Destination Unknown
Wind River Canyon
Admiral Biscuit
She woke in the middle of the night, briefly disoriented. The train was moving slowly across switches and she almost stuck her head up before remembering that was a bad idea. There was the flash of lights from a highway crossing and then the train went back into the night, bound for she didn’t know where.
She didn’t care where. At a guess, she was still going north or west, and that was good enough.
Stars spread out above her and she watched them until the train lulled her back to sleep.
•••
In the morning, her train was stopped in a yard. It was open and dry, what little vegetation she could see was scrubby and brown, and she began to wonder if she’d accidentally gotten on a train that was going to cross the desert again.
It wasn’t hot, though.
She was on a middle track, railcars on both sides largely obscuring the view. Sweetsong swiveled her ears and didn’t hear anybody nearby, so she stuck her head over the side sill and looked towards the front of her train. The locomotives were still there, and if she leaned her ear to the reservoir tank, she could faintly hear the thump of the air compressor.
Usually, they’d cut the locomotives off if the train was going to be broken up. Older, smaller locomotives moved cuts of cars in the yard, while the big new ones hauled the trains back and forth on the mainline.
Unless she were on a short line, then it was anypony’s guess what they’d have for equipment. Those wouldn’t take her as far, but the crews were less wary about riders, and some of them went really interesting places that the big trains didn’t go.
She’d gotten caught on a short line once; back before she was as smart about keeping her saddlebags on whenever she might be seen. Riding on the end of a grain car away from the locomotives, and she had crouched down and hidden herself as the rest of the train was cut away, but she hadn’t expected them to try and kick the cars into a facing siding, nor had she expected the conductor to climb up on the ladder to ride the car.
They’d locked eyes and she would have flown off but her saddlebags were there and her blanket was unrolled and she didn’t want to lose either, so she gave him an apologetic shrug and he pointed off the train. Then he lifted his radio up and told the engineer that the brake wheel was stiff and it would be a moment.
That was good enough for her, so she rolled up her blanket and strapped on her saddlebag and then flew off to a nearby tree—there wasn’t any sense in going further, not until she got a good idea of the situation.
It turned out that the conductor was friendly and invited her to ride in the locomotive for most of the rest of the run. He let her sit in his seat, even. It wasn’t as comfortable as the seat in the DPU she’d ridden to Alliance, but it was still a lot of fun. She got to chat with them about the finer points of running a railroad and a few things to watch out for, and in turn she told them about some of the places she’d been and some of the trains she’d ridden.
The engineer had been with the railroad since the locomotives were yellow and had names. Now they were blue and didn’t have names anymore, which she thought was a shame.
Sometimes she’d send them a postcard. It was about time to do that again. She wanted to wait until she was in the mountains, though. She hadn’t sent them one from the Rockies yet.
•••
Her train left the yard just before noon. She ducked down against the slope sheet and got the rest of her pizza out of her saddlebag—it was soggy, but she ate it anyway.
The town didn’t extend far beyond the rail yard; the tracks crossed under a state highway and all of a sudden there was practically nothing but open scrubland. The train passed an airport and a collection of fields, and then it headed into the high plains.
The terrain got ruggeder and ruggeder as they climbed towards the Continental Divide. She didn’t know how far away it was, how long they’d be in foothills or mountainous terrain. The tracks only occasionally followed roads, coming alongside now and then, before leaving them behind. She rarely saw cars on the road, and got bolder, standing up on her platform so she could see the scenery better.
They were on single track, so there wouldn’t be any opposing trains except on passing sidings. And there wasn’t anybody else out here. A few small towns that flashed by in a moment, occasional houses and farms, and an abandoned rail yard, its only remnants an empty passing track and one leg of the wye still leading off into the scrub brush.
Sometimes settlements naturally grew up around railroads, and she knew that some of those towns had died off again; the train passed through a couple where there were only a few buildings and a faded sign with the town’s name printed on it. Natrona, Arminto . . . where had the people who lived there gone? Had they moved to the cities, or back into the wild, away from the trains and the roads?
She could see diverging tracks and buildings ahead, so she ducked back into the safety of the car, her shape broken up by the air reservoir and its plumbing. To the north, a collection of mobile homes in dirt lots, then a grain elevator with a long string of grainers lined up.
Then it was gone, and the tracks crossed under a road important enough to warrant an overpass, then bent north.
Sweetsong caught a glimpse of an abandoned line that branched off, and the ground was flat enough she could follow it with her eyes until it ran into a lake.
She knew about the big reservoirs out West, but thought that all of them were built where the terrain was more mountainous; here she could only see distant mesas in the direction of the lake, although there were rocky hills to the north.
Maybe it was big and shallow, or maybe an earthquake had made it. Or maybe it had been a river cutting through the land, like the Grand Canyon. That was a place she wanted to visit sometime, maybe in the autumn when the train ride out would be cooler.
Soon enough, they were running parallel to the shore, occasionally right on the edge or even on a causeway over a small bay, other times further inland. The land alongside the train was rapidly rising up, faster than she had expected.
She hadn’t been anticipating a tunnel, but all of a sudden it was dark and she jerked back, then huddled against the slope sheet of the grain car. Some tunnels were long and she wasn’t ready for that.
The sound of the train was very different in the enclosed space, echoing and weird. Everything was louder and she couldn’t tell where sounds were coming from; she could faintly make out the tunnel walls rushing by and then they were gone, too, swallowed in the darkness.
