The lamp burned low in Tim’s room. He stood still for a moment,
studying the place. The door at the back must be a closet. He took off
his boots and put them on the hearth and padded over to take a look.
The floor boards creaked but he didn’t care. Sounds in the room would
go unnoticed for a little while.
He opened the door without a sound. The closet was empty and there was
a door at the back. Tim tried the knob but the door was locked. Boots
sounded on the floor beyond and he heard a tapping on the other side.
He answered the tapping and heard the stealthy turn of a key. The knob
moved and the door opened and Red whispered, “You game for a try?”
“Let’s watch and listen for an hour or so.”
Red shut the door on his side of the closet but Tim left his ajar.
He walked without stealth, as he might if he were preparing to go to
bed, and set to work packing his haversack with the things that by
now were warm and dry. There was a big tin of matches on the bedside
table. He put it into his haversack and rolled his blanket and laced
it across the top of the sack. He cleaned his teeth with a bit of salt,
regretting the loss of the taste of the dinner, and packed the brush.
He raised the lamp chimney and blew out the flame, opened both windows
a crack and hung his blouse on the polished bedpost.
He lay on the bed with his feet toward the pillows, his chin cupped in
his hand, and looked into the cold December night. In the hall there
was a scraping of chairs and mumbled talk. Tim heard MacNeil bidding
the guards good night, and then there was quiet.
He thought, If we don’t act now we’ll be back in jail by tomorrow
night. He felt his heart thumping against his ribs. If Kane had no
sentries outside the house, they would make an attempt. They could jump
to the ground.
Tim moved to the window that faced the west.
The scene was lit by a crescent moon. The leaves on the ground were
stirred by gusts of chilly wind, and deep shadows lay across the grass.
Lamplight winking beyond the trees showed Tim that the center of the
village must be a half mile or so northwest.
As he traced the wagon road to the edge of the trees he heard the sound
of hoofs on the frozen ground and a rider came around the bend, big in
the saddle and turning his head to left and right. The rider was Kane,
there was no doubt of that.
As Kane came close Tim thought he saw an unlit lantern in the man’s
left hand, ready to be used as a signal perhaps. Kane was apparently
doing the job himself. He passed the house, then shortly appeared
again, riding back the way he had come. Before he reached the bend in
the road he turned to the right and rode into a field to the west of
the house. He paused in the middle, then cut back to the road again and
disappeared behind the trees.
Tim felt suddenly cold and began to shiver. He moved quietly back to
the bed, put on his blouse and lay down to wait.
In less than an hour Red tapped at the door again. Tim had watched
Kane make another tour much like the first. But now he was gone and
everything was still.
Tim went to the door and whispered to Red, “You’ve seen Kane, of
course.”
Red nodded. “But I think my sentry has gone to sleep, and there’s a
door from this room to a storeroom at the back. If we drop to the
ground behind the house, we can retrace our route for a mile or so to
confuse the dogs.”
“Then go for the railroad as we did before. They’d hardly expect that
we’d do that.”
As Tim grasped his boots and his haversack a floor board creaked. He
stood stock still for half a minute, then moved through the door.
“Put on your haversack,” Red whispered. “We may have some running to
do.”
They watched while Kane made another circuit of the farm, waited awhile
and passed into the storeroom through a very small door. The window of
the storeroom faced the back but it was smaller than the other windows
of the house. Below it was a small shed roof. “That’s a bit of luck,”
Red whispered.
They struggled through the window and dropped to the roof and then to
the ground with what seemed like a terrible chorus of noises. They
stood for a moment, then moved along the back of the house. As they
rounded the corner and started across the side yard MacNeil’s dogs set
up a racket in an outbuilding beside the barn. The fugitives broke into
a run, keeping the house between them and the place where they had last
seen Kane.
They gained the shelter of a stand of pines and paused to look back.
Kane soon rounded a corner of the house, clearly confused as to which
way to look. He reined in at the back of the house and looked toward
the north, then dismounted, ran up the steps and rapped on the door.
Tim and Red retreated into the trees. When they topped a little rise
they ran along the road heading south.
Just past a curve they found the place where the cows had crossed. Here
they left the road and cut to the west across the field and through the
grove of scrub oak and pine.
As they ran down the hill they could hear the hounds. They reached the
little brook and ran in the water for a hundred yards or so until the
sound of the dogs was disturbingly close. Then they dashed up the ridge
toward the railroad track.
