The paved road to Coulee paralleled the train tracks. It went on right through the town. Mary got off the paved road before Coulee, went around the place on lesser tracks like the one that led to her family's farm, and then got back on to drive for another couple of miles.
She stopped the auto there and pulled off to the side of the road. When she got out of the Olds, she looked both east and west. Nobody coming in either direction-that was what she'd wanted to see. She remembered the Quebecois soldiers who'd appeared out of nowhere while her family was picnicking. Having a patrol show up now wouldn't do at all.
No patrol. There were too many miles of railroad, not enough soldiers to keep an eye on all of them all the time. Mary opened the trunk. She carried the box in it over to the railroad tracks, then came back. As she returned, she scuffed and kicked the footprints she'd made in the snow till they were unidentifiable. She drove the auto back onto the road and did the same thing to the tire tracks. The occupiers would be able to figure out where she'd planted the bomb. The explosion itself would tell them that. Who she was, or even that she was a she? No. Not if she could help it.
Mary drove back to Rosenfeld the same way as she'd come west, skirting Coulee. Nobody in the town would see the Oldsmobile. She tried to use different little country roads heading east. She didn't want a farmer remembering he'd seen the same auto coming and going in a short stretch of time.
She got back to her apartment less than an hour later than she would have if she'd come straight from the farm. Who was to say when she'd broken off her visit with her mother? Mort might notice that the gas gauge on the motorcar was down a little farther than it should have been. But so what? Even if he did, would he turn her in to the occupiers? Not likely!
All the way back to Rosenfeld, she'd listened for an explosion. She hadn't heard one. Maybe no train had gone through during her drive. Maybe she'd got too far away for the sound to carry. Or maybe the bomb had failed. That was an unwelcome possibility, but one she couldn't ignore.
As soon as she got into the apartment, she used a nail file to get rid of the dirt from the barn and washed her hands. Drying them, she felt a little like Lady Macbeth-another stubborn Scotswoman advancing her cause no matter what.
Music blared from the wireless when she turned it on. It was twenty minutes to the hour, so she had a while to wait before she could hear the news. She used the time to good advantage, making herself a cup of coffee and sitting down with a mystery story set in Toronto before the Great War. She knew what she was doing-pretending things hadn't changed since. Again, so what?
When the news came on, it talked about an American submersible torpedoing a Japanese cruiser somewhere in the Sandwich Islands. It talked about U.S. bombing raids on Confederate cities, and about Confederate terror attacks on U.S. cities. Mary sneered. She knew propaganda when she heard it. The wireless talked about U.S. progress in Utah. It talked about an Austro-German counterattack against the Tsar's armies in the Ukraine, and about a German counterattack against the British near Hamburg.
It talked about cuts in the coal ration for Canada, and about reductions in civilian seat allocations on the railroads here. Bombs on the tracks? Not a word.
Mary said a word-a rude one. Maybe it was too soon to get the news on the air. Maybe no train had gone along that stretch of track, which didn't strike her as very likely. Or maybe something had gone wrong. Could a patrol have found the bomb before a train went over it? Worry settled over her like the clouds that presaged a snowstorm.
After Alec got back from kindergarten, even worry had to stand in line. He rampaged through the apartment. Mouser had been asleep under a chair. Alec blew a horn right by him, which horrified him and Mary both. He fled, squalling. "Leave the cat alone!" Mary shouted at Alec, who wanted to do no such thing.
She kept the wireless on, wondering whether she would get news from it or a knock on the door. At last, three hours after that first newscast, the announcer started inveighing against saboteurs who tried to put a spike in the American war effort. "These evildoers hurt their Canadian brethren by further decreasing the number of seats available in the railway system as a whole. Southern Manitoba is particularly afflicted, but authorities have every confidence they will soon hunt down the murderers and depraved individuals responsible for these dastardly acts of terrorism." The man sounded ready to flop down on the floor and start chewing up the carpet.
Hearing that report took the nervous edge off Mary's temper. Alec kept after the cat. Before long, Mouser had had enough and scratched him. He ran to Mary, crying. She managed to be sympathetic, and painted the wounds with Mercurochrome, which didn't sting, and not with Merthiolate, which did.
"He's a bad kitty," Alec declared, glowering at the orange-red blotches on his arm.
"He is not. If you tease him, he's going to scratch." Mouser rarely bit, thank heaven. Mary and Mort had trained him out of that when he was a kitten. "How would you like somebody blowing a horn in your ear when you were asleep and chasing you all over everywhere?"
Alec looked as if he thought that might be fun. Mary might have realized he would. And then, all at once, an amazingly knowing expression passed over his face-he saw he shouldn't have let her notice that. He's growing up, she thought, and couldn't decide whether to laugh or to cry.
When Mort came home from the diner that evening, he was oddly subdued. She wondered if he'd had a row with his father. She didn't want to ask him about it till after Alec went to bed. Then her husband beat her to the punch: "They say a train got bombed, other side of Coulee."
Uh-oh, Mary thought. Voice somewhere between casual and savage, she answered, "I heard something about it on the wireless. They didn't say much, though. I hope it gave the Yanks a good kick in the slats."
Mort made a small production out of lighting a cigarette. He said, "When the Frenchies turned this place upside down, they didn't find anything."
"Of course they didn't. There wasn't anything to find." I made damn sure of that, Mary added, but only to herself.
"They never found any of the stuff your father used, either," he said.
That rocked her again; she didn't think he'd ever come right out and talked about Arthur McGregor and what he'd done before. She made herself nod. "No, they never did."
"Mary…" Mort paused, maybe not quite sure how to go on. He drew on the cigarette till the coal glowed tomato red. "For God's sake watch yourself, Mary. This isn't a game. They'll kill you if they catch you. I don't think I could stand that. I know Alec couldn't."
How long had he known and kept quiet? If he could add two and two, how many other people in Rosenfeld could do the same thing? "I always watch myself, Mort," Mary said, but she knew she would have to be more watchful yet.
A corner drugstore not far from Chester Martin's house in East L.A. had gone belly-up a few months before the war started. Times were still hard; the building had stood vacant ever since, the door padlocked, the going out of business! sign painted on the window slowly fading in the harsh California sun.
And then, quite suddenly, the place wasn't vacant any more. Off came going out of business! A new sign went up on the window: a fierce-looking bald eagle in left profile in front of crossed swords, and below it, in red, white, and blue, the legend u.s. army recruiting station.
Chester eyed that with thoughtful interest. He smiled a little when he thought about the men who'd be working there. They had a tough job, didn't they? Talking other people into carrying rifles and going off to shoot Confederates was a hell of a lot safer than carrying a rifle and going off to shoot Confederates yourself.