CAPTAIN STANDISH REACHED Nazce ahead of the engineers. He freed the soldiers tied up on the floor of the hut and left them to tend Corporal Bennett. Then took his men on to the border and saw the bridge for the first time. Or, more exactly, saw what was left of it.
He wished he could cross the river and go after the hijackers, but orders and the nature of the terrain prevented him. Instead, he turned round and rode back to Fort Davis. By the time he arrived the telegraph line was repaired and Colonel Slade knew all about the attack.
Word got sent through to Washington that four men, presumed to be Americans, all dressed in Army uniforms, had overpowered the border patrol at gun-point and subsequently hijacked a munitions train carrying machine-guns and automatic weapons together with ammunition across the border.
In due course, a protest was sent through diplomatic channels to Mexico City, demanding an immediate investigation and—if possible—the return of the weapons.
No one really believed the guns would ever be seen again. At least, not unless American troops crossed the border and went to find them.
More immediately, word was sent to the chain of forts guarding the border. It went up through Texas to New Mexico and Arizona. Word got flashed to the Navy ships standing off Baja, California. Along the way it reached Colonel Holden at Fort Brigg.
Holden was still smarting from the beating Onslow had given him. Mostly inside, where his dignity dictated his reactions, but also physically: his nose was broken and Onslow had smashed two teeth loose.
Holden sent an immediate reply to Slade, along with a covering report to Washington.
He sent his reply in code. Translated, it read:
Physical descriptions and method suggest this attack may have been effected by the deserter, Cade Onslow. Formerly a major with the Ninth Cavalry, Onslow attacked his senior officer (myself) and went AWOL together with a Negro, Jonas Strong, former sergeant at Fort Brigg. Both men are dangerous. (Full physical descriptions are posted to all CPs and Law Enforcement offices.) The other men are unknown.
Two and two came up to make four and Colonel Slade got word from El Paso:
Suspect third man to be Yates McCloud. Arrested for brutal assault on Mexican prostitute. McCloud is of Southern origin. Lives by gambling and drug dealing. Five feet ten inches. Fair hair. Uses Colt Lightning and knife. Wears expensive clothes. Dangerous. Approach with caution.
It took time, but the word went back and began to stir feelings in the capital.
An Army officer hijacking American trains?
A deserter getting away with thousands of dollars’ worth of Army weaponry?
Selling it to Pancho Villa? (By now the driver and engineer had told their stories.)
And all this while America had enforced the arms embargo on Mexico?
It was too much: these outlaws must be caught. Brought to justice and executed for their crimes. And the sooner the better!
Word spread from military headquarters to the White House. To the intelligence services. To the Army. It went on down the line to the field agencies and from them to the operatives.
It was a simple message: it said Find and destroy.
Jamie Durham wired all five sticks of the dynamite around the boiler of the locomotive. He set detonators at both ends of all the sticks. The forward linkages were coupled to a simple plunger that would go off when it hit any kind of solid obstacle.
The rearward system was linked up to a battery device with a hundred feet of wire between the box and the activator. That allowed for maybe three minutes’ escape time.
After that the whole engine would blow.
The mine was set inside the brake car, hooked up to the rear door so that it would explode when the door was opened.
The way Onslow had it figured was classically simple. They’d get the locomotive moving and take it down the thirty-odd miles of track to Santa Rosaria. By the time they reached the town the train would be moving at around fifty miles an hour. They’d slow down outside the place enough to jump clear, then leave the locomotive with the throttle tied down and let it run on in. Like one great big bomb.
Villa liked the idea. He couldn’t match the speed of the train with his horsemen, but he gave them some names and addresses where they could find refuge when they quit the train.
They got it started up and moved it down the tracks towards Santa Rosaria. By then the afternoon was giving over to evening, and by the time they got it into gear full dark had come down. Onslow reckoned on taking one hour to reach the town, maybe thirty minutes longer. No patrols had showed, and if they did now they should get lost in the darkness.
