Captain de Milja and the engineer saw the dim shape ahead at the same moment. De Milja wondered what it was, and squinted to bring it into focus. The old man swore and hauled on the brake with both hands. The wheels locked and screeched as they slid on the iron rails, and the train finally shuddered to a halt just short of the barrier, tree trunks piled across the track.
The light was strange at that hour—not night, not yet dawn—so the shapes coming toward them from the forest had no color, and seemed to glide on mist, like phantoms in a dream, with white plumes steaming from the horses’ nostrils in the cold mountain air.
The bandit leader—or ataman, or headman, whatever he called himself—was not to be hurried. Rifle at rest across his saddle, he walked his horse to the cab of the locomotive and stared at de Milja. “Get out,” he said softly. This was Ukrainian, of which de Milja understood that much at least. The bandit was perhaps in his fifties, wore a peaked cap and a suit jacket. Two or three days’ white bristle covered a stubborn jaw below the small, shrewd eyes of the farmer’s most cherished pig.
De Milja jumped to the ground, the engineer followed, the boy did not.
“Who are you?” the leader asked.
“I work for the railroad.”
The bandit did not quite believe that. “You ready to die up in a tree?” Ukrainian executions lasted all day. De Milja did not react.
“Hardheaded, you people,” the leader said. “You’re finished,” he went on. “Now it’s the Germans and us.”
De Milja was silent.
“Carrying anything valuable on that train?”
“No. Just people heading for the border.”
The bandit glanced back at the passenger coaches, de Milja followed his eyes. The passengers had their hands on the sides of the railcars, their baggage was laid out on the ground so that the bandits could pick and choose what they wanted.
A bandit on a gray pony rode up beside the leader. “Any good?” the leader asked.
“Not bad.”
“Gold?”
“Some. Polish money. Jewelry.”
“And the women?”
“Good. Four or five of them.”
The bandit leader winked at de Milja. “You won’t be seeing them again.” He paused, something about de Milja fascinated him. “Come over here,” he said. De Milja stepped forward, stood beside the bandit’s boot in a stirrup. “Give me your watch. It would be a railroad watch, of course.”
De Milja undid the strap, handed up his watch, long ago a present from his wife. The bandit glanced at it, then dropped it in his pocket. “Not a railroad watch, is it.”
“No.”
The leader was getting bored. With one hand he raised his rifle until de Milja was looking down the barrel. “What do you see in there?” De Milja took a deep breath, the bandit was going to ask him to look closer. One of the passengers screamed, de Milja couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. The bandit on the gray pony trotted a little way toward the sound. A rifle fired, a flat, dull crack like the earlier shot; then another, deeper. The bandit leader puffed out his cheek so hard it burst in a red spray, his horse shied and whinnied. De Milja grabbed the harness and pulled himself close to the horse’s body. The barrel of the rifle probed frantically, looking for him. Somewhere above, the bandit was wailing and cursing like a child. De Milja hung on to the reins with one hand and snatched the rifle barrel with the other. The weapon fired but he didn’t let go. Then the boy came out from behind a locomotive wheel and hit the bandit on the head with the shovel, which rang like a bell as the rifle came free in de Milja’s hand and the horse tore away from him.
The other bandit danced his pony around and shot the boy again and again, de Milja could hear the bullets hit, and the boy grunted each time. He fumbled the rifle around to firing position but the bandit galloped away, jumped his horse over the coupling between cars and disappeared. De Milja flinched as something hissed by his ear. Then Nowak called to him from the coal car and he ran up the ladder mounted on the wall as a bullet struck a silver chip out of the iron and the locomotive’s light went dark. Two horses thundered past, then a cluster of rapid rifle shots, a yell of triumph.
Nowak was lying on the coal at one end of the car, firing a rifle into the darkness. De Milja threw himself down beside him. Between the train and the forest, dark shapes were sprawled amid clothing and suitcases. A yellow spark from the trees—both he and Nowak swung their weapons. Nowak fired, but de Milja’s clicked as the hammer fell on an empty chamber. He threw it aside and worked the pistol free from beneath his sweater. “Who has the other rifles?” de Milja asked, meaning the weapons they had hidden behind a panel.
“Don’t know, sir,” Nowak said. “It’s chaos.”
He couldn’t permit chaos. Rolled over the lip of the car, slid down the ladder on the other side, stood between cars for a moment, then jumped to the ground and ran along the length of the train. The conductor ran by him going the other way, eyes white, teeth clenched, pistol held up in the safe position. Combat-mad, he never even saw de Milja, who wondered who he was chasing. Passengers were climbing through the coach windows; some of them had gotten a horse off its feet and it kicked and whinnied in terror as they tried to kill its rider, who howled for mercy. De Milja stepped on a body, then through a tangle of clothing that reeked of cloves—hair tonic from a shattered bottle. He tripped as he leaped for an open doorway, then went sprawling into the last coach.
The smell of gunpowder and urine hit him like a wall. Someone moaned softly, but mostly it was very dark and very quiet—the people packed together on the floor were breathing audibly, as though winded. A bullet from the forest went through the car and a triangle of glass fell on a seat without breaking. A silhouette rose suddenly in the middle of the car and returned the fire.
As de Milja crawled along the aisle, the train moved. Barely, only just making way, but he thought he could feel the logs being slowly forced off the track. The engineer is alive, he thought, using the locomotive like a bulldozer. The rifleman knelt quickly, moved on his knees to a neighboring window, straightened up, and fired. It was Herschensohn, the violinist. The homburg was jammed down on his head, a muscle ticked in his jaw, and he was muttering under his breath—“Stay still, you”—as he took aim.
De Milja reached the far end of the car—the back of the train—just as something seemed to give way and, with the sound of splintering wood, the train moved a little faster.
“Wait!”
A running shape burst from the forest—the peasant girl who’d begged to be let on the train at the water tower. “She got away!” Herschensohn had appeared beside him. The girl ran in panic, tripped, went sprawling on her face, struggled back up again, limping now and much slower. She waved her hands and screamed as the train gradually picked up speed.
De Milja was abruptly shoved aside. A man in a gray suit, with carefully brushed hair, leaped off the train and ran toward the girl, circled an arm around her waist and tried to help her. No longer young, he could barely run fast enough to keep up with the injured girl. “For God’s sake don’t leave us!” he yelled.
The bandits, on horseback and in the woods, saw what was happening. De Milja pinpointed the muzzle flashes in the half-light. The range was absurd but he aimed with both hands, changed the action to single-shot, and squeezed off round after round from his automatic. Herschensohn muttered angrily under his breath, talking to the target, as he fired his rifle. A young woman in a sweater and skirt jumped from a window, stumbled, came up running, took the girl around the waist from the other side. De Milja heard footsteps pounding above him as Nowak ran down the roof of the car, firing into the trees. Somebody yelled “Save her, save her, save her,” like a chant, and others took up the cry. De Milja thrust his empty pistol into his pocket and stood on the lowest step as the three people gained on the car. Herschensohn was firing over his shoulder and Nowak was shouting something from the roof. The three faces were distorted with exhaustion, with tears of effort, mouths gasping for breath, hands clawing
