“Oh, no,” he assured me. “We have guards at night.”
“Good,” I said, “because I’d feed you your own liver if something happened to that pony. I reckon you understand me.”
He swallowed hard. “Si,” he said. “Mi sabe.”
“Good.” I turned away and walked on over to the telegraph office. The operator said he’d heard from Nuevo Laredo and that my message had been delivered to the hotel, but it hadn’t been picked up. I wondered just where in hell Les could be. It was kind of starting to worry me. I hoped he wouldn’t be damn fool enough to have already left for Texas. It was way too early to be making any such visit, no matter how bad he was feeling about Tod.
I lolled around the cantina the rest of the evening, having an occasional drink. Manuel and his friends come in about nine o’clock and we had a drink or two together. It seemed to me they got into town an awful lot for working cowboys. They were polite and agreeable enough, but they seemed to watch me mighty close. I figured I’d scared them with my quick temper and they just wanted to be on guard in case it happened again. I’d told Manuel I was going out on the train the next morning and he wanted to know if I was shipping my horse along. It was a kind of a strange question.
“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Nada,” he said. “It is just expensive to ship a horse.”
“How you know I even got a horse?” I asked him. I don’t like people getting curious about my animal.
“Oh, I didn’t!” he said. “I just assumed.”
“Oh,” I said. We were sitting at a table. “Tell me,” I asked him. “I’ve heard there were bandits south of here. Are they still active?”
He shrugged. “Who can say. Of late they have not been too active.”
One of the others laughed and said something in Spanish that I didn’t catch.
“What?”
“He didn’t say anything.”
“Yes he did. What’d he say?” I looked around at them. There were five, including one who had not been there the previous evening. They were a poor-looking lot, but they were all carrying revolvers. I hadn’t really taken note of it before and it kind of surprised me. A hand gun is a pretty expensive luxury for a working cowboy. I asked Manuel again what the cowboy had said.
He shrugged. “Oh, just something about how broke the bandits must be getting. It’s a Spanish joke about not having any work.”
“Yeah,” I said.
After a little while I got up and went to my room. I lay down on the bed for a minute, but then got up and got my saddle and bed roll and went out the back and walked down to the livery stable. There was a sleepy old man on duty and he asked if I wanted my horse. “No,” I said. “I don’t.” I went back in the dark of the stable and opened my mare’s stall door. She looked around at me and made a little whinny. “All right,” I told her. “Just take it easy. I’m gonna bunk with you.” I fixed my bed roll in the straw in front of the stall door and lay down. The drinks had me good and relaxed and I didn’t have any trouble going to sleep.
Sometime later, a little before dawn, I heard a sound and it brought me full awake. I lay still, but got my hand in under my blankets and got hold of my revolver. Somebody was fooling with the latch of the stall gate. I waited until they got the lock off and swung the door open and then I suddenly sat up and cocked my revolver. It was very dark and all I could see was a very dim form. The sound of the revolver cocking made a loud click-click in the quiet and whoever it was suddenly yelled, “Yiiii” and seemed to fall backward. I expect it was kind of startling. I could hear the sound of somebody running and I crawled through the stall door, my pistol in my hand, and I looked to the right and left. I couldn’t see a thing. After a little I went up to the front of the barn to ask the watchman if he’d seen anything. He was sound asleep in a chair by the door. I kicked at the legs and the chair overturned and spilled him to the floor. It near scared him to death. “Goddam you,” I said, “stay awake!”
I went back to the stall and lay back down. But my nerves were tensed up and I had trouble getting to sleep. I dozed off and on until dawn and then got up and went looking for breakfast. I would have give a pretty to have known who my visitor had been, but I didn’t expect I was going to find out. My train would be leaving in about four hours.
About nine I saddled my mare, leaving her cinch loose, and led her over to the train station. A big crowd of Mexicans had gathered around, some with traveling gear, but some just come down to see the train. I’d been on ’em plenty of times before, so it wasn’t no novelty. The clerk said the train had got away from Nuevo Laredo on time, so it ought to be pretty near on schedule.
There was still no word from Les. I figured he must have changed his plans.
I sat in front of the station watching the crowd. A good number of the passengers seemed to be quitting the country for good, for they had furniture and bed rolls and chickens in coops and one or two was leading goats. They’ll get right into the chair cars with that kind of gear too. I’ve ridden Mexican trains before and it ain’t no treat, unless you like to be sat on and shoved around and smell chickens and garlic and listen to a lot of noise.
It got to be ten o’clock and then a little past and the train still hadn’t come. I went into the station and asked the clerk where the hell it was. He shrugged and said that was something he could not know. “Perhaps it has broken down, Senor. Perhaps bandits, perhaps it has simply stopped to rest the passengers. Who can say?”
I checked with the operator, but there was still no wire from Les.