That cut out one problem. The only other was the possibility of roadblocks. If one showed the whole idea was gone with the explosion of the dynamite. He hoped the tracks were clear.
Onslow and Strong handled the controls; McCloud and Jamie Durham stoked the boiler. They got the locomotive moving as Pancho Villa took his men away to the west, to the canyon hideout. They rode it down through an empty landscape, running alongside the Rio Grande, watching for riders.
The land was empty, quiet under the rising moon that was full now and near as bright as the sun. It lit the country with a pale light that picked up the skeletal outlines of empty houses, the bare timbers of haciendas. Once they saw a line of horsemen watching them, but nothing happened and they had no way of telling if the riders were Villistas or Government troops or just vaqueros. They passed on by with the engine sighing lonely into the night, the pistons pumping an urgent message up through the platform of the cab.
It was late evening before they reached Santa Rosaria and the town was alive with people.
They saw the lights from a mile out, fuzzy and indistinct in the distance. Then brighter as they got closer. When they got inside the town Onslow slammed the brakes on and eased the locomotive to around fifteen miles an hour. McCloud and Strong and Jamie Durham jumped clear, the Kid complaining that he wouldn’t be able to work his second-chance detonator at that distance.
Onslow laughed and watched him leap from the side plate of the engine. Then he set the boiler and the speed controls down to full throttle and jumped away.
He landed in the sand flanking the rails. Hit and rolled. Came upright and watched the shuddering line of cars go down the tracks towards the center of Santa Rosaria.
Strong and the others came up to join him. He climbed to his feet and watched the line of cars disappear round the bend.
From where they stood, the tracks went off on a curve that shrugged round the outbuildings of the main station. There were two lines going in; one out.
The loop line cut straight through Santa Rosaria, directing traffic south and west. The secondary line ran head-on into sidings designed to take cattle cars, backing up against a buffer system that was situated directly below the office controlling the station. The loop, curving south until it connected with the main Chihuahua line, took rail traffic through on a flying trip. The secondary tracks were designed to deliver cows to the rear, quiet, end of the station.
There were corrals and buffers there.
The train hit the runway and exploded.
It came in with the engine screaming a protestation and ran wild down the tracks into the buffers. It blew up while it was still ploughing on and exploded against the buffers and the wall and the offices. It killed Manuel Garcia and Juan Fernandez and Raul Mansez. It took away the front of the office and killed four porters who were watching the thing come in and got wiped up under the tumbling trucks. Carmen Verrana got hit by a chunk of metal that flew loose from the last car and tore through her stomach, which killed the baby she was carrying and left her holding her guts in at both sides of her belly.
Juan Ortega ran towards the crumbling office over the buffers. He got close, about a yard away, then a chunk of concrete fell loose and crushed his skull. That left his men without an officer, so they ran towards the train. There was nobody in the cab, nor any sign of life on the cars. They opened the rearmost door.
The mine went off.
Jamie Durham had rigged it to explode when the door was opened. He had fixed it up so that the movement of the door would trip a drawstring that detonated the mercury-fulminate cap. That way there was a three second gap between opening and explosion: just enough time for men to bunch around the cab.
They didn’t bunch for long because the explosion ripped backwards and blew them away along with most of the tail end of the cab. Three men were killed and nine more seriously wounded. Two were blinded by fragments of burning wood.
The locomotive was dug into the wall beyond the buffers. The explosion of the dynamite ruptured the boiler and spread boiling water in a fountain over the ground around. Flame spat back from the firebox and ignited the woodwork of the platforms and the coal wagon. The flatbeds jumped their couplings and spread across the tracks, sideswiping three soldiers and two porters. All five men were killed.
The whole train began to burn.
Carmen Verrana tried to crawl clear. She had only come to the station to bring her husband some food. She didn’t know that Ramon was dead, his head crushed by a swinging chain torn loose from the flatbeds. She wasn’t even thinking about Ramon: it was hard to think about anything except the pain in her belly. She got five feet away from the wreckage before the boiling water splattered over her back. When it hit, she clutched both hands around her head to protect her hair.
