“Take it easy,” Sheriff Tabors said. “Let’s sort this thing out.”

She shifted her aim to the lawman’s forehead. “You stay on the platform, whoever you are, or I’ll blow your brains all over this god-forsaken station.” She was sweating and didn’t look at all well, more like a woman who’d made a monthlong journey on foot.

“Damn it,” Acy White said. “Let’s just get on.” He grabbed Lily and took his wife by the arm, and they stepped up into the coach.

Before getting on, the conductor turned around and faced the platform. “I wouldn’t board if I were you.”

“I sort of have to,” the sheriff said, pushing back his coat and putting a big hand on his revolver. His face was flaming, and his eyes showed he was furious.

Sam put a hand on his shoulder. “Step over here a minute.” He motioned to the station agent to join them. “Why didn’t this crew pick up those two flatcars of barrels about three miles back?”

The agent’s eyes moved off, as though he’d been caught in a lie. “It don’t really matter none. They’ll get ’em Monday for sure.”

“When we passed the switches, those boys in the yard were waving for your train to stop. Can you cut the crew an order to back to that switch and get their cars?”

The agent pulled his watch. “I reckon. It ain’t like this outfit runs on a tight schedule, if you know what I mean.” He looked at August and the sheriff. “What’s this all about with children and barrels?”

“I think I just figured it out myself,” the sheriff said. “Just write the order and hand it up to the engineer. It’s Ned running the engine today, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Never mind the conductor, he’s occupied. Come on.” The sheriff motioned them along to the engine and they climbed into the cab. Soon the agent came running alongside and handed up a new flimsy. The engineer pulled the Johnson bar into reverse, tugged three short blasts from his whistle, and began backing the train hard.

The three of them stood behind the engineer, staying out of the fireman’s way as he shoveled a thin layer of coal on the boiler’s grates. Over the engine noise Sam hollered, “What you gonna do about her pistol?”

“I think she was just trying to scare us off,” the sheriff told him. “I’d bet she wouldn’t use it.” About three miles from the station, as the barrel mill came into view, he leaned over and hollered something to the engineer above the hiss and chuff of the locomotive. The old man stopped the train, and the three of them slid down the grab irons and walked back to the coach. The sheriff went up first and walked the aisle to where the Whites were sitting with Lily jammed between them, crying silently, her nose running, her eyes cloudy with confusion and grief. He looked around at the five other passengers and told them to stay in their seats.

“Who are you?” Acy White said with the calm assuredness of one who thinks he’s in charge.

“These two men say that little girl isn’t yours.”

The wife began to stand, but the sheriff held up his hand. She looked at it and kept rising, lifting her chin as well. “You three men are the abductors.” She turned to the other passengers. “They’re trying to steal my baby,” she said, her voice nearly screaming. The three farmers and two drummers watched placidly, their heads moving from the sheriff to the finely dressed woman.

“We need to talk to the little girl,” the sheriff said, reaching for the child.

Acy White said, “Don’t,” but it was unclear whom he was addressing, and in the next instant the nickel-plated revolver came up in her hand, aimed at the sheriff’s head, and went off. An orange dart of fire and rotten-smelling smoke bloomed into the aisle as the bullet went through a clerestory above a farmer’s head, and the startled sheriff backhanded the gun out of her grasp, sending it over the next seat, where it clattered to the floor.

“Lady,” he told her, his voice shaking, “assault with a deadly weapon is a felony in Mississippi.” He spread his coat and both Whites focused on the sizeable badge pinned on his vest.

“But we’re in Louisiana,” Acy White protested, his eyes suddenly sick and weak.

“Not anymore. I figure we’re a mile inside the state line.” He pulled back his coat on the other side to show his gleaming Colt. “And you’re both under arrest on that charge. Now let me see that child.”

Sam turned to August. “You’re on, boy.”

He stepped around the sheriff and pulled her gently into the aisle. “Hey, Lily.”

The girl looked at him hard and said nothing.

“Oh, this is ridiculous,” Acy White said. “Conductor, I insist you get this train moving in the direction it’s supposed to. She’s our child. She doesn’t know this young man.”

“Is your name Lily?” The sheriff bent over her like a cloud of dark cloth, and she said nothing.

August seemed to show his panic. “Sure it is. Come on, Lil. Tell them who I am.” He stared at her, seemingly frightened by the blankness in her eyes.

The sheriff stood up and frowned. “If your name isn’t Lily, what is it?”

In a small voice she said, “Madeline.”

“I told you,” Willa White cried.

“Wait a minute.” Sam stepped up and put his hand on August’s neck. “Little girl, do you know what this fellow told me?”

The girl shook her head slowly, on the verge of tears.

“He said he taught you a tune from the Sinbad revue in New York and that you could sing the whole thing through.”

“This is ridiculous,” the wife said. “The child knows proper ballads and some hymns. Do you think she’s a little tramp?”

Sam held up a hand and backed the sheriff and August away a bit, creating a little stage in the aisle. “I told him I didn’t believe it one bit.”

“It’s true,” the child said, slowly raising her head.

“I don’t believe it. Bet you can’t sing a single word of ‘Cleopatra.’”

Her eyes flashed over at the Whites; then she held her right arm out, looked at the coach’s ceiling, and began singing in a schooled, vibratoless voice:

You’ve heard of Cleopatra

Who lived down along the Nile.

She made a “Mark” of Anthony

And won him with her smile.

Her feet began a matching dance step, and the other arm went out.

They say she was Egyptian

But I’ve reason to construe

She was Jewish and Hawaiian

With a dash of Irish too.

The sheriff was smiling broadly as if he’d heard the tune many times and thought it the best thing ever written. The child paced up the aisle and kept singing, stepping out of her captivity into her gift, no longer in the aisle of a sooty train but onstage in her mind, the one she’d been born to.

When she strolled with bold Mark Anthony

On Egypt’s yellow sands

You could see that she was Jewish

By the motion of her hands

She would shake her hands and shoulders off-

Lily gave her shoulders a shimmy, and an old farmer down the aisle guffawed and clapped his hands.

“All right, all right,” the sheriff said. “Who taught you that Jolson song, little girl?”

She stopped and pointed dramatically at August. “Gussie. My brother there.”

THE CONDUCTOR allowed the train to back the rest of the way to Woodgulch. The Whites were taken off the coach against their loud, wailing protests and threats, and many townspeople turned out to see the splendidly dressed couple led through the streets in handcuffs.

Before the train left again, a sheriff’s deputy boarded the coach and walked up to where the three of them were seated. “Sheriff said he’s calling for warrants in New Orleans and Kentucky both, that whoever wants ’em most can have ’em. After he gets through with ’em, of course. He’ll get in touch so’s y’all can be deposed down the line.”