Annie’s eyes were still red from crying over José. Lyda looked ashen. Grace wondered what news could possibly be worse than Rico threatened with execution and José sent into exile.
“What’s happened?”
Jake took off his Stetson, ran his long, knobby fingers through his hair. “Zapata’s rabble has blown up the troop train.”
“Was anyone hurt?” asked Grace.
“I don’t know. The lines are all down. I just heard it from someone who rode down from Tres Marías last night.”
“They’ve killed Socorro’s papi and the other poor prisoners,” sobbed Annie. “They’ve blown them up.”
Lyda tried to reassure her. “We don’t know that.”
“The rebels have damaged the tracks before,” said Grace.
“Not like this. I hear the main trestle’s destroyed. I’m putting together a convoy to take the company’s executives and their families to Em Cee. We have horses, mules, a truck, and a Gatling gun. You and Lyda and the young ’un can come with us.”
“I thank you for the offer, Mr. McGuire, but I cannot leave the Colonial.”
“Miss Grace, I’m all for loyalty and commerce. But the time has come to pack your possibles, kick out the cook fire, and decamp.”
“I won’t leave my staff.”
“Hell, they’ll be the ones sacking the place as soon as your heels clear the lintel.”
“They will not!”
Jake was a good fellow at heart and a droll one, but he had that pernicious American sense of superiority over Mexicans, and everyone else for that matter.
Grace had to admit that she didn’t have complete confidence in the people of her adopted country either. She assumed that if she abandoned the Colonial, the local folk would swarm in. They would smash what they could not steal and set fire to the rest. The fact that her staff believed the same thing didn’t make her feel any less hypocritical.
Grace didn’t expect Jake to understand her reluctance to leave. He was a wildcatter for the oil company. He moved from place to place and felt beholden to nowhere. His job was to destroy the landscape, and he did it with matter-of-fact efficiency. But Grace tried to explain herself anyway.
“We have guests staying here,” she said. “And army officers.”
“If the guests are smart they’ll come with us. The soldiers can fend for themselves.”
“My mind is made up, Mr. McGuire. Thank you all the same.”
“Well then, Lyda May, pack your things and Annie’s. I’ll meet you at the house in an hour. You two can ride Duke.”
Annie crossed her arms and planted her feet. “I won’t leave without Aunt Grace.”
Lyda tucked her wild blond hair behind her ears, stood behind her daughter, and put her arms around her. “We’ll stay here a while longer.”
Jake blew out his breath in exasperation. “I have to get those starched collars to Em Cee. As soon as they’re safely stowed, I’ll come back and help you circle the wagons and hold off the hostiles.”
Grace smiled at him. He was gallant in his own thorny, Texas way.
“What do you ladies have in the way of firepower?” he asked.
Grace retrieved the Winchester Ninety-Seven pump shotgun and boxes of ammunition. She had had the gunsmith cut the barrel down to her specifications. Antonio Perez had told her that if she didn’t mind ruining the plaster on the wall, this was the best weapon to keep under the bed. “Just point it in the general direction and squeeze the trigger.”
Jake hefted it, inspected it, then nodded and gave it back. “Will you use this should the occasion arise, Mrs. Knight?”
“I will.”
Jake gave Lyda a quick kiss on the forehead and patted Annie on the head.
His bashfulness about kissing in public amused Grace. For all his bravado, she suspected Jake McGuire had a streak of shyness where women were concerned. Lyda agreed. She once had observed to Grace that cowboys only feared two things: being set afoot, and a good woman.
Jake put three fingertips to the brim of his Stetson and gave them a flick that was part salute, part wave. He swiveled on the tall heels of his cowboy boots and left. Grace and Lyda stood in the doorway and watched him walk across the zócalo. They both liked to watch long, lanky Jake walk. Annie said he looked like he had a pair of stilts in the legs of his dungarees.
Annie headed for the kitchen to see what María had prepared for breakfast.
When she was out of hearing, Grace said, “You and Annie should go with him, Lyda.”
“The Colonial weathered the 1910 uprising. We can wait this one out.”
