bond was the railroading that was in his blood. Breen was a railroad man.
I don't know why, do I? You don't know why, after Number Two had run to schedule all that night, it happened just when it did. It might have happened at some other time—but it didn't. Luck or chance if you like, more than that if you'd rather think of it in another way, but just a few miles west of Coyote Bend something went wrong in the cab of Number Two. Nothing much, I don't remember now what it was, don't know that I ever knew, nothing much. Just enough to hold her back a few minutes, the few minutes that let Breen sit in again on the night dispatcher's trick, sit in again at the key, hold down his old job once more before he quit railroading forever with the order that he gave his life to send, to keep Number Two from rushing to death and destruction against the rocks and boulders Black Dempsey and his gang had piled across the track in the Cut five miles east of Coyote Bend.
I don't know. "If a man die, shall he live again?" I leave it to you. I only know that they think a lot of him out here, think a lot of Breen, "Angel" Breen—now.