They approached the track. They were gasping for breath and the baying
of the hounds was sharp in their ears. Lanterns bobbed at the bottom of
the hill. The hopelessness of flight struck Tim with sickening force.
When they reached the track a new sound broke the air. The fugitives
listened and the sound came again, the shriek of a whistle off to the
south. Without a word to each other they jumped the track and ran like
madmen along the embankment. Now the hounds were close, their baying
rose above the roar of the approaching engine. A shot rang out.
The train moved toward them, lumbering along at what seemed a snail’s
pace. The engineers must have seen the hunters. The whistle shrieked
repeatedly.
Tim looked over his shoulder and before he knew it the towering funnel
stood above them, belching smoke and flame. The light of the headlamp
flooded the rails.
Now the hounds were just across the track, and Kane’s figure rose in
his stirrups as his horse shrieked and reared in fright. Tim ran at
top speed, leapt to a flatcar and hung on for his life. He worked
himself onto the car, sank to the planks and rested a moment before he
looked back.
The car behind was a flatcar, too, and Red was clinging to a stanchion
in the middle of the car. Tim jumped to his feet, and above the thunder
of the rolling cars the whine of a bullet split the air. He jumped
the coupling, stumbled over some loose timber and grasped Red’s arm,
pulling upward with all his might. The ground slid past his vision like
a crazy quilt. Something gave way and he lost his footing. He fell
backward and hit the flatcar with sickening force.
At first his eyes were sightless and there was terrible thunder in his
ears. Someone was shaking him and slapping his cheeks. He opened his
eyes and saw Red bending over him. Tim said, “I thought I’d lost you.”
Red pointed to his ears and shook his head to show he couldn’t hear.
Tim lay still for a while. His head was splitting. When he raised it
the light of the moon touched Red’s face. Red’s hair was wild and his
cheek was cut and streaked with blood.
As they rounded a curve Tim sat up and took in their situation. Ahead
of the car he had boarded was one boxcar, shielding them from the
fireman and the engineer. Behind, there were three more boxcars. A red
lantern marked the end of the train but apparently nobody rode the
last car. All the cars must be empty. They bounced and jerked until it
seemed they would jump the track. A good horseman might keep up with
the train for a while in open country, but he would find it hard in
country like this.
They had not traveled far when they entered a wood where the trees
pressed close on either side.
Red shouted, “How far to the end of the line?”
“Thirty-five or forty miles at most.”
The train thundered onto a wooden trestle. The trestle groaned and
the fish joints set up a chorus of screams. A milky mist rose from
the dark, still waters surrounding the roots of the swollen trees. It
drifted thinly through the moss and vines that hung unmoving in the
chill night air.
Red reached under his blouse and pulled out his watch. The cracked
crystal glinted in the dim light. He stopped up one ear and pressed the
watch against the other, grinned and nodded. “Better ride less than an
hour, I should think.”
The train jumped so much and the light was so bad that they couldn’t
read the hands through the cracks in the glass. Tim faced the rear of
the car and lit a match. It was just past ten. He blew out the match.
“Let’s jump at ten to eleven.”
As the train left the trestle it slowed to pass through a sleeping
village, then gathered speed again. Red asked, “You want to sleep?”
Tim shook his head and lay on his back and watched the moon and the
stars standing in the heavens as the train barreled through the night.
When they next lit a match it was quarter to eleven. Tim was uneasy. It
seemed to him the train was slowing down. He said, “Let’s jump.”
Red got to his feet. “I’ll go first. Jump wide.” He gripped a stanchion
and watched the ground below them, blurred by the speed of the train.
The land was flat and grassy with a thicket here and there. Red reared
back and jumped into the wind and Tim followed, flexing his knees
against the shock of the ground. At the moment of jumping, the air
sucked him back while the train roared on. He hit the ground and rolled
clear of a patch of undergrowth. He felt as if one knee was twisted but
when he got to his feet it seemed all right.
Red came out of a bramblebush, cursing and laughing. Tim stood up.
The strap of his haversack had broken and some of his clothes were
scattered on the ground. He fumbled for them while Red fixed the strap
by tying the ends together with a clumsy square knot.
As the thunder of the train became a distant rumble Tim pointed north
across the dark landscape to the shapes of the hills beyond. “If we
walk fast, we’ll be at the border by dawn.”
Red hooked his hands around the straps that held his haversack. “And
what does it look like, Timmy boy? Is it a bright green ribbon twenty
feet across?”