She was proud of her hair. So was Ramon. Or at least, he had been.
She got blisters on her hands fending off the water, but she couldn’t feel them because she couldn’t feel anything anymore. When she took her hands from her belly she bled profusely and died from shock and blood loss without knowing what was happening to her.
Villa had promised Onslow that the sidings were manned only by soldiers.
The explosion killed seventeen people. Eighteen if the baby was counted.
Colonel Montoya got there thirty minutes after the crash. He had a hangover and he was furious at the interruption. When he learned that the train had come in from Nazce after a Villista attack, he got madder still. When his ADC brought him a message from Fort Davis—a message attributed personally to Colonel Slade—he got worse tempered.
He stormed back to his headquarters and began asking questions. There were soldiers tied up fighting the fire and still no word from the empty border post. That was because—though Montoya didn’t know it yet—Villa had organized a small ambush. Onslow didn’t know about it, either, or he might have changed his plan. Villa had simply ordered ten men to stop any traffic coming from Santa Rosaria in the direction of the Nazce bridge. Montoya had sent a cavalry patrol of ten men under the command of a lieutenant up the line to investigate the disturbance of communications. They followed the rail tracks until they met the men Villa had left behind. And died.
Villa’s men shot them off their horses and tumbled the bodies into a gulley.
Montoya did what he could, which wasn’t very much.
He sent a troop of cavalry up the line to the bridge and ordered a house-to-house search of Santa Rosaria. The only good thing about the whole incident was that he now had some idea of the attackers.
He gave definite orders that Cade Onslow should be taken alive and brought in for questioning. The questioning was euphemistic: Montoya wanted to kill Onslow himself.
Slowly.
In a way it was exactly what Onslow wanted, though it didn’t help his present situation.
He had hoped all along to bring Montoya out into the open and kill the murderer of Linda Hoyos. To that end he wanted to make his presence felt so that Montoya would come looking for him. Personally. Then—according to Onslow’s plan—he would kill the man and excise his debt.
By now the man had to know that it was Onslow who brought the guns to Jesus Sanchez and hijacked the train for Pancho Villa. That should draw him out. But to where? Santa Rosaria was crawling with federales and Onslow wondered if he could get out alive.
He made for the address Villa had given him, through a lit-up town.
The place was wide awake, partly because that was how it spent every night, but mostly because of the excitement of the train crash.
Onslow led the way down streets filled with light and running people. Most of them were heading up towards the depot to see what had happened, following the fire-engines that clanged their bells over the heads of panting horses, but twice they saw rickety automobiles with hand-cranked sirens spraying smoke behind and dirt to the side as they went round the corners.
Crowds followed the engines, eager to see the fire. Onslow and the others got through to the street with the house Villa had said would be safe.
It was a quiet avenue, flanked on both sides by tall walls that hid quiet houses with trees and gravel drives leading up to the doors. It was surprising that a bandit like Villa had supporters in so urban an area, but Onslow wasn’t about to argue with it. He found the house and rattled the bell set into the wrought-iron of the gate.
Above the bell was a brass plaque announcing that the house belonged to Miranda Garcia de la Cruz, Teacher of English.
An old man shuffled out from a small lodge built inside the main wall. He carried a shotgun and a battery-torch and asked what they wanted.
‘Friends,’ said Onslow as he’d been told to say, ‘of the Revolution.’
The gate was swung open and they went inside. The gate swung closed again with a dull sound as the lock turned. They went up the drive towards the house.
There was a flight of marbled steps leading onto a verandah flanking the wide door of the place. Above the verandah, a balcony spread shadow below. It was a big house, with a garden set out in front and light showing through the tall windows.
Onslow eased his Colt out: it didn’t feel like a Villista hideaway. It felt more like a hacienda, a place where a supporter of Huerta might live.
The door opened, spilling light across the garden.