“This is different.”
“What do you mean?”
“Zapata has vowed to keep on fighting, no matter what.”
“Maybe Zapata could be president.”
Grace shook her head. “Too many men with ambition and no conscience are arrayed against him. He will always be an ignorant indio to those in power.”
Annie returned peeling a banana and Grace changed the subject.
“Jake does have a point,” Grace said. “Maybe the time has come to circle the wagons, as they say in the moving pictures. You and Annie should stay here. Goodness knows, we have room.”
“What about Duke?”
“Bring your horse, too. He can keep the hotel mule company.”
Annie and Lyda exchanged looks.
“He’ll be safe,” said Grace. “Socrates sleeps in the stable.”
“Duke won’t come down,” said Annie.
“Down from where?”
“My bedroom.” Annie rushed to assure Grace that they hadn’t put Duke in solitary confinement. “The landlady loaned us her goat to keep him company.”
“We think they’re in love,” said Lyda.
“Annie, your bedroom is on the second floor. What’s he doing up there?”
“We didn’t want anyone to eat him. We don’t want anyone to eat the goat either.”
48
A High Horse
Lyda’s old horse, Duke, proved that what goes up does not necessarily come down. Annie led him to the top of the stairs at the end of the corridor outside her bedroom. There, he planted his front hooves and rocked back on his haunches.
He weighed almost three times as much as Annie, Lydia, Grace, and Socrates combined, so hauling on his lead line and shoving on his caboose proved futile. All of their reassurances, bribes, and cajolery couldn’t persuade him to risk plummeting headfirst to the flagstones of the courtyard. He also refused to back down them.
The house that Lyda rented was a modest one made of the local volcanic stone with terra-cotta tiles on the roof. It was built in a square around a small, weed-grown courtyard. The exterior stairway leading from the courtyard to the second-floor corridor was wide but steep.
Grace assumed that if Duke had been born with two legs, he would have become a philosopher. He stood at the top of the stairs and gazed down at Lyda and Grace in that thoughtful way of his. Lyda called up to Annie.
“Send his girlfriend down. Maybe he’ll follow her.”
Annie ran inside and reappeared leading the goat. Lyda waved an ear of corn at her and the goat almost fell head over hooves in her hurry to reach it. Duke looked stricken by her betrayal.
He threw his muzzle into the air and neighed as if his heart were breaking. He shifted his soulful gaze to Lyda, rolled back his lips, and whinnied so long and loudly that passersby looked in at the open gate to see what the commotion was about.
“Try putting a towel over his eyes,” suggested Lyda.
Annie shook her head. “He might fall and break a leg if he can’t see.”
“Miserable damned cayuse.” Lyda planted her fists on her hips and glared up at him. “Hammer-headed, cat-hammed plug.”
“I thought you knew about horses, Lyda, you being a cowgirl from Texas.”
Lyda swiveled her gaze to Grace, then resumed her stare down with Duke. “We don’t stable them in the attic in Texas, Gracie.”
“I
have an idea.”
“Then have at it, because I’m plumb out of ideas.”
“Plums have something to do with it. Annie, come down here, please.”
Annie scampered down the stairs, took the handful of dried plums, and listened while Grace whispered in her ear. With food so scarce, even fruit was precious, but not so valuable as Duke.
Annie went back to the second floor to confabulate with her love. He pricked his ears forward and listened intently. Annie held a plum out over the outer half wall of the stairwell. Duke’s muzzle followed until he was standing sideways on the landing and no longer looking straight down. She gave him the plum, moved down a step, and held out another, still over the edge of the wall. Duke sidestepped to put one hoof on the first step, then the other, and craned to reach the treat.
Annie moved backward and lured him down another step so that his rear hooves had to follow. Crab-stepping sideways, with his neck still over the wall, he and Annie reached the courtyard. Annie hugged him.
“What made you think of that, Gracie?” asked Lyda.
