* * *
“It seems to me,” Lymon Pugh said, “that we’re sunk pretty deep in a vinegar brine of trouble,” and that truth was impossible to deny.
Lymon Pugh was as emaciated as the rest of us after all our time in the trenches, but his muscular forearms, sliced by flensing knives and tattooed by beef blood, were still impressive, even buried under the sleeves of his thick woolen jacket; and he made a reassuring companion. We walked behind Sam, who was scouting a path. We had come a good distance up a wooded hill, all of us sweating despite the frosty air.
The day, though cold, was fortunately not overcast, and the position of the sun gave us some clue as to the cardinal points of the compass. We knew we were east of the Saguenay , and probably well north of our own lines. It was fortunate for us that this part of the country was not much inhabited, or we might have been taken captive long ago. But we could not avoid civilization for long, unless we set up housekeeping in the woods, and that would have been a tall order, since there was nothing much to eat—even small game had been chased away by warfare or scoured up by hungry Dutch soldiers. So we continued to climb this increasingly steep bluff until, as we reached the top, Sam held up a hand, signaling us to stop, and whispered that we should not make any noise.
We came up singly or in twos, crouching.
From the height of this ridge we could see a long declining counterslope, gentle enough that a railroad (of the narrow gauge the Dutch prefer) ascended it at an angle, passing close to where we stood. This was presumably the line between Chicoutimi to the Mitteleuropan estates at Lake St. John, or perhaps it ran all the way to the rocky Atlantic—the Dutch had built skeins of railroads across occupied Labrador in the decades during which they controlled this land.
The most important fact about this railroad was its connection to the town of Chicoutimi , which we could also see, though dimly, across a misty expanse of winter wilderness, attached like a smudged appendix to the blue ribbon of the Saguenay. And that meant we were no longer lost—though we were still a great distance from where we wanted to be. The way ahead was clear and obvious: we need only follow the railroad until we could veer off toward more friendly territory. And our hearts were light, for that did not appear to be an insurmountable task. We might even be back with our old regiment in time for a hot meal before bed.
But the journey had to be postponed a few moments more. Sam urged us to keep silent. He had seen a train approaching from the east—he pointed out a trail of smoke hovering over the eastern passes. “Stay hidden until it goes by, every one of you.”
We were only a few yards from the track where it crossed the peak of the ridge to begin its descent into Chicoutimi , and soon the train would be just adjacent to us. “Shouldn’t we fire on it, or do something soldierly such as that?” asked Lymon Pugh.
“It may not be a military train,” said Sam. “I don’t see any great advantage in shooting unarmed civilians, even among the Dutch. And gunfire would draw attention on us, in any case, and probably get us killed.”
No one was inclined to argue the point. We were low on ammunition, anyhow, for we had wasted some of it shooting unproductively into empty squirrels’ nests in hopes of bringing down a little fresh meat. We sat tight among the rocks and spindly winter bushes until we could hear the train’s Dutch engine straining against the slope, and feel the rumble of it. I had not seen a Mitteleuropan train before, and I wondered what it would look like.
It hove into view, finally, and it was not much different from an American train, in so far as function dictates form in these matters, though it did look very smoothly-built, and the engine was painted an unusual blue-gray color. What was alarming was not the design of the train but its speed, which was slow, and, worse, slowing. In fact it seemed as if the train was coming to a stop.
We raised our heads despite Sam’s warning. The train was a military one. That much was patently obvious. The engine was drawing only a pair of cars, both of which bore the sinister cross-and-laurel insigne of the Mitteleuropan army. “We ought to have pulled up the track,” Lymon Pugh whispered to me, “to keep that thing from reaching Chicoutimi with whatever it’s carrying.”
“There wasn’t time,” I said, “even if we had thought of it. Perhaps we can tear up the tracks later; but keep your wits about you, Lymon, I believe that train isn’t going any farther than right here.”
We had no plan for this unexpected contingency. Sam hastily motioned at us to move a little ways up along the ridge, though still keeping the mysterious Dutch train within sight. Why had it come to this hilltop near Chicoutimi , and why had it paused right near us? No simple explanation sprang to mind.
Sam halted us in a stand of naked birches where the hummocky ground made it easy to disguise ourselves against accidental discovery. We watched the train in breathless anticipation. Someone wondered aloud whether the train might not have been sent explicitly to hunt for us; but one misplaced American infantry company was not significant to the Dutch, Sam said.
Major Lampret stirred from his funk and said, “We ought to get as far from that thing as possible. We endanger ourselves by sitting here—why don’t we retreat?”
“We’re as safe here as anywhere,” Sam said coolly, “as long as we’re not seen. Stay put.”
“Don’t presume to give me orders,” said Lampret.
Evidently Major Lampret had regrown his spine; but he had chosen a poor time to enter into an argument over rank, I thought. The men of the company thought so, too, for they hissed at him to keep quiet. “I suppose we could all fly home, if we had Angel’s Wings,” one man muttered.
Lampret gave way, fearing mutiny; but he said to Sam, in a low tone, “We’ll talk about insubordination when we get back to camp.”
“That would be a more convenient time to discuss it,” Sam agreed; and Lampret lapsed back into his sullen silence.
In the meantime the Dutch train had halted altogether, noisily bleeding steam from its valves, and a few Mitteleuropan soldiers clambered off the rear car. What appeared to interest them was a little clearing just at the western side of the train—a granite shoulder covered with pebbles and tufts of brittle weeds. The Dutch soldiers scouted out that flat space meticulously, and shaded their eyes, and peered off toward the distant Saguenay , and spoke their unintelligible language to one another. Then they returned to the train, and rolled back the door on one of the twin boxcars.
The open door admitted a shaft of sunlight and revealed the car’s contents, at which we all gasped: for the train was carrying a Chinese Cannon.
* * *
Sam detailed a pair of men to count the enemy soldiers as they disembarked and prepared to assemble the Cannon. I asked Julian what he thought was going on.
“Isn’t it obvious, Adam? They mean to set up an artillery battery.”
“What—here? It’s a long way from the fight.”
“You forget the extraordinary range of the Chinese Cannon. That’s the advantage of it: it can be placed far from the active lines, and still be an effective weapon. The drawback is that it’s bulky and has to be carried by a whole convoy of wagons, or by a train, for instance in those two cars.”
Both boxcars had been opened now, and we could see that the assembly and activation of the Cannon would not be a simple task for the gunners. Its great Rotary Base occupied one car, and the Barrel of the thing, broken into telescoping pieces, occupied the other. The cargo of the train also included a couple of mules, to assist in haulage and enstationment, and winches and levers and other necessary tools. There was also a number of crates marked BOMBE , a word even Lymon Pugh was able to translate from the Dutch. [Or Deutsche, in this case, I’m told.]