WHOLE weeks went by in the same place when rain or cold delayed them. To travel in such conditions only invited sickness or chills or fever, and that did nobody any good. But spring came and gradually warmth returned and the train picked up speed along its invisible tracks. Day and night again became a continuous blur of movement, change, fear, hope, hunger, and exhaustion. Finally a night came when, a few hours before dawn, they were led into a cave that appeared to be an abandoned mine of some kind. At the far end shone a faint, flickering glow. “Keep yo heads low so you don’t whack dem on da roof,” said the young man, who did not seem much older than a teenager but who had been leading them for several hours. Gradually the cave widened until the roof overhead suddenly opened upward and they came to a fire burning brightly in the center of a dirt floor. Its smoke rose into the top of the cave and somehow found its way up and out through an invisible series of cracks to the outside.
