IT WAS AN old dream.
Benedict stood in a wide and dusty street. It stretched away to infinity. Dust devils danced and whirled with deliberation. The town was dead, with empty, dust-glazed eyes of windows staring down at him. Fear was a thickness in his mouth, a painful drumming of his heart.
Somewhere down that street, something waited.
He never saw who it was, but the fear was always the same. And even in the dream, a small, partly conscious part of his brain was warning him that he only ever dreamed this bad dream when something wasn’t right ... when there was danger
He fought his way out of it. Slowly the towering buildings began to fade and the dust devils danced into nothingness. All was gray, then dark. Then quick light flooded his vision and he was sitting up sharply to find himself back in the mountains and very wide awake.
His Colt was in his hand as he rose. Everything seemed normal, but that sense of warning was still with him in the lingering traces of the dream he hated.
The boy slept close by. Beyond him lay Brazos’ heavy, motionless bulk. Benedict swung his head south and made out the lean figure standing beneath a tree against the stars.
Dusty Moore turned his head at the sound of the approaching steps. “What’s the matter, Duke? Can’t sleep?”
“Everything all right?” Benedict asked sharply.
“As right as it’ll ever be, I guess.” Dusty Moore sounded despondent. His brother’s death had hit him hard, all the more so because Carl had been running out on him when he was killed.
Nodding, Benedict glanced around at the tall timbers shouldering the night sky. Brazos had led them through such a wild maze of trails that afternoon that the Texan was the only one who seemed to know where they were. From time to time they glimpsed rising dust on their backtrail that indicated pursuit, but they had made camp in this deeply wooded ravine in the Chuchillos, secure in the knowledge that whoever was trailing them would be forced to rest up until first light.
Benedict believed the Federales were still on their trail, and they were the first danger that had leapt to mind on awakening. But plainly all was quiet and peaceful ... and yet that uncomfortable feeling remained ...
Aware that there would be no more sleep for him tonight, he took out his cigars and stayed up on the slope with Moore, listening to the nocturnal sounds of the mountains, waiting for first light.
He was still there when a huge figure materialized from the gloom directly before him without the faintest suggestion of a sound and greeted him with a laconic, “Howdy, Yank. That old guilty conscience keepin’ you awake again?”
Benedict blinked. He wasn’t surprised by the fact that he had heard and seen nothing before Brazos appeared, for the Texan could be as stealthy as an Indian when he chose. What he didn’t understand, was what Brazos was doing here, and what was that shape back down there that he’d mistaken for his sleeping figure?
He fired the questions without preamble and Brazos grinned again. “Don’t get your innards in a twist, Yank,” he drawled. “I just figured I’d go check on the train timetables. I had a notion you’d get to frettin’ if you seen me gone, so I rigged up my saddle and gear down yonder so’s you wouldn’t miss me until I got back. And you never did, right?”
“Train timetables?” Benedict said in disbelief.
“That’s right.” Brazos jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Mebbe I forgot to tell you that we ain’t more’n a couple of miles from the tracks at Patricio. There’s a train due through at eight.”
“Forgot?” Benedict said angrily. “You deliberately failed to mention it, mister. What the devil’s gotten into you today, anyway? You’ve been acting very secretive and mysterious ever since we left the Espantosas and I want to know why.”
“You’re just jumpy, Yank. We’re all a little jumpy. But we’ll be relaxin’ once we’re aboard that there freighter.”
“I’m not jumpy, mister, just damned suspicious. And what are you doing toting that about, anyway?”
Brazos looked down at the blanket-wrapped shape in the crook of his arm. His guileless smile flashed again.
“Her? Heck, you wouldn’t expect me to go anyplace without her, now would you, Yank? Not after the three of us decidin’ that I’m the most trustworthy one to look after her.”
Benedict stared at him. It was true what Brazos said. Following the incident in the Espantosas with Carl and the Virgin, it had been necessary for them to decide on who should be custodian of the golden figure. Benedict didn’t trust Dusty, and when forced to make a choice between the two of them. Dusty Moore had plumped unhesitatingly for Brazos. Brazos had seemed happy to take charge of the Virgin until they reached Arizona. Or delighted may have been closer to it.
“You’re treading dangerous ground, Johnny Reb,” he said after a heavy silence.
“’How’s that, Yank?”
“If you’re not levelling with me. You know I’m smarter than you, mister.”
“Ain’t never denied you’re a natural-born genius, have I?”
Benedict closed his mouth tightly, jaw muscles working. Instinct warned him that there was something going on here he didn’t know about. But he couldn’t even begin to guess at what it could be, while it was obvious that he wasn’t going to be able to crack Brazos’ laconic defense. It was rare that he felt Brazos had top hold and he didn’t like the feeling. But he wasn’t going to play into his hands by letting it show. Better to appear to leave it go, then watch and wait for Brazos to give himself away. He usually did.
“Sun’s coming up,” Dusty Moore observed as they stood there swapping stares.
Benedict looked east. “So it is.” He shrugged. “Well, no point in wasting time, I guess. Might as well get moving.”
“Might as well,” Brazos agreed.
Benedict watched him walk down to the camp to wake the boy. He was still sure Brazos wasn’t being completely honest with him. But two hours later, he wasn’t so sure. The northbound from Patricio did leave right on eight and they were aboard it. This proved that Brazos had indeed visited the railroad depot during the night, and Benedict wished the Texan would stop looking so completely innocent.
The only time that Duke Benedict didn’t trust Hank Brazos was when he started acting too honest to be true.
“Are we safe now, Mr. Duke?” Hughie Moore said, breaking in on his thoughts.
