45 minutes before. Glancing around she saw most of the contraband had already been moved. But a single agricultural locomotive sat with steam up. A smile broke Aleu’s muzzle as she saw Kaltag, his eyes glued to a clipboard.

Edging around the crates around him, she slipped out behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. Kaltag looked behind him, and a look that was a mix of seeing a ghost, and being caught with one hand in a cookie jar, spread across his face.

“’ello” was all Aleu said before burying her fist into his muzzle. She grabbed him by his shoulders and as he fell forward slammed her knee into his face. Kaltag flopped backwards, blood seeping from his snout. As the final move, Aleu smashed her foot into his crotch.

“And this time, Stay down.” She hissed.

Turning away from him, she mounted the Agricultural locomotive and ripped the throttle open. The little locomotive raced down the line, this time in the opposite direction then before.

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

Aleu sped threw the caverns, like knight on a steed, she rod on with the idea of giving it all for this fight. If she failed, it could mean an economical disaster for the Alaska Range, and for the WRR.

Up ahead  she saw the entrance to the mine, where the stolen trains had been parked. But this time, the steel plug was open, the dark forms of freight could be seen piled around the entrance, along with the silhouettes of workers moving the cargo around. The sun was just rising.

Aleu felt a bullet wiz past her face fur. Another one shattered the sight glass on the minute engine. Aleu fell backwards as the locomotive reached the group of men standing by the portal. The locomotive slammed into the freight, tossing end over end into the group who fled like scared rabbits. It landed outside in the snow in front of the old ore chutes.

Aleu slid along the stone floor, spinning around she flailed her leg out kicking the first dog she saw off his feet. It turned out to be Steele. She jumped up and landed on her feet.

A bullet missed her muzzle by centimeters. Grabbing the dazed Steele’s Smith and Wesson, she launched herself behind a pile of machinery. Steele and his group dove behind a pile of lumber.

Aleu launched a volley of fire into the group, seeing one husky fall in a puddle of blood, she received a cloud of bullets in return.

As she reached down to reload, a red and white paw grabbed her by her tail and pulled her backwards.

“What the!” was all she could say before scrambling around to see the familiar white and red face of her own flesh and blood.

“You!” Both Aleu and Kodi blurted out at the same time.

“Kodi, what are you doing here!” Aleu barked. He brother didn’t say, he just slammed the startled she-wolf in the stomach with the butt of a rifle.

Aleu flopped onto the floor of the cavern. Holding his hand up, Kodi stopped the firing from the group of dogs.

Aleu rolled over, dabbled back in pain. She opened her eyes to see the rifle bore of Kodi’s Winchester.

“Sorry Sis.” Was all he said. She closed her eyes and prepared as the husky’s finger closed the trigger.

But her eras picked up a filmier moan, caring on the wind outside the portal of the mine. It feathered up and down and was accompanied by a roar that sounded like the cross between a tornado, and an avalanche.

Kodi pulled the trigger…but not at Aleu, he swung his rifle up and fired at Texas as the 4-4-0 steam locomotive screamed into the old mine yard, sparks flying as his brake shoes dug into the icy rails. His whistle howling like a demented soul.

Aleu jumped up, and tackling her bother, both fell outside into the snow. The rest of Kodi’s team were busy fighting off the US army’s Alaska cavalry as they poured out of the boxcars behind Texas.

Kodi dove his fists into Aleu’s chest. The she wolf crossed her arms deflecting most of the blows, but she took several to the face, leaving a red stream that stained her white face fur. Standing up she threw a few kicks at her brother, but Kodi instead ducked under one, and caught the other. Throwing her leg up, he pushed Aleu off balance and backwards. She fell off the slope and slid down to the mainline which bordered the river. Aleu came to a rest on her stomach next to the outer rail.

Suddenly sparks flew from the rail next to her face as Kodi’s rifle barked. He was running down the slope, and restocking the shotgun.  

Aleu jumped up and reached for the Smith and Wesson, but she had lost it in the mine portal.

The icy gravel around her feet erupted in a small geyser and a round buried itself in the roadbed. Above the siblings, the sound of the battle between Kodi’s rail pirates and Texas’s regiment could clearly be heard.

Aleu backed over the bank of the river, standing on the ice. Kodi slowly approached her, closing the gap between the two.

“You stupid dog. We didn’t you just marry the mine boss and live out the rest of your life in merriment.” He said spiting out a tooth.