“The back stairs of the theater where my parents worked were steep and dark. When I was a very young girl I imagined hellfire and Old Scratch waiting for me at the bottom. The only way I could descend was to hold on to the rail, step sideways, and not look down.”
As Annie led Duke out into the street, Grace scanned the neighborhood. She noticed that a few other horses and mules were looking out of second-floor windows. She wondered how their owners intended to get them back down to earth.
Socrates tied Duke’s lead to the back of the hired victoria cab and loaded his tack and sacks of feed into the boot. He helped Grace, Lyda, and Annie up the steps, then climbed in next to the driver. He braced the shotgun on his knee with the muzzle in the air, clearly visible to anyone with evil intentions.
Three samples of the skulking sort formed a clot on a corner and watched them pass. The wide brims of their hats shaded their eyes, but Grace could tell they were deciding how best to attack the taxi. The sight of them saddened more than alarmed her.
Grace had always felt safe in Cuernavaca, except for a brief time at the beginning of the rebel army’s occupation of the city in 1911. And then she only had to go to Zapata’s headquarters in the Governor’s Palace and protest the rowdy behavior of some of his men toward her chambermaids. The problems ceased.
From time to time, in the back courtyard, Socrates still told the story of when Mamacita pushed her way past Zapata’s heavily armed guards and demanded an audience. Socrates had gone with her. He said he had been sure they both would end up shot, skewed on bayonets, and carved into little pieces by machetes.
Grace wished that a word in some official’s ear would make things right these days. Besides waylaying cars and carriages, the usual methods for today’s thieves were armed break-ins, kidnapping, and snatch-and run. Sometimes they took their victims’ money, jewelry, and clothes and let them go, but now and then the rays of the rising sun fell across dead bodies in the bottoms of the ravines.
Lyda pointed her derringer at these banditti and gave them the look she called “arsenic and chained lightning.” They ducked into an alleyway.
Lyda watched them go. “Why is it that the bad eggs tarry after the decent folk exit?”
“‘Opportunity makes a thief.’”
Annie looked ready to throw rocks at them. “Thieves aren’t getting Duke!”
Lyda put an arm around her, maybe to comfort her, maybe to keep her from yelling at the men and irritating them. “You know what President Lincoln once said.”
“What did he say?”
“When he heard that Confederates had captured a brigadier-general and a number of horses, he said, ‘Well, I’m sorry for the horses.’ The Secretary of War exclaimed, ‘Sorry for the horses, Mr. President!’ ‘Yes,’ said Lincoln. ‘I can make a brigadier-general in five minutes, but it is not easy to replace a hundred and ten horses.’”
Now that Duke was safe, Annie settled back against the seat. She had heard that the prisoners had escaped when the troop train blew up. Now that Socorro’s father was safe and her horse could stay at the Colonial with her, Annie was happy.
Lyda went on chatting as though war and disaster weren’t breathing down their necks, but Grace didn’t relax until she saw the graceful roof of the bandstand among the greenery of the zócalo. The zócalo meant home. It was an oasis of tranquility, a remnant of gentility.
She dismissed Jake’s dire predictions about the train no longer running. Mexicans would take their time about it, but they could repair anything. She wondered how long the rail crews would require to fix this latest damage.
The worst part of it was the cruel murder of so many people. She was glad that José and the others had escaped, but she had a feeling that Angel was the cause of those deaths.
In the rebel camp, Grace had seen Angel gambling, smoking cigars, swearing, and washing down dashes of gunpowder with tequila. But that wasn’t her parting image of her. Grace hoped she was wrong, but she feared she wasn’t. She wondered how that sweet-faced young woman could have commited such a heartless act.
49
Hell for the Company
The men of Angel’s company had gathered in a big circle for a spirited game of dice. At stake were Rico’s boots and horse, his saddle, rifle, and Navy five-shooters. They were so intent on the outcome that they seemed to have forgotten their primary chore for the day.
Rico’s own troops relished hangings, so he was not surprised that the rebels did, too. What did surprise him was how heavily the noose dragged on his neck. The rope was thick enough to anchor a ship. His captors were taking no chances that it would break.