‘Major Onslow?’ The voice was modulated to perfection, friendly yet commanding. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’
Onslow looked into wide, dark eyes under a spill of auburn hair that was lit from behind by the lanterns in the house. He noticed—irrelevantly—that some were electric. Mostly he just gaped at the woman: because she was lovely. Dressed in a white gown, she held a kerosene lantern up to light the patio. It emphasized the paleness of her dress and the darkness of her hair. She was tall and proud and built the way men dream of women.
‘I am a friend of Pancho’s.’
It was the second part of the password: Onslow dropped his gun back into the holster and went past the woman into the house. Strong and McCloud and Jamie Durham followed him.
‘We must hide you for a time,’ murmured the woman. ‘I apologize, but it is necessary. Colonel Montoya is organizing a search, so you must hide for our sakes. I’ll have food sent to you. Please hurry.’
‘Who are you?’ said Onslow.
‘As the name on the gate tells you,’ she said, ‘I am Miranda Garcia de la Cruz. Don’t let the name upset you. I believe in the revolution.’
‘Yeah,’ said Onslow. ‘I believe you.’
Oddly enough, he did. Enough at least to follow a servant down the hall to the staircase leading up to the higher level of the building where they were ushered into a room at the back. It was a big room, high-ceilinged and wide, with four beds set out along the northern wall. There was a table and four chairs placed at the center. Midway down the wall facing the beds was a wide window that opened onto a small balcony. The balcony looked down on a moonlit lawn, beyond which were walls at least ten feet high.
It was either an excellent place to hide, or a trap.
Onslow thought, though he couldn’t say why, that it was a refuge.
One of the best when the servants brought the food in.
There was soup and steak and potatoes. Greens and biscuits, with wine to wash it down. Then coffee and brandy and apple pie with cream. All brought on China plates with silver cutlery; napkins set out by the plates and a pure linen cloth over the table. The wine glasses, like the tumblers for the brandy, were of cut crystal.
‘This is what I call living,’ grinned McCloud. ‘Good food an’ better drink. Servants, even. Yeah! Maybe this revolution isn’t so bad.’
‘Make the most of it,’ grunted Onslow. ‘We still got things to do.’
‘Us or you?’ countered the Southerner. ‘I reckon I done my piece for now.’
Onslow didn’t answer. Like Strong and Durham, he was too hungry, and concentrated on the food while McCloud smiled and sipped his wine.
Two servants attended them, taciturn, dark-eyed men with Indian blood in their veins. They were politely evasive when Onslow tried to question them, murmuring that la señora would join her guests soon and answer their questions. Onslow decided to wait, intrigued by the air of mystery. For now this luxurious house was as safe a place as anywhere, safer, for sure, than the streets where Montoya’s men would be out looking for them.
They had finished the meal and watched the table cleared before the woman reappeared. She smiled as she came into the room, motioning them back to their seats. McCloud bowed before he sat down again.
‘Forgive me,’ she murmured. ‘I had hoped to join you earlier, but a squad of soldiers came to the door. I thought it wise to offer their captain a drink while I persuaded him I knew nothing about you.’
‘Nor we about you,’ said Onslow. ‘Why are you doing this?’
She smiled. ‘You find it strange that someone who lives in a house like this should help rebels? Hide mercenaries?’
Onslow shrugged and said: ‘Something like that, ma’am.’
‘Please call me Miranda. After all, we are comrades in arms. Let me explain ...’
It was a brief and painful story, loosely akin to Onslow’s in its history of personal loss and determination to extract revenge.
Miranda de la Cruz was the daughter of a land owner from Durango, not so wealthy as Ramon Hoyos, but a respected figure both in his own state and in Mexico City. When his only child announced her intention to marry Felipe Garcia, a young lawyer with political ambitions and little money, her father, a supporter of the dictator, Diaz, had renounced the match. He settled a sum of money on his daughter and told her she was no longer his child. She married Garcia and moved to Santa Rosaria. Her husband supported Francisco Madero, and when the liberal politician returned from exile in 1910 was one of his earliest adherents. When Madero became President in the October election of 1911, Felipe Garcia was awarded a post in the new government. They bought a second house in Mexico City and lived there for nearly two years. During the Decena Tragica of 1913, Felipe Garcia was dragged from his office by supporters of General Huerta and shot three times in the chest. He died in his wife’s arms twenty hours later.
