accompanied by the ragged heartbeat of the Texas. Even threw the glow of the gas lamps, Aleu could see the longing in his eyes. “I guess you’ve been taking care of yourself.”

Aleu smiled. “ The road takes care of me.”

The two walked over to a bench and sat down.

“So, have you found anyone yet?” Balto asked with a sly smile.

Aleu laughed. “Why is it that you and mother are so eager to mate me off?”

“Because you’re the one pup who hasn’t found even a boyfriend yet.”

Aleu wasn’t even going to bring up her past flings. “Well, Texas takes up a good chunk of my life. Speaking of which, when is my next freight due?”

“Tomorrow…9:09 pm sharp.” Balto looked around. “But we have a little situation that concerns me deeply. Only the dispatchers and managers know about it, and I’m tiring not to show too much emotion over it.”  

“What’s the problem?” Aleu asked.

“Three trains have gone missing.”

Aleu sat there confused. “Missing…as in robbed.”

“No…missing, as in the whole thing, caboose and all, was just plucked off the main line!”   

Aleu sat still, her mind contemplating. “How do you lose three freight trains? Don’t they have to fallow the tracks?”

“I don’t know, there are over a thousand miles between here and the next town: White Mountain. I’m just glad its freight trains and not passenger. If a passenger train disappears, there is going to be wide spread panic.”

Aleu nodded. “Alaska is a strange and un-forgiving land. You know the native wolf packs believe in a witch who used to lure passing travelers into her liar, where she would take them into the spirit world…not dead, yet not alive, trapped forever. It how they would explain the sometimes irrational disappearances of fellow pack members.”

Balto nodded. “Yah, but where not talking about a lone wolf in the woods, were taking about 200 tons of iron and steel.”

Aleu nodded. “Well, there is nothing we can do about it tonight. Say, how is mother doing.”?  

Balto finally smiled. “She’s cooking us dinner. She was able to get her work in the yard done before noon and spent the whole evening pre-paring a “welcome home” supper for you.”

Aleu smiled. Unlike her, her parents had decided to work outside the road crew life. In fact, most of the WRR’s locomotive fleet had Balto’s fingerprint in them somewhere along the line. He even built full classes of Locomotives in Nome’s extensive steam shop. The Railroad had a large 20-stall roundhouse on the edge of town, bordering the seashore. Not to far from the roundhouse was the old washed up trawler Balto used to make his home in. he had renovated it into a small design office after Boris Gooseanov passed away.
Jenna on the other hand was a yard manager. Although she had her hobbies too. Few knew it, but Jenna moonlighted as an artist and sculptor, she was the one who came up with WRR’s distinctive green and burgundy paint scheme.

“What about Kodi?” Aleu asked.

Balto sighed. “He’s had it rough since the railroad took the mail contract away. Lost three jobs here and decided there was nothing in Nome for him. He left for the Yukon Gold fields after the mill closed.”

**************************

Inside the old wooden house, Jenna was busy setting the table. Rosie, the 19-year-old girl who lived with Jenna was sweeping the wood board floors.

“I can’t wait till Aleu gets here!” Rosie said excitedly. She always had an exited hyperactive streak in her, and age hadn’t slowed her down. She showed no signs of the diphtheria that at one point crippled her. Ironically, if the outbreak had waited two more years, the antitoxin would have come in by train, and Balto and Jenna would have never met. Jenna thought: how much the world has changed with the coming of the steam train.

The door opened and Aleu and Balto stepped in. “Look whose here!” Balto called out.

Rose ran out of the kitchen and embraced Aleu in a huge hug.

“ohmygodAleuyourbackhowwasColoradoandtherailroadandthewildwildwestoomygodyousmelllikeoilandsmokeandsteamandotherstuffisthatwhatTexasmellslikeifsohesmnellsooooawsomeIsowantarideonTexascanyougivemearideonTexas?”

She said all this extremely fast. Aleu’s head was spinning.

“Sure…come down to the yard and I’ll let you chug him up and down the sidings.”

“Oh Goodie!” Rose said hyperactively.  

Jenna stood in the doorframe of the kitchen and laughed. Balto walked over to her and gave her a kiss, then walked into the kitchen and dining room.

“You can set your things by the couch. Dinner is ready.” Jenna said to Aleu who was hanging her jacket on the coat jack, she wore a black sweater underneath. Turning to her mother, she nodded, and then pulled her pocket watch out of the jacket, and pocketed it.