Outside I settled back down. Finally, from a way off, there came a little whistle sound and the crowd began to get excited and gather themselves up. After a time you could see the train clearly. It looked to be about six coaches with several flat cars for the livestock. It came around a bend and then straightened up for the run into the station. I went down by my mare and petted her and tried to keep her easy. All the livestock was getting tense and fidgety. They could hear the noise of the train a lot better than we could and it was making them nervous. I soothed my mare, but she still jumped around pretty good when the train pulled into the station. It come in huffing and puffing and throwing cinders every which way and the operator was sitting down on his whistle to try to get the crowd off the tracks. They’d surged out off the platform and it was a miracle some of ’em didn’t get run down. As it was, the train driver had to take it easy and inch his locomotive in little by little until he could get lined up with the platform. The crowd made a run for the chair cars, but I led my mare down to one of the flatbeds. A trainman came back and let down a little loading trestle and I led my mare up it and tied her in place. There were several other horses on the car, which was rigged up like a corral with posts stuck down along the sides and then stringers running along crosswise. I figured she’d be pretty jittery about the ride and I had no interest in trying to find a chair among that mob that had loaded in, so I figured to just ride along on the livestock car and look after my animal.
It took us a while to get under way, but I took me a seat up against one of the corner posts and got out one of the little cigars I’d bought a good supply of and settled down for the wait. Finally they got the crowd stuffed into the cars and then the locomotive commenced to get up steam. The horses were plenty nervous. I got up and patted my mare and done what I could for the others, but they was still mighty worried. After a bit the locomotive wheels began to turn. They had a trainman up in front of the engine pouring sand under the wheels to help them take hold and get up speed.
Then we were off. My mare didn’t like it at first, but we went along so smoothly that she finally settled down and I went back and sat down. After a while we got up speed and then we were really flying along. I figured we must have been making near thirty miles an hour. A horse can run thirty miles an hour, but not for very long. Cinders were blowing back, but the wind was generally taking them out to the side. Occasionally one would blow in on us and hit
one of the horses and make him snort and rear around, but it didn’t happen often. I got to feeling pretty good. I was still a little worried about not hearing from Les, but I was comfortable and we were whizzing along toward Sabinas and I figured to get a chance to see the girl. I didn’t know how I was going to arrange it once I got there, but I figured I’d think of something.
The prairie just flew by. It was starting to get a little hilly, but it was still northern Mexico land, cactus and rocks and sand. It’s poor country and the people who live on it are poor. Some of them have nearly about all they can do just to scratch out enough to eat. The land just about won’t support cattle. On the big ranchos, the ones that have more acres than you can ride over in a week, they raise hay and some grasses because they’ve got land enough to put to it and their cattle do all right. But the little man don’t really have much chance. He’s lucky if he can find enough for just one cow to eat and that’s what he does every year, raises him just one cow and then butchers it along toward the end of the year.
About a half hour or a little better out of the station I felt the train begin to slow. I got up and went to the side and leaned over the rail and looked down the track. Way in the distance I could see a water tower rearing up. The train kept on slowing until we were barely creeping along. We were coming to the edge of a little bunch of hills. They weren’t much, just some sandy mounds, but they were pretty thick with mesquite and cactus. I figured there was water under the ground on account of the water tower and the thick brush. We finally pulled in and stopped and then the engineer went to backing and filling until he’d got himself positioned under the spigot. I leaned against the railing, watching a train hand climb up the tower and swing the spigot through over the engine and release the water. A steam locomotive takes a power of water and they were some time at it. Finally they got full up and the train man got back aboard and the engine commenced jerking the cars forward. I could see the same man up front with a bag of sand helping the locomotive’s wheels. We got going, still creeping along, though, and he run back to the locomotive and swung into the cab. It was a marvel to me all the things they had to keep tended. The engine huffing and puffing, but we weren’t making much speed, maybe ten miles an hour. There was a good load aboard and it’d take a while to get all the rolling stock going. I leaned against the railing, smoking and watching the country going by. We were starting to get into the little line of hills. I finished my cigarette and flicked it into the air, watching it curving in the wind. Just before it hit the ground I caught sight of a band of men suddenly coming out of the hills. There must have been twenty of them and they were riding low, waving rifles and yelling and shooting. I quick run over to the other side and there was a bunch of about equal numbers coming from the other side. They were heading for the front of the train, but, as slow as we were going, they’d have no trouble coming up to us. They come on, yelling and firing off their rifles. I could feel the train jerk and shudder as the engineer crowded on steam trying to get up speed. I was a sitting duck as open as the flat car was. I run back to my mare and jerked out my Henry and lay down flat by one of the posts. The bandits had come alongside the train. They were mostly crowded around the front, shooting into the cab of the engine, but some had strung out alongside the cars. They were still a good fifty yards up from me, but the train was gathering speed and some of them couldn’t keep up and they were beginning to drop back. I could see that most of them were so poorly mounted that they wouldn’t last long if the train got to going any at all. I held my fire, hoping they wouldn’t see me. If they began firing at me they’d be sure to hit my mare, as many shots as they were letting off. The ones that were dropping back were firing into the chair cars. Some shots were coming back at them and I seen one bandit go down but the cars were mostly filled with old people, women and children and what not. Hell, them damn bandits didn’t care. They just rode along firing at they didn’t give a damn what.
