The two of them talked the matter over during that early morning descent to the plains, and she said at length, putting it far more concisely than he would care to have done: “The whole question is really—am I to escape alone, or are you to come with me? You are to come with me, of course, and that means we must go right away—out of the whole area of these local wars.” Then she looked at him and laughed rather queerly. “Oh, it all comes to this, I suppose, that what I want more than anything in the world is to be with you. Can’t You believe me? In a way I’m enjoying every minute of all this—it’s an adventure I don’t want ever to end; but if it must end, then let anything end it rather than separation. Promise that wherever we go and whatever happens to us, it will be together!”
“That is all I hoped you would say,” he answered. “We will make south for the railway, then, and take a train, if there are trains, towards Kazan. And there, if the situation remains the same, we can join the Czechs.”
The hill country ended with disconcerting abruptness; by noon they were crossing land so level that it looked like a sea, with the horizon of hills as a coastline in the rearward distance. It was dizzily hot; the threatened storm had passed over with a few abortive thunderclaps. The earth was caked and splitting after weeks without rain; dust filled eyes and nostrils at the slightest breath of wind; the crops were withering in the unharvested fields.
As distance increased between themselves and the mountains, they found tracks widening into roads, and roads becoming more frequented. Every side- track yielded its stragglers, most of whom were peasants carrying all their worldly goods on their backs. Where they had come from and where they were bound for were problems that were no more soluble after, as often happened, they had unburdened their secrets to the passing stranger. But many were too ill and dejected even to give the usual greeting as they passed, and some showed all the outward signs of prolonged hardships and semi-starvation.
For every passer-by in the opposite direction there were at least a dozen, bound, like themselves, for the railway twenty miles to the south. The chance of getting aboard a train did not, in such circumstances, seem very promising, and still less attractive was the prospect of camping out for days or weeks on the railway platforms, as thousands of refugees were doing. A.J. learned this from a youth with whom, along the road, he effected an exchange of a couple of eggs in return for a small quantity of butter made from sunflower- seeds. The boy—for he was scarcely more—seemed so knowledgeable and intelligent that A.J. was glad enough to agree when he suggested pooling resources for a small roadside meal. The stranger hardly got the better of the bargain, since his own provender included white bread (an almost incredible luxury) and part of a cooked chicken; but he only laughed when A.J. apologised. He was a merry, pink-checked youth, eager to treat A.J. with roguish bonhomie and the woman with a touch of gallantry. He was eighteen, he said, and his life had been fairly adventurous. At sixteen he had been a cadet in an Imperial training-school for officers, but the Revolution had happened just in time to fit in conveniently with his own reluctance to die in a trench fighting the Germans. He seemed also to have quarrelled with his family, for he said he neither knew nor cared what had happened to them. He had joined the revolutionaries at the age of seventeen, doubtless to save his own skin, and in a single year had risen to be a military commissar. But even that, in the end, had become too tedious and exacting, for in his heart he had always pined for something more individually adventurous. Presently the had found it. He had become a train-bandit. He admitted this quite frankly, and with a joyous taking of risks in so doing. “It suits me,” he explained, “because I’m a bad lot—I always was.”
It appeared that he had been the leader of a group of bandits operating on the Cheliabinsk-Ufa line before the advance of the Czechs had put an end to such enterprise. His colleagues had since dispersed, and he himself was now at a loose end, but he rather thought there was a good chance of successful banditry on the Ekaterinburg-Sarapul line, which was still to a large extent in the hands of the Reds. All he needed were ’a few suitable companions; the rest would be easy. There was a steep incline not far away where west-bound trains always slowed down. One man could jump into the engine-cab and make the driver pull up; the others would then go through the train, coach by coach and compartment by compartment. It was the usual and almost always successful method. A.J. expressed surprise that the passengers, many of whom were doubtless well armed, did not put up a fight. The boy laughed. “You must remember that it’s in the middle of the night, when most of them are asleep and none of them feel particularly brave. Besides, some of them do try their tricks, but we try ours first. If you shoot straight once you don’t often have any trouble with the rest.” He spoke quite calmly, and not without a certain half-humorous relish. “After all,” he then went on, as if feeling instinctively some need to defend himself, “it’s not a bad death—being shot. Better than starvation or typhus. A good many people in this country, I should reckon, have got to die pretty soon, and the lucky ones are those that get a bullet through the heart.” Looked at in such a way, the situation undoubtedly showed him in the guise of a public benefactor. And he added: “I suppose you don’t feel you’re the sort of fellow to join forces with me?”
When A.J. smiled and shook his head, the boy smiled back quite amicably. “That’s all right—only I thought I’d just put it to you. You look the sort of man I’d like to work with, that’s all. Anyhow, I can help you with a bit of advice. There’s not a thousand to one chance of your getting on board a train at Novochensk. The station’s already cram-full. But if you go about three versts to the east you’ll come to that incline I was talking about—where the trains all slow up. There you might manage it.”
“I suppose the trains are full too.”
“Absolutely, but they’ll make room for you and your lady if you shout that you’ve got food. Show them a loaf of bread and they’ll pull you into the cars even if they murder you afterwards.”
A.J. thanked him for the excellent-sounding advice, and after a little further conversation the eighteen-year-old bandit shouldered his bundle and departed. Following his suggestion, they reached the railway late that evening at a point a few miles east of the railway station. It was too dark to see exactly where they were, and they were just preparing to sleep on the parched ground until morning when, from the very far distance, came the sound of a train. It was a weird noise amidst the silence of the steppes—rather like the breathing of a very tired and aged animal. Once or twice, as the wind veered away, the sound disappeared altogether for a time, and they listened for it intermittently for nearly half an hour before they first saw the tiny sparkle of a headlight on the horizon. They perceived then that they were on the ridge of some low downs, which the train would have to surmount—that, presumably, being the incline they had been told about. And soon, to confirm this assumption, the breathing of the engine became a kind of hoarse pant as the rising gradient was encountered. More and more asthmatic grew the panting, until, with a sudden sigh, it ceased altogether, and a sharp jangle of brakes showed that the train was locked at a standstill.
“Let’s walk down,” A.J. said, rapidly gathering up the bundles. “They might take us on board—at any rate, we can try.”
They walked along the track down the noticeable slope; evidently the builders of the line had been unable to afford the evening out of the gradient by means of cutting and embankment. The train, as they approached it, looked in some commotion, and to avoid being seen too clearly in the glare of the headlight they made a detour into the fields and returned to the track opposite the third vehicle. They could see now that the train was composed of some dozen box-cars of refugees and a single ordinary passenger-coach next to the engine.