Miranda Garcia de la Cruz moved back to Santa Rosaria. The Huertistas appropriated her house in Mexico City and it was only the reluctant intervention of her father that allowed her to retain this place. She opened a school of English and set about contacting the resistance movement growing in the northern provinces. Unlike Onslow, she had no way of knowing who was personally responsible for her husband’s death, so her resentment was, from the start, channeled against the government itself. The school was a good cover for a hideout, and Miranda’s aristocratic background gave her a privileged position which she used to aid the revolutionaries ...
‘So now you know,’ she finished, ‘why you are here. The next thing is to get you out.’
‘Out of here, maybe,’ said Onslow. ‘Out of your house. But I came in for a reason. You get the others out, which could be difficult. None of us exactly blend in with the folks around here.’
‘No, you tend to stand out somewhat. We must think of some kind of disguise; especially for señor Strong and señor Durham.’
Jamie Durham touched his face. He had stayed with his left cheek turned to the wall when she came in, conscious of his deformity and unwilling to show it to the woman. Of course, she had seen it: he felt abruptly ill and knew that he needed a fix.
The woman’s voice intruded on his thoughts.
‘Señor Strong we can dress as an indio. With a serape and a wide hat, he might go unnoticed. Señor Durham ... that is a little more difficult.’
The Kid covered his scars with a spread hand. ‘I can look after myself.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She sounded like she really was. ‘I did not mean to upset you ... please, don’t be hurt. But you are noticeable. Perhaps if we fashioned a mask …’
‘Great!’ snarled Durham. ‘Then I’d really look ordinary.’
She shook her head. ‘Please don’t take any offence. I am sure we can do something.’
They settled down to talking over the details. Jamie mumbled something about taking a wash and walked out of the room with the oil-skin pouch holding his drugs and the hypodermic under his arm. His steps were wavery. While he was gone the woman asked if he was hurt. McCloud told her the Kid was a morphine addict and her face got worried.
‘Can he be trusted?’
‘Sure,’ said McCloud. ‘So long as he’s got his dope.’
She looked towards Onslow, who nodded reassuringly. ‘He’s all right. Touchy about his face, but you can’t blame him for that.’
‘No,’ she replied, ‘you can’t. We must try to think of something.’
Her answer was a rectangular patch of soft black leather with thongs attached to the corners. It covered the left side of Jamie’s face, fastening around his forehead and neck with the leather cut so that it didn’t interfere with his vision. At first he was chary of wearing it, but once they persuaded him to try it out he decided he liked the idea. At least he no longer needed to worry about hiding one side of his face when he was talking to people.
It was the least of their problems.
They were confined to the house: even with the high walls it was too risky to chance being spotted in the grounds. Montoya had doubled the patrols, and for two days he ordered random checks on suspect houses. So far his suspicion remained diverted from Miranda’s school and the four Americans were able to move about the interior with relative freedom. Lessons continued as before, and three times a day, for two hours at a time, Onslow and the others were required to stay silent in their room. They were fed well and Miranda provided them with newspapers and a few books. Onslow and McCloud played chess, or joined Strong and Durham in sessions of poker. They knew they had no alternative—other than risking detection and death on the streets—but the confinement chafed.
They were there for five days.
During that time they heard various accounts of the raid and slowly came to realize that they had become celebrities. Of a kind.
The station had burned for five hours after the locomotive hit. Pancho Villa had taken advantage of the confusion to send men in to blow the tracks east and west of Santa Rosaria, effectively isolating Montoya, who depended on the railroad to move his troops around. Now he was forced to rely on horseback patrols to police the outlying districts.
The train had carried machine-guns, automatic rifles, and ammunition. Plus two lightweight mortars complete with shells. Villa was delighted with the results and had sent word to Carranza that he could now move effectively against the Huertistas.
