The object: Be the last of your round’s six to jump from one side of the tracks to the other____that is, across the tracks____before the train passes. Your only real opponents are your six’s other five. Never is the train itself regarded as an opponent. The speeding, screaming train is regarded rather as le jeu’s boundary, arena, and reason. Its size, its speed down the extremely gradual north-to-south grade of what was then southwestern Quebec, and the precise mechanical specifications of each scheduled train____these are known to the directeurs, they comprise the constants in a game the
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