As he rode away I yelled for Hays and detailed him to take over the watch of Davilla. Then I directed everyone to get out of the saddle and take a rest. “Now you can smoke,” I said. I sat down by the embankment and leaned back against it, my horse’s reins in one hand, and lit a cigarillo. It was a poor substitute for food and drink, but it was all I had.
My thinking, in sending Lew on ahead, was that there had to be some way to service the rail bed and somebody to do the servicing. At least that was the way it was around Texas railroads. Maybe he’d find a little crew bunkhouse that had stores in it. Maybe he’d find one of those little pump carts that crew people used to get by rail from job to job. Hell, I didn’t know what he was likely to find; I was just hoping he’d find something that would give us a little relief. The shape we were in we could have used week-old water and two-week-old bread. But looking at the horses, I figured we weren’t long from being afoot. But at least that way we’d have something to eat.
After an hour I mounted up and directed the rest into their saddles. It was painful watching Senor Elizandro being helped astride his horse. But I didn’t think it was yet time to take desperate measures.
We trailed north for about half an hour. I taken notice that the roadbed was starting to get lower and lower, a situation I didn’t much care for. I could see the country falling away to the north and I guessed the railroad builders had figured there was less chance of disastrous flooding with a drain plane rather than the flat way it had looked some few miles back.
But I still didn’t like it. That embankment was the only cover for twenty miles and I hated to see it dropping away to nothing.
After about a quarter of an hour I saw a dim speck coming toward us. I held up a hand and halted the party. Ben rode up beside me. “Reckon that’s Lew?”
“Should be,” I said. “But let’s wait a bit and see.”
We watched as the dot grew larger and larger until it turned into the figure of man and horse. After a few more minutes I could see it was Lew. I urged my horse forward, the rest following. It took about ten more minutes, but we finally closed on one another. The first thing I noticed was the sort of satisfied look on Lew’s face and the fact that his horse didn’t look nowhere near as drawn and worn down as he had when Lew had taken out two hours earlier. Near as I could figure, two hours riding in that heat had never done a horse no appreciable amount of good, especially without feed or water. Also, Lew was chewing something.
I said, watching him closely, “Find anything?”
For answer he reached into a cloth sack he had tied from his saddle horn. He held out a handful of flour tortillas. He said, “Care for a bite?”
“You son of a bitch,” I said. But I took me a couple and passed the stack on back to the rest. The tortillas were tough and hard to swallow but the finest light bread had never tasted so good. I said, “Where’d you get these?”
He jerked his head back in the direction he’d come. He said, “They’s a water tank, a railroad water tank, the kind with a spout that they use to fill up a railroad engine’s boiler, back up yonder about a mile.”
“My God!” I said. “We can finally water these horses. Anything else? Is it guarded?”
He said, “Well, it’s supposed to be but it didn’t work out that way. They is a little crew bunkhouse there. Whatever you call it. Was two ol’ boys that work for the railroad there. But they ain’t guarding it right now.”
“You kill them?” I was about to get sick of the depredations we’d done in a country we didn’t have no standing in.
He shook his head. “Tied ’em up. They was pretty gentle. Thought I was a capitán of the federales. They was plenty helpful. Even give my horse some water and feed and give me all sorts of useful information.”
“They got a telegraph there?”
He shook his head. “We ain’t talking about the kind of hired help that can run a wire key. They more what you might call caretakers.”
“But there’s feed and water for the horses there?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Not a hell of a lot, but they is that big water tank and they got a well. Also got some beans and some dried beef. But I reckon we ought to kind of get in a hurry.”
“Why? If you’ve got them tied up.”
He gave me a wink. “We’ve got a train to catch. In just a little over two hours.”
I stared at him. “A train? How we going to stop a train, much less catch one?”
He said, “I think I’ve got a way. How’d you like to be in Laredo by this evening?”
