It was neat and cosy as a dollhouse. It had sleeping bunks along the walls with warm blankets and a little kerosene stove with a teakettle, and she suddenly realized she would give anything for a warm drink. The kettle had water in it. She struck a match to the kerosene, and while the water heated she found a tin of tea and another of sugar. When she found a jar of blackberry jam, she thought she would cry with happiness.

She was spooning the jam from the jar when her active gaze fell on a map of the railroad system that covered one wall. She saw why the route was lonely. The tracks ran in a remarkably straight line southeast from Berlin, through Güsten, Wetzlar, and Koblenz to Metz, in Alsace-Lorraine. The Berlin-Metzer Bahn bypassed cities like Leipzig and Frankfurt in favor of a direct route. This was what people called the Kanonenbahn, the Army’s strategic railway, built with gentle curves and easy grades to transport cannon and soldiers quickly to the border to defend against French invasion. Looking east on the map she saw similarly straight lines radiating from Berlin across Poland to hold the Russians at their border.

Sipping hot tea, the first warm drink she had had in two days, Pauline traced her route from Berlin and saw with a sinking heart that she had a long way to go. Suddenly a train whistle blew. It was coming from the east, headed toward France. She doused the lantern, unlocked a door, jumped to the siding, and hid behind the caboose in hopes of hopping onto the approaching train. She had done this twice already and had survived it only because Detective Curtis had turned unusually talkative one evening when she couldn’t go home. He had told her that when he was her age “riding the rails” older hobos had taught him to jump on the front of a moving railroad car, not the rear. If you fell from the front, you fell to the side. If you fell from the back, you fell under the train.

She crouched on the embankment, shielding her eyes so as not to be blinded by the locomotive’s headlight. It sounded like it was coming too fast, but the instant the locomotive passed she ran alongside, scrambling to catch onto a boxcar ladder. She tripped on a tie and fell, rolled down the embankment, and jumped up. Too late. It was racing by.

Dejected, she went back inside the caboose, wrapped herself in blankets, and fell asleep on a hard mattress. Utterly exhausted, she slept without moving. Deep in the night she dreamed something was shaking her, but it stopped. Later she dreamed she was on a tram rolling along a Berlin street, lurching as it switched tracks. The tram stopped. Later it started again.