What the Heart Keeps

by Rosalind Laker

  Everybody was sleeping when the train began to slow down in the blackness of the prairie night. Lisa, who had no watch, had drawn Minnie with her out onto the car platform in good time. Nobody had seen them slip silently out of the door. Leaning over the platform railings to peer ahead, Lisa saw with relief there were no station lights approaching. Her one fear had been that she might have miscalculated her stop. Still watching as the train came to a halt, she could see the great hissing locomotive had drawn level with a water tank and coal bunkers. Such was the length of the train that she knew there was no chance of being spotted by the engine driver or his fireman as they moved around in the firebox’s red glow and the light of half a dozen lanterns. Clutching the handle of her valise, she descended the steps of the car platform and helped Minnie down with her.

  “Now let’s run,” she instructed in a whisper.

  They ran as hard as they could away from the train, stumbling over rough ground and through high grass which whispered and rustled around them as they plunged on. Finally they flung themselves down and lay gasping for breath.

  “The train’s going,” Minnie said, sitting up.

  Lisa sat up beside her. Together they watched the train pull away and for a long time afterwards they could still hear it rattling in the far distance. The last contact of sound was a blast from its whistle as it approached a crossing somewhere. It sounded almost eerie in the prairie night.

  Then, except for the far-off yip, yip, and squealing cry of coyotes, the only sound was that of the breeze stirring the tops of the grass.

  They slept huddled together, keeping their faces covered against mosquitoes. The night was warm from a sun-baked day, but there was no comfort in the hard ground. At dawn Lisa stirred into wakefulness with a start to see an old man with a weather-beaten face, white hair, and an unshaven chin looking down at them. He was clad in working overalls and a faded check shirt.

  “I’m Jim Chivers,” he drawled. “Wanna cup of coffee?”

  “Thank you. Yes, I would.” She scrambled to her feet, looking quickly about her, but there was no one else to be seen. Minnie was still sleeping.

  “What’s her name?” He indicated the child with a nod. “Minnie. I’m Lisa, Mr. Chivers.”

  “Call me Jim. Everybody does. Wake your sister up and follow me.” He began to trudge off.

  Minnie awakened sleepily. She nodded on being told they would pretend to be sisters. Yawning and rubbing her eyes, she plodded along beside Lisa in the wake of the old man who was surprisingly sprightly and moved at a swift pace. Near the tank and the bunkers was a railroad shack that had not been visible in the dark. When Lisa and Minnie entered there was the inviting aroma of coffee mingling with that of frying ham and eggs. “Sit yourselves down,” he invited, busy at the stove. “It ain’t often I gets company for breakfast.”

  The food was roughly served on chipped enamel plates, but Lisa thought she had never tasted anything more delicious. She and Minnie did justice to it with thick slices of bread that he cut for them. The coffee was strong and black, but Jim found milk for Minnie, saying that she looked as if she could do with some fattening up. He ate less than they did and filled his pipe, tamping down the tobacco as they finished the loaf between them.

  “You jumped the train last night.” It was a statement, not a question. “How come? No money for a ticket?”

  “That’s it.” Lisa seized on the excuse.

  He put a match to his pipe, puffing on it. “The conductor about to catch up with you, was he?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the middle of the night? When the last stop was early evening and he would have been up and down the length of the train knowing just who had come aboard long before folks settled down to sleep.” When Lisa made no answer to this probe, aware of being caught out, he pointed the stem of his pipe at her and then at Minnie. “My guess is you’re both on the run.”

  Lisa sat back with a sigh. “We are, but we’re not criminals, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Home kids, are you?”

  “Oh dear.” Lisa put an arm protectively around Minnie, who had slipped from the neighbouring chair to stand close to her. “Is it so obvious? How did you know?”