Wasn’t much I needed to say to that. The men were crowding around, demanding to know what was going on. I told them that I didn’t know but that Lew had reported some help up ahead. Just how much I couldn’t say.
We hurried that last mile, spending the last of our strength and the last of our horses. As we rode I asked Lew for more details.
He said, “Well, they is a train coming in. And it’s a short train, a cattle train, so there will be room for the horses. And should be water and feed aboard.”
“I don’t believe this,” I said. “I can’t believe our luck finally changed.”
Lew said, “And they will stop for water at that water depot.”
“Lord,” I said. “This get’s better and better.”
“Just the one thing, though,” Lew said.
“What?”
“Train’s going the wrong way. It’s headed for Monterrey.”
10
We pulled up about a hundred yards short of the place so I could look it over. Like Lew had said, there was a hell of a big wooden water tank up on stilts so its spout would be over the boiler of the railroad locomotive. Then just beyond and behind that was a little shack. Behind that was a corral with a few sorry-looking nags standing around, their heads drooping.
I said, “What time is that train? That train that is going the wrong way?”
Lew consulted his watch. It was just quartering eleven o’clock. He said, “A little over an hour and three quarter. ’Course these damn Mexican trains never run on time.”
I give him a look. “How you know so much about it?”
He shrugged and said, “A man gets around.”
I studied the shack. “You sure you got these two railroad workers fixed where they ain’t going to give us any trouble?”
“Guarantee it,” he said.
The hot afternoon wind was starting a little early that day, stirring up dust so that it swirled between us and the water tank. My horse was mouthing his bit, smelling the water. I wanted to go in, but I wanted to go in cautiously. I said to Lew, “Let’s go take a look.” Then I motioned the rest of the party to hold their ground.
Lew and I rode slowly forward. The late morning air was still and quiet, the little swirling winds having died for the moment. I eyed the shack. It was a gray adobe affair with gray tiles for a roof and poles sticking out of the sides for rafter supports. The windows were small slitlike affairs. I could hear small insects buzzing around. Other than that there was no sign.
We pulled up at the water tower and tied our horses to the stilts that held up the huge wooden drum. My horse nickered at the horses in the corral back of the shack. They just raised their heads and switched their tails and made no other sign.
Lew said, “Ain’t you being a bit overcareful?”
“Quiet,” I said.
We walked toward the door of the shack. I had drawn my revolver. Lew, after a shrug, had done likewise. The only sound was the slight ching-ching of our spurs on the hard ground. When we got to the front of the shack I tried to see through one of the slitlike windows but it was covered with some kind of material. I walked over to the wooden door; I motioned Lew to the other side of it. He shrugged and took up his position.
All of a sudden I jerked up the wooden latch and shoved the door open. There was a sudden loud BOOM and a slug came whistling through the opening. Without hesitation Lew and I jumped into the door frame and fired two or three shots apiece
into the gloom of the inside. I heard a few go whining around, but I also heard several strike something solid, like the person that had fired the shot.
We rushed into the room of the shack. Laying on his back was a workman-looking fellow in some sort of a worn-out blue uniform. Laying between his legs was an old black-powder-firing muzzle-loader. I looked around. There was a chair laying on its side, busted. Around it were ropes. Against a far wall was the match to the fellow laying on the floor, except he was still roped to his little wooden, cane-bottomed chair.
I gave Lew a glance. He leaned down and picked up the old black-powder rifle. He said, “Justa, I swear I tied these boys up and then searched this place for weapons. I swear I done it. I just didn’t know he had Grandma hid out here somewheres. Hell, I may have seen it but I would have never thought it was anything anybody would actually shoot.”
It was easy to see what had happened. The dead man had tipped his chair over and the old, lightweight framework had busted, practically freeing him from all but the last of the bonds. It had taken him time, but then he’d had time, the time it had taken Lew to fetch us. Once he’d got his hands free it had been but the work of a moment to free his ankles. He’d probably looked out the window, saw us coming and realized he didn’t have time to free his comrade, just time to load the old muzzle-loader. The only question was why. I put it to Lew and he put it to the fellow that was still tied to the chair. They spoke together in Spanish for a moment. Lew shrugged and turned to me. “The fellow hates federales. They killed some of his family. He saw me alone and thought I was a federale and that it was a good chance to get some revenge.”
