The Union Pacific train was near Mecca, in the California desert, when the engineer spotted a man placing something on the track and then walking away.
It was only as the train got closer that the enginer, who has not been identified, realised the object was a puppy. He hit the emergency brakes, stopping the locomotive in time.
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." Thomas Jefferson