Free Crack of Doom by Willi Heinrich Page A

moment of utter forlornness he made up his mind to go with the wind; and as always, once he had decided something, he wasted no more time and marched on.
    About an hour later he came to the railway line. The railway now ran northward parallel with the road, and Kolodzi strode on even faster, afraid that a train might go past before he reached the station. But his luck held; nothing stirred on the line. At last he saw a light dancing through the snow. It twinkled on the right of way, and when he got nearer he saw that it was the lantern of a man going down the line.
    He called out, but the man took no notice and walked on with big strides; Kolodzi sent an oath after him. His legs began to hurt, and the snow clung to his boots in big lumps and made the going harder. At last the first houses came into view. It was Nagy—he remembered now. The station, a long wooden hut, was at the other end of the village, and he could see at a glance that it was not in use. The windows were boarded up, iron grating had been put in front of the door, and the wind howled over the dark, deserted platforms. It was half past three by now. From a sort of desperate obstinacy, Kolodzi went back to the road and marched on. The road ahead led unendingly into the middle of the snow storm. He began to feel very drowsy. Somewhere there were houses with warm beds in them, and people lying in those beds now, not worrying about the snow falling outside and the wind howling in the telegraph wires. It would be wonderful to be in bed. His shoulders drooped as he went on down the road, while the snow fell into his tired face and on his bent back, which hurt under the weight of the heavy gun. He walked on as in a dream and it began to seem to him that he had been walking on this road all his life, through the same night and the same snow and always the same wind on his back and the howling of the telegraph wires in his ears.
    Finally he saw a light twinkling near the line. This time it wasn't a lantern; the light came from the window of a signal tower between the tracks. He crossed the rails and found himself in front of a door. He opened it, went up a steep staircase in the darkness and bumped into another door; when he opened it a current of warm air hit him, making him blink before his eyes became used to the light. One side of the room contained a battery of switch and signal levers. There was a red-hot stove with a man sitting by it, the man was staring at him and now lifted a pistol and pointed at Kolodzi. "What d'you want?" he asked loudly. He wore the uniform of a railroad man, with a service cross in his button hole.
    Kolodzi pulled the door shut behind him. 'Tut that thing away, I don't like it," he said.
    The signalman hesitated, then lowered the barrel of the pistol. "Who are you?"
    "Lot of questions you ask, I'm a handset— can't you tell?"
    "You've got a funny way of talking," said the signalman. Kolodzi pulled his paybook out of his pocket and threw it over to him. The man looked at it, compared the photograph with Kolodzi, then handed it back. "One has to be careful," he said apologetically, and pointed to a chair. "Come and warm up."
    His manner had changed instantly. "We don't often get anyone straying this way," he remarked chattily. "And when we do, it's almost always a partisan. The trouble we have with them here! A week ago they blew up a whole signal tower. Three men killed. Cup of coffee?"
    Kolodzi nodded. He was beginning to feel extremely comfortable.
    "Where have you come from?" the signalman asked, as he poured out the coffee.
    "Oviz."
    "Not on foot surely?"
    "Yes, on foot. Thought I'd pick up a lift somewhere, but there wasn't a thing on the road the whole damned way. And I want to get to Kosice too."
    "There's nothing along here before dawn, I'm afraid. There aren't any trains that stop here. None of them stops before Jelnice."
    "When's the next?"
    "Can't say. One side of the line's snowed up, and there should be a snow plow coming,