Meanwhile, the men of Company K took their ease. They smoked on the flatcars, missing Detroit, where eternal summer was to be spent playing stickball, chatting up girls, listening to their fathers plan on Fridays for the end-of-the-shift chimes of the Moskowitz Brewery, which meant one free barrel of beer for the neighborhood. Hugo fussed with his gauges, wiping them down with his kerchief as if that gentle care would cause them to whisper their secrets to him. But he was stalling. The train would not go backward. He listened to the breeze (according to the phrase book, it was a sirokko), which was so different from the breeze off the Great Lakes. This one made him perspire. In this his reaction matched his mates’—the alien forest landscape to which summer had come with such violent joy made them all anxious.

At the other end of the bridge, four grizzled men appeared, carrying bales of hay on their backs. They wore derbies, tight woolen jackets with tears at the seams, enormous trousers stolen off more prosperous men, and huge, soft felt shoes. When Hugo saw them, he waved a wobbly, nervous greeting. Hesitantly, they waved back. Then they seemed to consult one another. As if reaching consensus, they suddenly dumped their hay to the tracks and, fast as horses, ran off the way they’d come.

“That’s a queer kind of greeting,” Hugo said.

“Were those Bolos?” Wodziczko asked.

“You see Bolos everywhere,” Hugo sneered. “Why would Bolos be carrying bales of hay? Obviously, they’re peasants.”

“They were Bolos,” Wodziczko insisted.

“Your mother’s a Bolo, you toad!” Hugo turned his back on Wodziczko, who was looking in vain for someone to hold him back from attacking. “If you punch me, tiny man,” Hugo said calmly, “I’ll throw you into the river and you’ll hardly make a splash.”

Gordon looked for a moment beyond it all, lordly and noble, until, focusing his field glasses, he toppled over. “I’m fine,” he murmured, closing his eyes. The empty vodka bottle rolled from the cab and hit the tracks with a sturdy clang before dropping silently into the foaming river.

Hugo stole the field glasses away from the peaceful-looking lieutenant and left the cab. With the rapids so far below him, his head swimming with the height, he gingerly hiked along the footplate, one hand on the boiler, the other on a handrail, until he was smack atop the cowcatcher. He was glad he was not a drinker.

Wodziczko joined him, and for long moments they argued over what exactly was ahead of them. Finally, Hugo declared, “It’s a village, definitely. There’s a sawmill smokestack. You see?”

Indeed, there was now a thick black column standing at the edge of the field—it was visible even without the field glasses—but why hadn’t they seen it before?