I looked at the dead man and shook my head. “I ain’t never been much of a promoter of Mexico, but we better get out of this poor country whilst a few of them is still alive.”
“And us, too,” Lew said.
I went outside and hailed the others to come on. They came up with relief and excitement on their faces. They were all for coming inside and having a bite to eat and something to drink, but I bade them help Señor Elizandro into the room and then take their horses around to the corral in back and get them watered and fed before they taken care of themselves. I said, “You better watch your animals. You know better than to let them drink too much in one go. Hays, you and Ben take my horse and Lew’s. We got some planning to do.”
I went back inside. They’d laid Señor Elizandro just inside the door. Lew was at the little coal stove stoking up the fire under a huge pot of what smelled like beans with chilies. He had a stack of tortillas warming and softening on another part of the stove. With his other hand he was eating an orange. I pulled Miguel’s shirt back. Well, the wound was good and infected. I may not could dig for those slugs but I could at least open the wound up and let it drain. If I didn’t he was going to die before we could get him to a doctor just as sure as shooting. I said, “Lew, those coals in that stove hot? I mean real hot?”
He opened the grate. “Not yet. But I can get ’em like that. You fixing to do some more surgery?”
“Yeah. We are out of whiskey, ain’t we?”
“Far as I know. But they ought to be some around here somewhere.” He spoke to the man bound to the chair. I saw the man nod his head toward some cupboards near the stove and say something. Lew opened the door of the cupboard. “They got tequila,” he said. “Will that do?”
“Going to have to,” I said.
He handed me the tequila and I handed him my knife. “Fan up them flames real good and then get the point of my knife nearly red.”
He said, “You do mind that we ain’t got all that much time, don’cha? That train is going to be here in less than an hour and we got a bunch of stuff to get ready.”
I said, “Does that train automatically stop here and take on water?”
Lew nodded his head toward the man in the chair. “Pancho don’t think so. But the other one told me it didn’t, that it was one of the newer locomotives of a bigger class and didn’t have to take on water so often. Train has to be stopped.”
I looked down at Miguel. He was breathing heavy and his eyes were closed. Hell, I couldn’t figure out how he’d made it as far as he had. I reckoned the coolness of the shack was some relief to him. After the merciless pounding we’d taken from the sun for two days, the dim interior of the little building felt like the inside of one of them icehouses I’d been in once in Houston. I said, “Miguel, I’m going to open you up. You’ll feel better. You understand?”
He nodded, pretty tight-lipped.
I said, “I got some tequila here and I want you to take down as much as you can. I figure it’ll be pretty raw stuff but do the best you can with it.”
He nodded again and I put one arm under his shoulders and raised him to a sitting position. He opened his eyes and I guided the bottle into his right hand. Trying to make a joke, I said, “Now really put it down, Miguel. The more you drink means the less I got to.”
He tried to smile but it didn’t come to much. Then he put the bottle to his mouth and took several swallows. When he took it away he was gasping. He said something I couldn’t hear. I put my ear close to his mouth. I said, “What?”
He whispered, “I think I prefer to be shot.”
At least the man could joke. I had to admire him for that. I got the bottle back up to his mouth and forced a few more swallows down him. Then I laid him on his back and poured some of the tequila right over the wound. But it was so closed up he didn’t even flinch when the raw stuff hit it.
Lew brought me over the knife. He said, “That about right?”
The point was glowing a cherry-red. I said, “Well, you’ve taken the temper out of a damn good blade, but it will do Miguel a world of good. Hold his shoulders hard. He ain’t going to enjoy this overmuch.”