Rico wanted to scratch where the coarse hemp itched, but his hands were tied behind his back. Astride his horse, he scanned the surrounding peaks for the glint of a rifle barrel or the flash of a signal mirror. This would be a good time for Juan to arrive with a troop of cavalry. But by now Juan was probably in a cantina in Coahuila, drinking tequila and winning money from a whole new crop of second lieutenants.
Rico even would have welcomed Rubio. Fatso would be easier to outwit than the rebels.
One of the men tied a knot in the other end of the rope as weight. When he threw it, the knot arced over a limb and hit the horse’s nose on its way down. Grullo half-reared, then crow-hopped. The rebels had taken Rico’s saddle, tack, and weapons, so he had no stirrups. He tightened his knees to keep from pitching off backward and ending the show before it started.
Lieutenant Angel sauntered over. “If you join us, muchacho, you will live…” Angel shrugged. “…or at least we will not be the ones to kill you.”
“No one lives forever.”
Even though the lieutenant had called a vote to decide Rico’s fate, he had the feeling that Angel wasn’t in favor of hanging a possible recruit. Rico could empathize. Leading was often a case of being pushed from behind.
He tried one more time to find out where Grace was. The information would be of no use to him now, but he did not want to die without knowing she was safe.
“Mother Merced told me the Englishwoman rode with you.”
“Do you see her here, cabrón?”
“I think you know where she is.”
“You should save your breath to beg God to forgive you for your sins, Captain.” Angel stalked off to sit on a rock, smoke a cigar, and stare out at the valley below.
With the disposition of Rico’s worldly goods decided, the rebels returned to the task at hand. He ignored their taunts and jokes as they cut switches to whip his horse out from under him. Several of them hauled on the rope, pulling the noose taut under his chin and cutting off air to his windpipe. He gripped more tightly with his knees and raised up to create enough slack to breathe.
A couple of the men lashed at the horse. Grullo fidgeted and sidestepped but he refused to run. Muttering an oath, one of them pulled his old forty-five from a tooled holster worn low, gunslinger style.
&nbs
p; Grullo’s new owner stepped in front of him. “Pendejo, don’t kill my horse!”
The first man fired just behind Grullo’s head. The bullet tore a chunk from his ear and he bolted. The horse, the earth, and everything solid and dependable shot out from under Rico. Lights exploded like pinwheel fireworks at a festival.
As the brilliance blinked out, blackness engulfed him. Pain radiated from his cowlick to his calluses. Maybe he should have used the last fraction of a second of his life to rehearse what he would say to his Maker, or to the Devil, but only one regret resonated.
He would never hold Grace in his arms again.
Rico couldn’t convince his eyes to open, but the fingers pressing against his neck must belong to Grace. Who else would dare lay hands on him?
“My dove,” Rico murmured, “I’ve searched for you.”
“I lack the equipment for flying, Capitán. Lucky for you I didn’t arrive a blink of an eye later.”
The voice arrived echoing and distorted, as if shouted down a mine shaft.
Rico assumed he lay at the bottom of that shaft. He opened his eyelids a slit, then closed them again. The sun shone too intensely for a mine, and the leaves of the gallows tree shimmered in a kaleidoscope of green and gold.
José hunkered next to him, his arm half extended from checking for a pulse in Rico’s bruised and bloody neck. Rico sat up. When the landscape stopped spinning he brought José into focus. Antonio, Serafina, and Socorro stood behind him.
“Am I dead, amigo?”
“Do I look like St. Peter, Capitán?”
Rico laid his fingers on the long, curved abrasion the noose had left on his neck. He gave a jerk of his chin toward Angel’s sullen, disheveled pack of ne’er-do-wells lounging in the shade and picking their teeth with their big knives.
“One look at those devils made me think I’d died and gone to the hotter place.”
Rico levered his aching body onto its feet as if just learning the knack of it. He put a hand on Grullo’s back to steady himself. He must have been unconscious for quite a while. Someone had curried him until he gleamed in the sunshine.
Last Train From Cuernavaca Page 28