America was embarrassed. The warlords in Washington were furious. Rewards of up to five thousand dollars were offered for the capture, alive or dead, of Cade Onslow, Jonas Strong and Yates McCloud. Also of the young man with the badly-scarred face accompanying them.
‘It ain’t fair,’ complained Jamie. ‘How come you all get named an’ I don’t?’
Onslow grinned. Jamie was shaping up better than he’d expected. He was using the needle less—only twice in the five days—and was used, now, to wearing his mask. He seemed less edgy, content to wait on Onslow’s word and bide his time. Curiously, it gave Onslow a sense of responsibility he thought he had left behind with the Army.
One day Jamie found him alone, choosing a book from Miranda’s small library.
‘I wanted to thank you for what you done. I appreciate it an’ I want you to know I’m with you. All the way.’
It came out in a long spill of words, all running together as though the Kid was embarrassed to reveal his feelings.
‘Thanks, Jamie,’ said Onslow, ‘but you’re doing as much for me as the other way. We need you.’
‘Christ, Cade.’ The Kid picked up a book. Set it down again. Picked up another and spoke as he leafed the pages over. ‘I never felt like I belonged many places before. Home, maybe. But I had to leave there.’ … The woods and Mary Riley ... Her father ... Mary’s body, two months’ pregnant and swollen by her drowning ... In the same creek that ran through the woods ... ‘I quit the Army when I saw what my face looked like. Couldn’t face them. Face them, eh? That’s good.’ Onslow said nothing. ‘I drifted. Hell! You know that. That’s how you found me: I wasn’t worth much then.’
He broke off, peering down at the book in his hands. It was Tom Paine’s Rights of Man.
‘And now?’ said Onslow quietly.
‘Shit! I feel like I got somewhere to belong. I know it ain’t a house or a farm or anythin’ like that. But it looks to be workin’, don’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ said Onslow. ‘It looks that way.’
He felt suddenly depressed. The way he had when McCloud delivered his condemnation back at the bridge. The only people you got now is us. It was true, but now, coming from Jamie Durham, it sounded better. It was a change of direction, sure. All he’d thought about in the beginning was hitting back at Montoya, taking his personal vengeance. Now the whole thing had spread out wider than his own wants. Jonas had thrown over a respectable career, the chance of a pension, everything he knew. Just to follow his friend because that was how he weighed things: and friendship was more important than anything else.
And Yates McCloud? Hell, Yates was an opportunist He’d come along because there wasn’t much for him in Texas, apart maybe from a long spell in prison. But he had come. And done his share. And whatever his feelings, he was still with them. He turned his attention back to Jamie.
‘Me an’ Yates, that’s a long story. I guess he’s a fixer. Leastways, that’s how I met him: he got me dope and we kinda teamed up. He always did stand by me, so I guess I’m kinda attached to him.’
‘Sure,’ said Onslow quietly. ‘I guess we’re all kind of attached. You an’ me an’ Jonas. Yates, too. We’re a team.’
The Kid looked up and grinned. With the mask covering the scarred side of his face he looked like a boy. A good-looking, cheerful boy.
Onslow laughed. ‘We’ll be all right together.’
Miranda chose that moment to enter the room. She had news of the war. Pancho Villa had agreed to support Carranza, and the ‘First Chief’ of the revolutionary army was marching on Huerta. Colonel Montoya had increased his patrols outside the town, thus leaving Santa Rosaria only loosely guarded. It was time for los gringos to move out.
They went that night. Miranda had horses brought round to the rear of the house and organized a guide. They left at midnight and by the dawn were ten miles south of Santa Rosaria and heading up into the hills concealing Pancho Villa and his growing army.
It was a bright, early dawn, one of those late summer mornings that start off clear and golden and then get brighter still all through the day, when the air is warm and clean and friendly, and birds sing louder than usual. Onslow looked back once, trying to find Miranda’s house amongst the sprawl of the town. He couldn’t spot it. He wondered if he would ever see her again.
Two and a half days later they met Pancho Villa again.