They say a railroad is little more than a small town that stretches a thousand miles along a single winding thread. And like any small town, gossip is known to travel up and down the rail so fast it might as well be a telephone party line. So when a local runaway turns up dead sixty miles down track under a bridge marked as a safe hobo camp, it becomes Hook Runyon's job to find out what happened before it hits the headlines of the local newspapers. The rail yard bull is dealing with the constraints of a new office job and the presence of a young aspiring criminologist from Back East, a mixture ripe for all hell breaking loose.