  “Just a hunch. You talk with an English accent as if you’re right off the boat, although she’s a bit better.” He indicated Minnie again with the stem of his pipe. “Immigrant girls don’t jump trains at night-time to land themselves in the middle of nowhere. I reckoned you must be desperate and I know a runaway when I see one.”

  “All right,” Lisa said, feeling she could trust him with their story. “I’ll tell you what happened. We couldn’t risk getting off near a station because if we had been sighted and dragged back onto the train by the woman in charge of our party then all chance of getting away would have gone.”

  He listened with interest as she recounted meeting Minnie again after all the child had been through and of the decision she had made to look after her. His job of track maintenance with the Canadian Pacific Railway was a lonely one and he had heard some odd tales from travellers in his time. “Now where are you aiming to go?” he asked when she had concluded.

  “To Calgary. A girl I know lives there. We were friends and I think she would be able to advise me about getting work. Minnie knows her, too.”

  “Calgary is a long ways from here.”

  “We’ll travel in a boxcar. That’s what I’ve planned. I know freight trains travel East full of grain at this time of year, and back to the West with the boxcars empty as often as not. We shall have to wait until one of the west-bound freight trains halts here for coal and water. You see, Jim, apart from anything else, I didn’t know whether I would be able to evade railway police near a station and get Minnie as well as myself into a boxcar when the train was gathering speed as the men do.” She was thinking of Peter, whose descriptions of some of his adventures had put the idea into her mind once she had committed herself to keeping Minnie with her. “At least, not until I’ve tried it the easy way first.”

  Old Jim guffawed. “Women don’t ride the rails.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  He saw how determined she looked and was no longer amused. “‘Cos it ain’t safe for females, that’s why not.”

  “I’m aware of the dangers. Minnie and I will stay hidden all the time. If the worse comes to the worst, I’m not unarmed. I have a pair of strong scissors in my valise and a sharp knife that I kept back from preparing food on the journey.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Maybe, but it’s important to get Minnie as far away as possible from any chance of recapture, and Calgary seems a good chance to me. All the money I have in the world amounts to two dollars and twenty cents and that won’t buy us tickets. So we’re going by boxcar and nothing is going to stop us getting to our destination.”

  He puffed twice on his pipe before he began to guffaw again, his shoulders shaking with mirth, and abruptly he slapped his knee with approving glee. “Well, I’ll be damned! I reckon nothing will.”

  To her astonishment, Lisa heard Minnie chuckle. The child was finding the old man’s amusement infectious. It was the first time she had thawed from her bleakness into any kind of lighthearted response. Lisa laughed a little herself in sheer relief. She hoped it was a good portent for all that lay ahead.

  Jim then gave her some helpful information. That evening a transcontinental freight train from the East would be going through on its way to Calgary. It would stop for water and coal between eight and nine o’clock. He would be up by the locomotive when it stopped and she and Minnie must get aboard as near to it as was possible. This was because those boxcars were less in favour with men who rode the rails, for risk of being seen by the driver and fireman was greater there, and also when a train was gathering speed the rear of it was often all that was available to those forced to wait until the last minute before climbing aboard. The girls would have the advantage of darkness and a certain amount of time in which to
make their choice.

  During the morning Jim made four stout props of wood. These were to be braces for Lisa to wedge on the inside of the boxcar to stop the two sets of doors being opened from outside by others when the train stopped somewhere. Lisa appreciated his thoughtfulness. She and Minnie spent a pleasant day at the halt.

  Jim told them where to look for the berries known as saskatoons, and they picked some and put them into a bowl. Afterwards Lisa baked them into two pies for him, but he insisted that they put one aside for the journey. He made them a meal of prairie chicken, which proved to be a species of grouse, and told Lisa to put a whole cooked one that had not been cut with the pie. He provided a basket for their provisions and included a lantern, some matches, and a flagon of drinking water and some dried food, including grits. He took her knife and scissors and sharpened them on a grindstone until they had a razor edge. He returned them to her wrapped in a piece of sacking for safety, and she put them away carefully.

