A String of Beads by Thomas Perry

climbed upward,
     and looked back to the curve where the next part of the train was still to appear,
     rolling toward them. She looked back up the hillside through the trees. She said,
     “I’m ready. Are you up to this?”
    “Yep,” he said.
    “Stay low. When we see the one we want, we’ll run for it. You get aboard, and then
     I will.”
    He looked at her. “Are you sure you don’t want to go first?”
    “I’m being sensible. If you get up there first, you’ll be able to pull me up. If I’m
     there first, I won’t be strong enough to pull you up.”
    “What you’re really afraid of is that you’ll make it and I won’t,” he said. “But that’s
     okay. We’d better get going before that cop catches up and sees us.”
    They watched the cars coming past, and then Jane said, “I see one coming. It’s a hopper
     with an open top. Black. See it?”
    “I see it.” Jimmy began to trot, then sped up a little to match the speed of the car,
     jumped to grasp a vertical bar at the back that formed part of a ladder, and then
     stepped onto the small level space just before the rear coupling.
    Jane ran in right behind him, grasped the bar, and pulled herself up. She clung there
     for a few seconds, and then they looked at each other and smiled as the engines pulled
     them around the first curve into deeper woods. “Let’s see if we can get up there on
     top,” Jane said, and sidestepped to the ladder. She climbed up, stepped over the rim
     of the hopper, and disappeared.
    Jimmy climbed up after her, looked over the rim into the hopper, and climbed in beside
     her. The hopper was loaded with tiny, coarse stones like the gravel under the railroad
     ties. It was mounded in the center and shallower along the sides, so if they stayed
     near the outer areas, they were well hidden. Jimmy gave her a high five, and then
     lay back to look up at the sky. There were a few wispy white clouds very high up,
     each like a single brushstroke, but most of the sky was a pure blue.
    The train stopped. A moment later, it began to back up. It went about twenty feet,
     and then stopped with a jolt, as though something had collided with the rear of the
     train. “They must be adding more cars,” said Jimmy. In a moment, the train started
     moving ahead again, very slowly overcoming its inertia and immense weight, and making
     its way up the first hill.
    Jimmy started to sit up, but Jane put her hand on his chest. “Please don’t sit up
     yet. Let’s wait until we’re at least a few miles farther on, where there’s zero chance
     Tech Sergeant Isaac Lloyd will see us.”
    Jimmy smiled. “You certainly have gotten cautious as a grown-up.”
    Jane didn’t smile. “Sometimes the difference between sort of safe and absolutely safe
     is pretty unpleasant, so I lean toward absolutely safe.”
    The train climbed the hill slowly, tugging its long string of cars up the gradual
     incline until it reached a gap in the hillside and sped up to twenty-five, then about
     thirty-five miles an hour.
    Jane and Jimmy both unrolled their bedrolls and spread them on the gravel, their heads
     slightly inclined toward the mound. They used their packs as pillows and rested from
     their long, hard run. They passed through areas where the tall trees and the cuts
     through the hillsides kept them in shade much of the time, and then through rolling
     farmland. After a half hour they were both asleep, rocked gently in their hopper,
     hearing only the constant clacking of the wheels and feeling the fresh breeze passing
     over them.
    They woke when the train blew its whistle to signal its approach to the first crossing
     at the next town, and they remained alert but out of sight until it regained its full
     speed on the way out of town.
    As Jane lay on the gravel bed she decided riding the train was like lying in a boat.
     The hopper was open to the sky, and traveled at a nearly uniform slow speed, almost
     never stopping. Even twenty miles an hour felt