The rain over District Four did not clear with the dawn. It came down in cold, gray streaks, turning the red clay soil around the central grain elevators into a knee-deep soup of mud and chaff.
At five in the morning, two miles north of the main rail junction, a dull, concussive thud echoed through the timberlands.
Foreman Haddon stood on the inspection platform of an idle yard engine, his heavy wool coat soaked through. He didn't need to look at the smoke rising above the pine ridge to know what had happened. He jumped down into the slush, his heavy leather boots sinking four inches into the mud, and ran toward the telegraph hut at the edge of the siding.
Inside, the brass telegraph key was clicking erratically—not in structured Morse, but in the wild, fractured rhythm of a snapped line swinging against an iron tower.
