocking swiftness. His thrust was so efficient that it would have caught a man his own age flat-footed. The watchman never had a chance. The telescoping sword was in his throat and out again before he crumpled to the ground.

The Wrecker looked down at the body in disgust. Of all the ridiculous things to go wrong. Jumped by an old geezer who should have been in bed hours ago. He shrugged and said, half aloud, with a smile, "Waste not, want not." Pulling a poster from his coat pocket, he crushed it into a ball. Then he knelt beside the body, forced open the dead hand, and closed the fingers around the crumpled paper.

Dark and empty streets led to where the Southern Pacific rails crossed the narrow tracks of the Los Angeles & Glendale Electric Railway. The big green streetcars of the interurban passenger line did not run after midnight. Instead, taking advantage of inexpensive electricity purchased in bulk at night, the railway carried freight. Keeping a sharp eye for police, the Wrecker hopped aboard a car filled with milk cans and fresh carrots bound for Los Angeles.

It was growing light when he jumped off in the city and made his way across East Second Street. The dome of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway's Moorish-style La Grande Station was silhouetted against a lurid red dawn. He retrieved a suitcase from the luggage room and changed out of his dusty clothes in the men's room. Then he boarded the Santa Fe's flyer to Albuquerque and sat down to a breakfast of steak and eggs and fresh-baked rolls in a dining car set with silver and china.

As the flyer's locomotive gathered way, the imperious conductor of the express passenger train came through, demanding, "Tickets, gents."

Affecting the brusque attitude of a man who traveled regularly for business, the Wrecker did not bother to look up from his Los Angeles Times, which allowed him to keep his face down, concealing his features, as he wiped his fingers on a fine linen napkin and fished out his wallet.