The locomotive was followed by one passenger car and five red, sun-dulled boxcars. The train stopped and the fireman cut off the locomotive and it pulled ahead past a switch, then backed into a siding and ran alongside the train, where it went through another switch and then came forward to pluck the five boxcars away from the coach, chuffing backwards through town to distribute them on sidings. The conductor opened the vestibule door and put down his stepstool, handing the passengers down to the platform. Twelve men got off, local men, the sheriff nodding to each in turn as they walked down the platform to be greeted by those picking them up in Fords or buggies. After the last man was off, the sheriff boarded and walked through the coach. When he came back into the station, he shook his head. “Maybe they’ll come Monday.”
“We shouldn’t have sold the mule,” August said, his voice cracking. “We’re stuck here.”
The man wearing overalls stood up. “Sheriff?”
“You can go back to the office. I know those hogwashers you’re wearing are hot.”
The man jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “What about Mike?”
“Bring him with you. Tell him we’ll try the same thing on Monday.”
Sam walked out on the platform and stared down the track. He could hear the locomotive huffing around in the yard of the window-frame factory. “I don’t know.”
Tabors looked in the same direction. “What do you think?”
“Once they start something, the Skadlocks don’t strike me as the kind that waste time.” Sam turned to the train board. “What’s Fault?”
“Just a flag stop right over the Louisiana line, though nobody seems to know exactly where that line is. There’s still two farmers that ship a few cans of milk, and a little shop that sends out a half-car of cypress shingles every week. Plus a little barrel operation. There’s just one road that runs through the area and crosses by the station.”
Sam looked down the crooked rails again. “Where’s the road go?”
The sheriff squinted an eye. “From the prison on one end to a gate five or six miles miles east of the railroad, where it reaches the highway.”
“I rode the mule across a straight gravel road when I went down to the Skadlocks’. Was that it?”
“Had to be.”
He stared at the board, then walked into the station, where the conductor was taking an order from the agent. “Excuse me, but did you let off two passengers at Fault?”
The conductor was an old man who arched a thick eyebrow. “And who might you be?”
“He’s all right, Sidney.” The agent shoved his orders at him under the window grate.
“As a matter of fact, we did. A gentleman and a lady.”
“Well dressed? Maybe thirty-five years old?”
“I’d say so. The lady was taking from a flask right on the aisle and I had to ask her to go to the restroom if she wanted a sip.”
Sam glanced at the sheriff and August walked up and stood between them.
“Is there an agent there or what?”
“Yeah,” the conductor said. “On the days the train comes.”
Sam shook his head. “Hell, they’re down there right now waiting for the train to come back.”
The sheriff crossed his arms and looked at his boots. “If they are, well, I’d like to help you, but I can’t. Not my jurisdiction.”
“Could you telegraph the Louisiana sheriff?”
“It wouldn’t do any good. I don’t like to talk about the man. Let’s just say he’s never been to Fault.”
Sam turned to the agent and paid two fares to Fault.
August watched the agent retrieve the tickets. “You think she’s down there, sure enough?”
“I can’t take a chance on thinking otherwise.”
The locomotive turned on the wye in the mill and drifted back to the station with three empty flatcars and coupled to the coach.
August boarded ahead of Sam and they chose the first seats on the left. “Well, we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?” the boy said.
Then Sheriff Tabors stepped on and sat behind them. “Don’t look at me like that. I had the agent write me a pass.”
“How’ll you get back to town?”
“My brother-in-law lives at Gashouse. He can ride me up here in his Ford after supper.”
The whistle let out a growl and the train jerked into motion, swaying and rattling over the branch-line track toward Fault, six miles away. Sam counted telegraph poles and figured they were going twenty miles an hour. The train went past a pasture full of milk cows and plunged into a brake of old-growth pine for a mile or so.
August looked up at him. “How’s your shoulder?”
“I try not to think about it.”
“You won’t do much in a fight.”
“I don’t guess so.”
They passed a clearing and he saw a small barrel factory, nothing more than a shed covering an undulating machine and a mud yard stacked with blond-wood kegs bound with metal hoops. A switch ran into the yard, and two flatcars sat loaded in the sun. A mill hand waved and waved like he’d never seen a train before, but the little engine kept on puffing south, leaking steam and wobbling along the kinked rails.
Snaking out of the pines, the railroad traversed three miles of scrub country, cut-over land crowded with brambles and trash-wood saplings. Soon the engineer was blowing the whistle for the little wooden station, and Sam felt the air brakes grab. He looked at August.
“Showtime,” the boy said.
They got up and stepped off onto the platform. A man wearing a tailored suit was standing next to the bench outside the station, a streamer of tickets in his hand. A woman was struggling with Lily, who was angry at being held and kicking her legs, her face red and running tears. “I want Vessy,” she wailed. “Where’s Vessy gone?”
“Oh, hush up,” the woman snapped. “Aren’t you glad to see us? What’s the matter with you?”
Sam and August walked up, the sheriff dawdling behind as if he didn’t know anyone there. Sam looked around but saw only an old Ford and no horses. “Where’s Ralph Skadlock?”
The man looked at him blankly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
August drew close and looked at Lily, smiling.
“Get away,” the woman told him, a shining alarm rising in her eyes. “What do you want?”
“That’s my sister. Let her look at me.” And when the child did turn around, she gave him the look of a baby who hadn’t seen her brother in many months. She wriggled out of the woman’s grasp and stood there on the rough planks. Lily shaded her eyes and peered up at him but said nothing. The sheriff made a clucking noise in the back of his mouth and looked away.
“I know who you are,” Sam said. “You’re the Whites from Graysoner, Kentucky, and that girl was stolen from Krine’s department store in New Orleans.”
Acy White looked at the conductor, who had his watch in his hand. “Will you board us?”
The conductor looked at the sheriff and the child. “I can’t stop you from getting on if you got a ticket.”
“Well, come on, then.” He made a move toward the coach.
Sam grabbed his arm. “We’ve come for the girl.”
“Get your hands off me. I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is our daughter, Madeline.” He grabbed Lily by the hand but Sam pulled him away from the train and the two of them stumbled backwards across the platform and fell against the bench. Lily began to shriek and August kneeled next to her as Sheriff Tabors went over and began to separate the men.
The agent dashed outside, shouting, “Everbody calm down. What’s this all about?”
Sam had banged his shoulder against the bench, but even the pain couldn’t overcome his worry that the Whites would get Lily on the train and slip away with her. He couldn’t show up empty-handed in New Orleans and have to tell Elsie they’d lost her again. He got untangled and stood up. “You’re not getting away with this. I know what you did, and I’ll follow you until you’re both in the jailhouse.”
At the word “jailhouse,” Mrs. White reached into her purse and brought out a nickel-plated revolver and pointed it at Sam, her mouth open and trembling.