Benedict looked out the window at the countryside rolling by. How very Mexican, he mused, for them to go to the enormous expense of constructing a railroad, yet fail to string a telegraph wire to supplement it.
Not that he was about to complain, of course, for there was nothing their enemies behind could do now to prevent them crossing the border.
“Safe as the proverbial bank, Hughie,” he assured the boy. And about the furthest thought from his mind then as he crossed his boots and admired their tips, was something called a heliograph.
“Hey, Vincente?”
“What do you want?”
“I see a train.”
“So?”
“I think maybe you want to see the train also?”
“I do not wish to see the train.”
“It is a handsome train.”
“I spit in the eye of the man who made the handsome train.”
Corporal Aguero of the 21st Sonoran Federales, Signals, sighed gustily and gave up. It was plain to Aguero now that Trooper Vincente Pastor needed a transfer.
Aguero had seen it happen before, since the colonel had established his heliograph system to take the place of the long-awaited telegraph. Aguero knew the signals system was vitally important to the Federales, and it had proved its worth many times in the short time it had been in operation. But Madre de Dios, it was boring! So boring in fact that the slow passage of a tiny, toy-like train along the glimmering ribbon of silver steel far below in the valley was an important event.
But not to Vincente. He just yawned hugely and shifted his skinny back to a more comfortable position against the wall of their crude little cabin. He was getting ready to yawn again when Aguero leapt to his feet with a shout.
“Aye! Why you jump and make the noise, Aguero? Is a bad thing you do.”
Aguero booted him in the ribs. “Up! The message is coming!”
That took care of Vincente’s lethargy fast, and grabbing up pad and pencil, he hurried to Aguero’s side as the corporal stared southwards over the mountain ranges at the flickering series of flashes coming from the transmitting point at Jaguar Pass above Patricio.
The signals stopped and Aguero lifted the mirror in his hand and adjusted it to the sun. His quick manipulation of the shutter told the Federales at Jaguar Pass that they were alert and ready to receive.
The message came back, flashed in the eye of the sun. Then, after the two men had studied the pad, Vincente watched intently as Aguero turned to face the north and carefully caught the sun in his mirror again. He began sending the signals through two notched sticks nailed to tree trunks which had been carefully calibrated to the line of vision of the men at the next relay station at Anselmo.
When he was through relaying the message, Aguero slumped and swabbed his brow. A man was obliged to concentrate very hard while heliographing. Vincente lit two cigars and passed him one.
“Much goes on we do not understand, Martin,” he said.
The corporal grunted. Much indeed. Several days ago, they had relayed messages to the outposts at Mission and Patricio warning the Federales there to be on the lookout for a travelling party of Americans whose descriptions they bad been obliged to transmit in great detail. Now another urgent message from the colonel in Patricio instructed his troopers at Rosarita to arrest the same party of Americans travelling aboard the northbound ‘under pain of death for failure.’
Aguero looked at the message pad, then smiled. “It seems there is a surprise waiting for the gringos when they get to Rosarita, Vincente.”
“A very bad surprise.” Then Vincente looked wistful. “I would not mind a surprise, Martin. Even a bad one.”
“Be patient, amigo. Only another month and we are relieved.”
“My heart sings with excitement.”
“You are sarcastic, Vincente. But the time will pass.”
“I wish I was down there fighting gringo gunfighters.”
“You lie, Vincente.”
“Si. I do.”
Smiling around a freshly lit cigar and with one hand resting lightly on Hughie Moore’s shoulder, Duke Benedict stepped down from the train at the Rosarita depot.
All was hustle and bustle at the depot, with noisy Mexican families leaving and boarding the train which swung east from Rosarita to Chicuelo. Steam hissed noisily from the hardworking loco which had hauled the train up from the south and the bright lights gleamed down on swarthy faces, brilliantly colored serapes, tall sombreros.
Benedict and the boy waited for Brazos and Dusty to step down before starting along the platform towards the horse car. Dusty Moore fingered his right eye to remove a cinder. Brazos cradled the heavy bundle in his right arm like a baby. The Texan dwarfed everybody on the platform with his towering bulk. His battered hat was tilted back from his blond thatch and he grinned genially at the people he passed.
Beyond the rooftops of the town, the squat bulk of the Federales’ headquarters was bulky against an orange moon. That same moon would be shining down warmly on the wide plains of Arizona less than fifty miles’ distant now. If their horses travelled well, they should make it a little after daybreak.
None noticed anything wrong as they approached the yellow-painted horse car. There was nothing unusual to be seen, for the black-hatted, heavily armed men had all entered the horse car from the off-side as soon as the train halted.
The first intimation of danger came when the horse-handler emerged from the car to drop the ramp to the ground. The man didn’t look at them directly but they could see he was pale and trembling. Benedict halted and his hands dropped to his gun butts as he looked upwards. A Federale officer appeared in the doorway with a rifle in his hands. A dozen pistol barrels stabbed through the slatted railings on either side.
“You are under arrest,” the officer barked. “You will drop your guns, pronto!”
Brazos swung his head at the sound of footsteps and saw another line of men emerging from the freight shed in back of them. Slowly he lifted his hands, one empty, one clutching the blanket-wrapped bundle. Dusty Moore followed suit quickly, but Benedict seemed to find it hard to let go his gun butts.
A gun roared from the car and a warning bullet fanned Benedict’s cheek. Hard-faced, Benedict unbuckled his double gun rig and tossed it to a Federale before lifting his hands.
Benedict couldn’t understand any of it. The Federales had been waiting for them. But how could they have known they were on the train?
Then he had a bigger mystery to ponder upon when a Federale snatched the bundle from Brazos’ hand and ripped off the blanket wrapping. The bundle contained a long gray stone about the size of a loaf of Mexican bread.