Railroad iron is a magician’s rod, in its power to evoke the sleeping energies of land and water. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson



Aleu sat in the rocking chair on the bridge deck of the old trawler. She slowly rocked back and forth. Her eyes glued in the northern lights as they crackled and whipped above. Not too far away, separated by a small field of snow, the roundhouse stood.  She looked at the semicircle of bold, unwinding headlights looking out the stall doors, heard the low purr and mutter of the steam mounting in the gauges - scornful hisses of contempt as a slack valve lifted a little. Locomotives all readying for some night jog that would find them elsewhere by morning. She watched as a 4-6-0 pushed out gingerly, accompanied by the clang of her own bell onto the turntable, then spun about. Lanterns waved, or danced up and down, and the locomotive moved into the yard, and out of sight behind the buildings of Nome. Then with the faint clashing of couplers and squeals of hand brakes, she was attached to her train.

“Sometimes I wonder how we don’t get calls every night about the noise we make.” Balto chuckled as he walked out of the bridge door and sat next to Aleu on an old bollard.

Aleu knew why. Nome rode on the Railroad. It needed the WRR to haul in supplies not just for the town, but also for the mines, and to the outposts outside Nome. It also needed the Railroad to sell its goods outside the town, to the rest of Alaska. Nome had survived without the railroad before…but Aleu knew that it couldn’t do it again. The Railroad was a lifeline; the sound of whistles and bells was the sound of progress to the town on the edge of frozen hell.

“You worried about those trains?” Aleu asked.

Balto sighed. “Yes, I am. I’m also worried about you making that run in the morning.”

Aleu laughed. “Are you trying to discourage me from running my own train…on our own railroad? Papa, we both know the Mountain Trail like the back of our rather bushy tails.”

“I know, but sometimes…well…Alaska is a large and unforgiving land, we don’t know everything out there.”

Aleu stopped rocking and looked at her father. “Papa…doesn’t tell me you believe in Ghost Trains!”  She burst out laughing at the idea. “There is nothing supernatural on that railroad line! The line is dangerous yes…but nothing supernatural.”

“I don’t know Aleu. I remember several years back, I was on a work crew out on the line between Nenana and Safety checkpoint. It was a snowy and cold evening. We stopped work when a freak blizzard showed up. In the middle of this blizzard we all saw this cloud roll down the track, and in this cloud an ancient outside frame wood burner steam locomotive pulling these civil war era coaches roll passed. Each window was ablaze with light. Music and laughter was coming from each car. But the train made no sound. It came and went without as much as a clack on the rails.

Afterwards we checked the dispatcher, the other trains out on the line, and even the roundhouse crew. No train was scheduled to pass…no ancient wood burner was out that night.

To this day, a apart of me is certain that train was more then iron and wood.”




Aleu almost passed out laughing. She held her head in her hands and was laughing so hard tears streamed out her eyes.

“I’m sorry papa, but if I counted all the “ancient outside frame wood burners” on this railroad, I would have become a mathematician! So you saw a train in a blizzard and your eyes played tricks on you. It is all scientifically explainable, and you’re giving it supernatural credence.”

“Oh come on Aleu…if your so shire of yourself, then explain why you carry that Gunpowder Falls Railroad Lantern with you?”    

“That has nothing to do with this conversation.” Aleu spat back. “I just have not had the chance to give it back to the crews at Wolf Creek.”

Balto smiled. He new the old railroad superstition that it was good luck to have a lantern from another line aboard. “Nonetheless…I’m going with you. Besides, an old pal of mine is getting married in White Mountain.”

Aleu’s ears perked up and her bushy tail started to wag. “Who?”

“Your old babysitter, Star.”

Aleu smiled as she thought back. Star had been a sled dog on the team that brought back the antitoxin back in 25. He used to baby-sit the pups for Balto and Jenna every now and then. “Who’s he wedding.”?

“Miss Dixie of Nome…one of Jenna’s gossip pals. Don’t say anything to her you don’t want the whole town to know.” Balto laughed.

Aleu leaned back in the chair.  “We’ll just have to not be late then.”

*****************




Morning found snow. The switch-lamps at Nome Yard twinkled faintly through the swirling flakes as they gently fell down from the heavens.

Aleu gently let her 4-4-0 roll out of the roundhouse and onto the turntable. Texas had a good head of steam, but she wanted to load up with a fresh pile of wood. Having her father on board meant she could use his wood burning skills.

Texas spun around on the turntable like a battleship preparing for war. His pumps hissing, and steam wafting lazily from his diamond stack. His headlamp glowed faintly in the morning