Leland made time pass by playing with his dogs and thinking about money. Sometimes he bounced the squeaky ball across the car, causing Nanette to scamper over hay bales and sleeping soldiers, until craps games were supplanted by plots to murder Leland and his charges. So instead he tied Nanette and Boy to the frame of the open door, which stunned them. A hundred passing miles of cow pasture was like a tour of the Louvre.

Whenever the train stopped, even if it was between platforms, villagers seemed to arise from between rusted tractors or in furrows of wheat fields. They were hungry. If Leland was sleeping, he knew when they were coming: Nanette would spring up and furiously wag her tail, eventually issuing an efficient single bark. She cared not for the adults, but had some primal spot, in her otherwise careful canine heart, for children. When a flock of tattered urchins surrounded the train, Nanette bounded to the ground and barked until Leland relented and put her through her paces. Sit. Down. Come. Stay. Roll over. Speak. Crawl. Beg. Shake. Jump. Higher. The first time, he tossed his dummy hand grenade, and she uncorked it and threw it with a toss of her head, but the resulting wail and scatter of hysterical children made him shamefacedly strike this from the program. Again.

Once or twice, he let Boy off his lead, which resulted in his sprinting to random and interesting-smelling places until Nanette caught up and herded him back to the train.

By the time Leland and his dogs reached Bordeaux, he was close to broke but, more important, beginning to worry. Anyone he met with a rank over sergeant had announced he wasn’t getting his dogs home with him. Dogs were fine in France, but not on a boat. Killer, Stumpy, and the rest would be left here. He began to understand the danger of allowing himself to want something. When they slept, he took to bringing his ear to his dogs’ chests, and listening carefully; with every day that passed, they were closer to America. And the film industry. Nanette was going to be a star in motion pictures.

Bordeaux, departure point for the troops, was a hothouse where red tape grew. Leland was told at noon that he would depart at midnight, and then, at midnight, that his departure had been delayed. He was put through the cootie mills twice, given a short-arm inspection, told that the captain of the Hermione loved dogs and had instructed the ship’s carpenter to build them a kennel, and then that the Hermione had sailed without him.