  As darkness fell the last few hours of waiting seemed long. He heard the train before they did and escorted them across the tracks to wait on the side opposite to the tank and bunkers where all the activity would be.

  “I can’t thank you enough, Jim,” Lisa said gratefully. “I’ll never forget your kindness.”

  He became gruff and irritable, embarrassed by her thanks, but he shook her hand and then Minnie’s in a hard grip that expressed his good will. “S’long,” he said. “Don’t forget nothing I’ve learned you about riding the rails.”

  He stumped back across the tracks. They crouched down to hide in the grass. The train drew nearer at a steady speed. Then with a sound like thunder and a violent hissing of steam the locomotive passed them and came to a halt a short distance away. Following Jim’s instructions, they waited for a few heart-thumping moments to see if any unofficial riders alighted for a breath of fresh air, but not a door slid back.

  “Come on,” Lisa whispered. They hurried along by the side of the train and were out of luck with the first half-dozen boxcars, which were padlocked to protect cargo inside. Soon they came to the first of the empty ones that made up the rest of the stretch of the long train. Lisa found that the door slid back more easily into its outside slots than she had expected and the interior had a dusty, grainy aroma that was not unpleasant. She loaded on her baggage and a bucket that Jim had given her without comment, its essential purpose fully understood. After helping Minnie up with the provisions, she ran back to collect two of the heavy props and shoved them aboard. When Minnie had pulled in the other two, Lisa tucked up her skirt and climbed up herself into the boxcar. She closed the door shut and laughed softly in the darkness.

  “Calgary! Here we come!”

  Minnie clapped her hands. “Let’s wave goodbye to Jim,” she requested eagerly.

  They opened the opposite door cautiously to look out when the train began to move again. They could see him in the light from the railroad shack. Although he must have seen the glimmer of their waving hands, he made no acknowledgement, which they realised was a sensible precaution against attention being drawn to them from another part of the train. Soon the halt was left far behind. Ahead lay a three-day journey. Lisa lit the lantern briefly in order to see where to brace the props securely against the doors. In darkness again they settled down to sleep.

  In the warmth of the following day they kept a pair of the doors apart in order to break the monotony of being shut in. Now and again a herd of cattle would stream away from the train in alarm. Once they caught sight of grazing buffalo in the distance. Derelict shacks bore witness to homesteaders who had failed and departed. It was cheering when they did sight smoke from a cooking stove rising bravely above a sod roof, although usually too far away to glimpse the inhabitants. And always the endless prairies rolled on and on under a blue sky greeting the first day of September.

  As if in warning that everything had been going too easily, that night turned bitterly cold. In the morning there was no sun and the draught through the open doors was fierce enough to make them sit well out of range. Jim had told them that the weather could be unpredictable around this time of year, although a cold snap did not mean that mild days were necessarily at an end. Lisa found an extra shawl in her valise for Minnie, who was already draped in a borrowed jacket.

  It was early evening when the train stopped. Lisa had no idea where they were, but she hoped that by now they had covered some of the territory of the province recently established as Alberta. Although alert every time the train was at a standstill, she had begun to feel confident that in following Jim’s advice to keep as near to the front of the train as possible they had escaped any intrusion and would continue to be left in peace. Therefore it came as a great shock as the train began to move on again for the doors at the right hand side to shake against such a violent pull of strength from the outside that one of the props, perhaps not as secure as it might have been because of her fingers being chilled when she set it back into place, leapt and fell with a clatter. In the resulting aperture the ugly, unshaven face of a man appeared as he poised for entry. His eyes widened at the sight of Lisa, who had sprung to her feet, and he registered the flurry of another skirt behind her. Instantly he turned his head to bawl an announcement gleefully over his shoulder.

  “Women! In here!”