While Lew got at the caballero’s head and put his weight on Miguel’s shoulders, I took the bottle of tequila in my left hand and my knife in the other. With a quick movement I punched the hot blade into the point I took to be the bullet entry. As I did I began pouring on the tequila. Miguel moaned and thrashed his legs, but he didn’t move his upper body and he didn’t call out.
The results were about the same as they’d been for Jack Cole, although the knife had been so hot with Miguel that I figured I’d cauterized the wound while I was opening it up. I said, “Sit him up. Let him suck down some more of this tequila. He’s got to be hurting like hell.”
Elizandro took two hard sucks off the bottle then pushed it away and sighed. He was still pale, but it was a different kind of paleness. His eyes fluttered open. He said “Gracias in almost a whisper.
Lew lowered him back to the floor. I said, “Just lay there, Miguel. I know you’re hurting, but there’s not a damn thing I can do about it right now.”
He opened his eyes again. “It’s not so bad. Do you have a cigarillo?”
I lit him one and stuck it between his lips. Then I got up, leaving his shirt laying open. Lew said, “Ain’t you going to bandage him up?”
I shook my head. “We ain’t got nothing clean enough to use for a bandage.” And I wasn’t going to poke a tent in either. If we were able to get hold of that train we’d be in Laredo before the wound could close again and he’d be under a surgeon’s care. If we couldn’t . . . well, it wouldn’t make much difference either way. He’d never last to the border horseback.
Lew and I went back to the main part of the adobe shack. The beans were starting to smell. I said, “They got any coffee?”
Lew spoke to the man in the chair again. “Hey, Pancho, tiene café?”
The man shook his head. Lew shrugged. “He’s probably got some hid away. That’s pretty rare stuff for these kind of boys.” He looked around. The little shack wasn’t more than twelve or fourteen foot square. He said, “Ain’t that many places to hide it. We could probably root around and come up with it.”
I shook my head and went over to the back window slit to see how they were doing in the corral. They were just starting to lead thei
r horses out. I taken note that Hays had a lariat rope around Davilla’s neck and was leading him like a dog. The capitán looked mighty run down. He didn’t appear to have an ounce of fight left in him. Of course that’s when you wanted to start watching somebody like him the closest. I said to Lew, “Looks like company’s coming. You better start setting the table.”
Lew was rummaging around on a table. “Hell!” he said. “These cheap bastards ain’t got but four tin plates and just a few spoons and forks. What are we going to do?”
“Eat in shifts, I reckon,” I said. “Now where the hell is that water? Is that it in the corner?”
“Yeah. An’ it’s good water too.”
I took the lid off a big earthen crock, got the dipper and drunk my fill of the cool, fresh well water. I don’t reckon I’d ever tasted anything better. But I no more than got my thirst quenched when I commenced wanting a drink of whiskey, good whiskey, not that rotgut tequila. I reckon such is the nature of man. When he’s starving to death he’d eat an armadillo raw, but once you get him satisfied he won’t settle for anything but the best. But we didn’t have any whiskey, mainly because Ray Hays hadn’t seen to it. Not that it would have done us much good crossing that hot plain. The last thing a man needs that’s short on water is whiskey. It just dries him out further.
There was a rough wooden table in the middle of the shack. I said, “Well, here comes the crew. You better go to ladling out beans and handing out tortillas before we have a riot on our hands. Then you and I better talk.”
When Lew and I had eaten we stepped to the door. Señor Elizandro seemed to be going easier. One of his men was helping him with a plate of beans. The railroad track was just outside. By now the grade was barely a foot high. I said, “All right, just how do we stop this train? You and Davilla? In uniform? Standing on the tracks waving your arms?”
“Something like that,” he said. “But also with these.” He stepped back into the crowded room, full of men refreshing themselves after several days of hardship and danger, and returned with a couple of items. He held them out. They looked like a pair of sticks of dynamite with tenpenny nails in the bottom.
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