Aleu looked at her brother. “You know about dad…”

“Who do you think recommended Brewbaker.”? Kodi spat back and he too started across the icy river after the backing she-wolf.  “You ruined it…you would have died a rich mistress…instead of here on an icy river.”

“What happened to you?” Aleu asked looking at her brother.

Kodi reached out with the rifle, Aleu dove as a hole was blasted in the ice where she had previously stood.

Aleu slid across the ice, holes blasting behind her as she scrambled back to her feet and then dove at Kodi.

Kodi was knocked off balance as she rammed into his legs. The two canines rolled onto the ice, spider web crack forming around them as they fought like the primeval wolves they where descended from. The rifle slid away.

“Aleu!!!” Balto’s voice called out. He stood on the rail line, confused at the sight of his two offspring out on the ice. Torn between whom he should reach out. Rather then help one, he ran out onto the ice to separate the two. But instead of helping, his added weight on the stressed ice caused rifts to form. He jumped back onto dry land and watched in horror, as the cracks reached out like the hands of death to his children, he knew one wouldn’t come back alive.

Aleu heard the cracks, and as she separated from her bother, her arm went threw. Suddenly the ice around the two dogs seemed to disintegrate into ice-cold water. Aleu contorted in the water, grabbing the edge of the ice hole, her back to Kodi. Her whole body suddenly went into a cardiac arrest as the cold water drove itself into each fur and flake of her skin. Her clothing suddenly waterlogged became anchors, and her muscles started to act sluggish and confounded.

Kodi fell backwards across the ice as the rift fallowed him Kodi grabbed the rifle as the hole swallowed him. Just as he went under, he hit the trigger.

Aleu felt it more then heard it, she was clinging to the side of the hole. The bullet hit the ice in front of her, splitting it and causing it to overturn. The last thing she saw before blacking out was the hand and arms of her father, reaching into the icy water as he franticly grabbed his beloved daughter.  

One day, we will be propelled around the world in carriages moved by steam. Perhaps at speeds over 20 Miles per hour!- Newspaper article, 1832.


Through the drawn curtains of the hospital room that had become Aleu’s sanctuary, which squatted in the right angle formed by the street and the tracks, a hundred yards or more from the station, a light shone dully. Aleu lay on the down bed. Her loose gown, girdled at the waist with a tasseled cord, only half concealing the sturdy, sweeping lines of the form beneath. Her placid, blue eyes were light with what seemed a habitual earnestness of purpose, and her sweet wolven mouth drooped seriously.

After she had arrived in town, more dead then alive, Balto had swooped her into the local hospital as quickly as he could. She was a lucky dog…

Aleu quietly sat up, and scratched at the belt that was draw across her waist and around the bed, locking her in. Balto’s precaution. He knew that Aleu would instantly leave town on Texas, and not give her body time to heal. Also, he had Texas go into the shops for an overhaul. The 4-4-0 was currently disassembled, his boiler on blocks and his driving wheels standing outside in the snow. As a measure of comfort, Balto had his headlamp sterilized (a feat of ingenuity!) and brought into the hospital. It sat across the room. Aleu smiled quaintly as her eyes glanced on it. She knew when she got back in the cab; Texas would be better then ever before.

She looked around the room, the wooden walls and paneling gave off a warm glow, the gas light flickering gently. Snow fell on the crystal glass as the wind howled outside. It made the battle at the mines and the stolen trains seem so distant.

Then the spell was broken by the distant scream of a locomotive, half-drowned in the howling wind. Aleu glanced at the clock.

"There's the 'Overland,'" she murmured. "She's three minutes late.”

Aleu watched as a beam shone threw the window, then the blast of the whistle and the outline of a locomotive, firebox flickering drew past. Fallowed by a strange of bright yellow squares, some with the outlines of passengers in them.

Kodi hadn’t been found. Another hole in the ice had been discovered downstream. Aleu found out from her father that her brother had changed drastically. After he had lost his job with the sled company, his route taken over by the railroad, he joined Steele to head to the mining town of Dawson. It was Kodi that introduced Balto to Jonathan Brewbaker. Aleu knew that something had gone on between them.

She reached over to the nightstand and picked up a sketchpad. Its pages where filled with rough sketches of the inner workings of locomotives. Valves, injectors, valve gear. Even a way to work vacuum brakes with Westinghouse.

Just as she started to put her graphite to the paper, a knock came at the door.

“Come in!”