A little under a year before, when Simms alighted the train at its terminus, a small, indistinct town, the population small, the atmosphere verging on sleepy. Since then, workers, toiling in the heat of summer, and the intense, numbing cold of winter, extended the line, laying the iron rails over the land, stretching it for miles, ever deeper into the interior. Along the way, temporary camps sprang up, and the evidence of such places punctuated the route, the detritus of human existence scattered and discarded in every direction. At one point, the rail tracks split, one section disappearing to the northwest, and it was here that Lol and his companions had set their trap. Using heavy rocks, pieces of timber, and one or two broken carts taken from one of the camps, they erected a barrier acr