The train kept going, but I didn’t think it would for long. I could see up to the front of the train and there was quite a bunch around the locomotive. They were shooting point-blank into the cab.
Then I heard a yell and swerved around to look the other way. A bandit had dropped nearly even with my car and he was pointing at the livestock car and yelling something at the riders ahead of him. I finally made out he was yelling, “Caballos!” which is “horses” in Spanish. As poorly mounted as they were, the good horses on the car would be a real find. The rider still hadn’t seen me, so I eased around until I could get good aim on him and I let him have one right in the chest with my Henry. He never knew what hit him. One minute he was in the saddle, the next he was flipping off backward. Another rider came into view, coming backward because the train was going faster than he was, and I shot him too. Then another. But he saw me and got off a shot before I could hit him. It was easy shooting but I knew it couldn’t last. My rifle only held five shots and there wouldn’t be time to reload.
Then I became aware there were riders falling back on the side I was on. I swerved around, guns going off everywhere, and cut down on one. Just before I shot him he looked back and I seen it was one of the men that had been with Manuel. I didn’t have time to speculate about that, for others were coming back and I seen one of them was Manuel himself. He seen me about the time I recognized him and swerved in his saddle and aimed over his shoulder at me. He was not quite back to my car. I seen the smoke from his revolver and ducked. He cut out away from the train and I followed him with my sights and shot him out of the saddle just as he wheeled for another shot. Ahead of him I recognized the charro I’d slapped. There wasn’t much question what they’d do to me if they could. They hadn’t forgotten what I’d done to the one I’d pulled the gun on. I remembered how they’d sat there the night before watching me. I reckoned they were just biding their time, knowing they’d get a chance at me.
Just then I felt the engine begin slowing. No doubt they’d killed the engineer and his fireman. I took a quick look toward the front and seen one jump from his horse and swing into the cab. The train was commencing to really slow. In another second it would be stopped. My rifle was empty and I left it laying right where it was and crabbed across the car and kicked open the little gate they had fixed up. Then I jumped up and run back to my mare and undid her reins. She was jumping and trembling from all the gunfire. I tightened her cinch as quickly as I could and then started to mount. I heard something thud into the back of the car, right by my head, and I jerked around and seen a bandit riding alongside shooting at me. He was cocking his pistol for another shot when I got my own piece out and thumbed off two shots. The second one got him and he went sideways out of the saddle. I had it all over them, shooting from the train, while they had to aim from a running horse.
The train was near stopped and I vaulted on my mare and urged her toward where the gate was swinging open at the side of the car. The boards under her feet felt strange and she picked her way across the bed of the car. A bandit come riding back just as we got to the gate. I snapped off a shot, but missed him and he shied away to the front. Then the train was stopped and I laid spurs to my horse and jumped her off the train. It was pretty good height and she nearly went to her knees when she landed, but we made it all right. She scrambled around in the sand and rocks for a second, then got her feet, and I laid the spurs to her and took off for the north. A few of the bandits seen me and let off a shot or two, but they weren’t concerned with me; they were more interested in looting the train. I rode low, looking back every now and then, but no pursuit developed. It wouldn’t have mattered if it had anyway. Their horses were so fagged from chasing the train they’d have never been able to catch me on a fresh animal. After a little I pulled my mare down to a lope and looked back. The bandits were ganged around the train like flies on a piece of fresh meat. The train was stock-still, a little thread of steam rising from her smokestack. Occasionally a shot would ring out, but they seemed to have pretty well taken charge. I rode alongside the railroa
d tracks. I figured to head back for Rodriguez. It couldn’t be more than twenty miles and it was near a hundred to Sabinas with the bandits in the way. I figured to go back to town, get provisioned, and set out horseback.
CHAPTER 16
Sabinas Hidalgo
When I finally got back into Rodriguez I headed straight for the railroad office and told the little clerk his train had been robbed. He’d already heard. The bandits hadn’t killed all the trainmen and one of them had got the train into a little way station and they’d wired back. I asked the little clerk how many had been killed, but he didn’t know, didn’t seem to much care either. I expect he’s pretty used to train robberies and, so long as they don’t happen in his office, he don’t get too excited.
I asked him when the next train would be going south and he shrugged.
“Who can say, Senor. You can understand an event of this nature would disrupt even one of the great railroads of the northern United States.”
“But at any rate it will be a few days?”
“Oh, indeed. Yes, indeed. But then, perhaps not. Perhaps they will dispatch another train from Nuevo Laredo. If that occurs service will be much improved.”
I got out a cigar and lit it. “Well, do you think that will happen?”
He give me that look again, like I was an idiot. “Señor, clearly that is not for this office to know. Surely you can understand that—”
“All right,” I said. “Okay.” I turned around and started for the door. Just as I got there the telegraph operator came in wiping his mouth. He’d been eating again. He saw me and put up his hand and said, “Ah!”
“Yeah? Ah, what?”
“Ah, I have the telegram for you, Señor.”
I had completely given up on hearing from Les and it was a nice surprise to hear he’d wired me back. The operator went around his little fence and got himself settled at his desk and began going through some papers.
The Bank Robber Page 19