  Lisa did not hesitate. She snatched up the empty bucket by the handle and dealt him such a blow in the face with it that he fell back, a cut from the base rim opening above his eye. She slammed the door shut again and rammed the prop into place before she realised that she was trembling with fright from head to foot. The train was gathering speed. She leaned back weakly against the wall and managed a shaky smile at Minnie, who had rushed to her with a cry.

  “It’s all right. We’re safe now. Let’s forget that it happened.” She felt it was important to distract the child quickly. “What about something to eat?”

  As she lit the lantern, which hung for safety on a nail in the wall, Minnie went to the provision basket. They had allotted so much food and water for each day of the journey, and the amount was getting low. They soon finished their meagre supper and were putting what was left of the bread and some other items back in the basket when Minnie lifted her head, listening attentively.

  “Is that thunder?”

  Lisa listened as well. For a moment or two it did sound somewhat like thunder until there came a scraping sound. She felt the colour drain from her face. “That man is on the roof!” she exclaimed in horror. Minnie whimpered with fright, drawing close, and Lisa put protective arms about her as they stood listening.

  Both started in alarm as the doors that had been tried previously began to shake. Lisa realised he had climbed down to the side and would be hanging on to the vertical handrail as he tried his strength on the doors. He used short, sharp jerks, trying to dislodge whatever wedged them.

  “Quick, Minnie! Lean against one of the props for added support,” Lisa instructed. “I’ll take the other.”

  While the child did as she was told, Lisa paused only to un-wrap from its sacking the sharp knife that she kept on a convenient ledge from which it could easily be snatched up. Hardly had she put her weight against the other prop when the doors on the opposite side of the boxcar began to shake and jerk in a similar fashion. The would-be intruder had with him whomever he had addressed upon first sighting her and Minnie. Even as Lisa grabbed the knife and advanced to check the other props, one of them gave way, and the door shot open. The man who lunged in was not the one she had seen before. Red-haired and red-bearded, short and thick-set, he would have thrust her aside to gain admittance for his companion through the other doors if he had not seen the knife glinting at him, the point long and dangerous.

  “Get out!” Lisa ordered. “Go back the way you came!”

  “There’s no need to be hasty.” He showed his tobacco-stained teeth in a twisted smile, his hard eyes ranging over her in lustful appreciation. “We could have a fine little party here. I’ve some boo
ze in my pocket and my pal outside has a bottle of good Scotch whisky.” His leering gaze went to Minnie, who had forgotten her task of leaning her weight against the prop and stood huddled in terror back in the corner. “How old are you, honey? Old enough I guess. You’ll get your turn.”

  “Keep away from my sister!” Lisa stepped swiftly between him and Minnie. She felt sick with loathing and disgust. His face, his threatening presence, the lantern that swayed with the movement of the train making their shadows dance, had combined into a situation horribly reminiscent of one that had occurred thousands of miles away in another country. In her racing mind she judged him stupid for having given away that he had only one companion outside, which meant she knew exactly the odds against her, and she felt that all the time she could deal with them singly she would have a good chance. “I’m not telling you again. Get out!”

  In fury she made a threatening gesture with the knife, intent on making him back out of the still open door. The blade came close enough to his face for him to dodge instinctively. It was also not the first time he had been menaced with a knife. His hand shot out in a slicing movement, catching her a sharp blow across the wrist that released her grip. As the knife clattered and spun across the floor, he added a kick to send it whirling outside into the speeding darkness. Grinning mockingly at her, he reached behind him and pulled the door shut.

  She stood defensively. There were still the scissors on the ledge near Minnie. If only the child would have the wit to remember they were there and dash them to her she would not be caught by his trick a second time. But Minnie was paralysed with fright, standing as if glued against the wall, eyes starting from her head. The man wagged a finger in her direction.

  “Listen to me, young ‘un. I’m keeping my pal outside a while longer. First come is first served in my reckoning. If you move out of that corner or make a squeak at what I’m going to do to your sister, I’ll throw her off this train and you’ll never see her again. Get that?”