She couldn’t tell if the train was speeding up or slowing down or keeping its pace. Logically, she imagined that it was keeping pace, that the train crew wouldn’t want to stop in the tunnel if they could avoid it. But she was dozens of cars behind the locomotives; if they had to stop, the tail of the train might still be in the tunnel and then what would she do? There was barely any clearance on the side of the train, she knew that. Walking out would mean getting killed by a freight car, one she’d never see coming.
What if the train broke?
•••
It was only a couple minutes before the train popped out the other side, and she caught sight of a dam then they crossed over the river on a nice, open bridge and followed along on the west bank.
The terrain had changed to rocky outcroppings and falls of gravel leading towards the river, with scrubby bushes and grass anywhere that stayed still long enough for it to put roots down. Taller trees lived near the river, if there was a spot of land flat enough for them.
She looked ahead, and this time was prepared when the train went through a shorter tunnel, then another short pair, crossing through the jutting rocks that led down into the river. On the other side, a highway curved along, also following the watercourse. It, too, had to pass through tunnels.
The river was beautiful, and she spent as much time watching it as she did the terrain around her. Sometimes the trains went places the roads didn’t, but here people driving on the highway got the same view she did, just from the other side.
Much of the right-of-way had been eked out of what little land they had to work with, and the rocky walls to the west were almost close enough for her to touch . . . and some places, they were. When the rocks came in on both sides of the tracks, that usually meant another short tunnel, a place where the rocks went right down to the water and couldn’t be cut through.
Even without leaning out too far, the train went around enough bends she could see the cars in front of her and behind her, and they were moving slow enough that if she’d wanted to, she could have flown off the train and over the river.
It was tempting, but if she left the train would she actually be able to catch it again? Better to take in the scenery from her comfortable platform.
The west was in shadow, and chillier than the daylight implied. When Sweetsong rummaged in her saddlebags for some granola bars to snack on, she also unrolled her army blanket and draped it across her back.
They ran alongside along the river for a while, until the land had flattened out, then went through some fields and crossed over it again, and then a second time before coming up on a town. The highway was close enough to the town she could read the signs put up for cars: Thermopolis. It was the biggest town she’d seen since the train left the yard in the morning, and it had restaurants and hot springs, and she almost bailed off her train, but thought if she did, she might not be getting on another until tomorrow.
Now they were back in more familiar-looking farm country, fertile land in the floodplain of the river they ran alongside. The train picked up speed, now that it wasn’t running alongside the edge of rock outcroppings, and up ahead she saw a passing track with a southbound train waiting. She crouched back in the car until they were past the locomotives, then got back to her hooves.
The highway came and went, following its own course, and she had her head out the side of the car as it bent towards them again, her eyes on an oversized load making its way along the highway.
It was bracketed by a pair of minivans, and carrying a train-sized load. What it was, she couldn't tell; some sort of cylinder with attachments for pipes all over it.
Eventually, the train started to slow down, and she rolled up her army blanket and tied it to her saddlebags, then crouched down and waited, just in case they were arriving at a yard.
•••
They were on the outside track of the yard, and she jumped off the train as soon as she had cover.
Just down the street was a restaurant called The Tipsy Cow, and her stomach was growling at her—the granola bars hadn’t been enough.
Bars were usually fast, and had okay food for cheap. There was a chance she could get back on the same train and get pulled out during the night—she hadn’t gotten that lucky yet, but there was always a first time.
Even though it wasn’t good for her, she had a craving for fried food, so she ordered fried pickles, pizza bites, and mean beans, all to go, and decided to have a cider while she waited. They had Angry Orchard, which she’d tried before and decided was okay.
On an empty stomach, it hit right away, and now she was light-headed and hungry. Real smart, Sweetsong, you should have known that would happen.
Tempting though it was to devour her food as soon as the Styrofoam cases were placed in front of her, she didn’t. She trotted towards the yard, then took flight, the smell of the food taunting her nose. The train was moving again, slowly, but it was moving.
She could see the yard office and a warehouse and climbed higher as she curved north. A road paralleled the yard, and there was a bridge a mile ahead. Trains sometimes accelerated deceptively quick; she’d never make it that far before the train was either gone or too fast to board.
Sweetsong had her food, a rail yard at her disposal, and a town that would surely offer some kind of sleeping space, but now it was a race. She angled for just beyond the throat of the yard; there was a small junkyard along the frontage road and no rail bulls in sight, nor any other railroad employees.
Matching speed was essential; she got too far forward and had to slow down and let the train come to her, balance out some speed gain on the dive and some speed loss on the turn, and then she darted between her grainer and the trailing grainer. Instead of landing on her car, she let the rearward car come to her, dropping down to its flooring—carefully, this one was what she’d heard was called a suicide grainer. Instead of a nice floor to lie on, it only had narrow support beams, and a misstep would drop her onto the turning axle, or worse, in front of the wheels.
She barely touched hoof to its beams before crossing back to her car, a short, easy flight with an easy push-off, and as soon as Greybull disappeared behind her, she tore into her sack of food.
Pizza bites were a form of pizza she’d never had before, fried pizza raviolis with sauce and cheese and almost certainly mystery meat pretending to be pepperoni. Or maybe it was just meat flavoring; she’d seen that grocery stores sold smoke flavoring so you could make your food seem like it was properly prepared even when it wasn’t.
On a stomach that was empty save a bottle of Angry Orchard, they were pure bliss, and she scarfed half the package before taking her time to properly enjoy the rest.
Beans were good cold, too, so she left the mean beans for the morning, as well as half the container of pickles, and settled down on the end sill and watched Wyoming go by.