Dawn found the captured train highballing through the State of Durango in a more organized condition, although the same could hardly be said for Durango and points north. The locomotive was a 4-6-4 Baldwin made in Philadelphia in the early eighties. It was a rugged mass of rolling stock and easy enough to operate, so Captain Gringo had taught the professor and a trio of the brighter guerrillas how to act as engineer and fireman. They worked in two-man shifts, two hours at a time. The American knew the danger of night hypnosis and, once the novelty wears off, driving a locomotive down a straight track in total darkness is monotonous to say the least. The professor had been worried when the American doused the headlight and, in truth, there was danger they’d barrel into something on the track as they ran blacked out. But the danger of announcing their approach with a headlight that could be seen for miles was greater, and, as he kept telling the less professional rebel leader, there’s no way a soldier can avoid all dangers, if he aims to soldier at all. The so-called art of war consists for the most part of choosing between God-awful risks and offering the other side as difficult a target as possible.
As they rolled, the guerrillas made their cattle cars more comfortable by shoveling the dried dung out the open doorways and spreading bedrolls on the evil-smelling planks. Captain Gringo ordered a guard mount, and the men took turns riding up on the brakemen’s platforms with rifles ready and dire warnings about falling asleep. He appointed a sergeant of the guard to walk the catwalk and keep him posted every fifteen minutes.
The locomotive had no condenser. Exhausted steam was vented up the smokestack, creating a forced draft that kept the boiler breathing fire and gulping water at an awesome rate. The American engineers who’d built the Mexican railroads had gotten around this problem as they’d done in the North by placing water towers every fifty miles or so. Many of the “towns” on western U.S. or Mexican maps were little more than jerkwater stops with perhaps a coal tipple and some occasionally used loading platform or cattle chutes. Some of the water stops were uninhabited. The tower kept filled by a self-operating and ingenious Yankee windmill. Other stops, like Agua Moreno, were manned by section crews and had a telegraph shack. In either case, whenever they stopped for water they knocked out the north- and southbound wires.
In the wan light of morning on a lonely stretch of track they came to one of the robot water towers and took advantage of it. As they topped off the tender’s tank, Captain Gringo got down from the cabin to tidy things up completely. He crunched back along the trackside ballast, gathering a work detail to uncouple the caboose, and he showed them where he wanted eight crowbars and some honest sweat.
Rosalita joined him as he supervised the sabotage, plastering herself against him and sobbing that she was lonely and afraid. He patted her absently, saying, “All right, muchachos. Put your backs into it and heave!”
Rosalita asked what they were doing and he said, “They’re supposed to be rolling the son-of-a-bitch car on its side to block both tracks.” Then he disengaged himself from her and stepped over to throw his own weight against the rocking caboose, getting in time with his men as he dug in his heels and grunted, “Now, goddamn your eyes!”
The car almost went, rocked back to threaten them with mangled obliteration, then slowly swayed the other way and, this time, kept going to land with a splintering crash on its far side. The men laughed and the girl sighed, “Oh, my toro!”
He said, “Yeah. Now I want the machine gun carried up front and mounted atop the tender. You two, Pedro and Jose, see to the gun. The rest of you come with me. The wires are down, but we still have to do something about that water tower.”
A man grinned, “Can’t we dynamite it?” and the American shook his head, explaining, “We save explosives for real demolition. I think if we tie a cable to one of the wooden tower legs and hitch it around the coupler of that last car—”
“Ay, que Chihuahua! You are very amusing to serve under, Captain Gringo.”
“Since you catch on quickly, I’m leaving it to you, Pablo. Make sure you hook up to the northwest leg, farthest from the tracks. I want to bring it down on the roadbed if possible.”
“You want the windmill down too, no?”
“No. Bust off the governor and leave the blades spinning. With no head of water to pump against, it should suck the well half dry and leave a lovely muddy mess for the repair crews when and if.”
With Rosalita at his side, the tall American moved up the cars to where the captive brakemen were sharing coffee with their guards. He said, “I’m dropping you boys off here with a sack of corn and some beans. You’d better stand clear of the tower until after we pull it down on our way out. After that you’ll be all right for the day or so I figure you’ll have to wait.”
One of them protested, “We’ll be stranded out here alone for a month! You have completely wrecked the line behind you and if you do the same to the south … Jesus!”
Another, younger crewman asked, “Can’t we join you guys? They don’t pay us much and I have no great love for the stupid government of this country.”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “It’s not that I don’t trust you guys, but I’m not recruiting today. We’re short of guns and horses for the men we have. Behave yourselves and maybe I’ll leave you some coffee.”
“They’re going to have our backs to the wall for letting you take this train, Captain Gringo!”
“I doubt it. Not even the federales can shoot the whole railroad and, if our luck holds, you’ll be lost in the shuffle as they try to decide whose fault this is, starting with some overconfident Army officers. Just remember to yell ‘Viva Diaz’ a lot and you’ll get by.”
He left them pondering their probable fates and led Rosalita up to the locomotive. He helped the girl up to the crowded cabin and they crawled up on the coal pile, where he found his disassembled Maxim. He killed the remaining time at the water stop by putting it on its tripod and adjusting it as the girl watched, hugging her knees with her back against the tender wall. Like everyone else on the train by now, Rosalita was filthy with soot, and her thin cotton pants were scorched here and there by flying cinders. The American knew he was grimed up, too. His eyes felt itchy and were as red-rimmed from lack of sleep as they were by wind and smoke. He tried not to think how long it had been since he’d slept. Rosalita had obviously been able to doze back in the cars, and kept squirming her little behind around on the coal as if she had worms, or wanted to screw.
He muttered, “I’d feel better if you were in a safer place, kitten.”
But she insisted, “My place is with my toro, and you can show me how to help with this big gun. It takes two to fire a machine gun, no?”
“Not really. But I’ll show you how to feed me the belt if you’ll promise to keep your pretty head down when I tell you to. These steel walls should stop most bullets, but the coal is high and I’ll want you full length on your lovely belly as we roll into the next stop.”
The professor had been listening from the gritty floor just ahead of them. He came to the tender opening and asked, “Is that the best place for the machine gun, Captain Gringo?”
“No. I put it here because I’m stupid. The wall of the reefer to our rear protects my back. From up on this pile I have a field of fire out to either side and in a pinch I can fire over the boiler by standing with the gun. Where did you think I should be, the cow catcher?”
“You’d be exposed in that position and we couldn’t communicate.”
“You’re learning, Professor.”
He stood up and leaned out to look back along the train. He saw that his men had attached a cable to the tower as he’d instructed and that the train crewmen were watching, morosely, from a safe distance. He yelled out, “All right! All aboard for Oaxaca!”
Then he dropped down by the gun and added, “Let’s go, Professor.”
“You shouted that as a ruse, eh? But where are we going, if not to Oaxaca?”
“You just run the choo-choo out of here. I’ve got to study the railroad map we swiped a few stations back.”
The old man nudged the guerrilla at the throttle and they slowly pulled away. Behind the last car, the water tower protested with a groan of twisted timbers and came down with a horrendous wet crash on the already blocked tracks.
As they gathered speed, Captain Gringo unfolded the tattered map from his hip pocket, and faced to the rear to keep it from fluttering. After some thought he addressed the four men in the compartment. “We’ll be hitting Torreon in less than two hours and it looks like a real city on this map. I wish there was some way to bypass Torreon, but I guess there’d be no point in running tracks around a main stop. Jesus, I wish this was a bigger scale. I can see there’s a marshaling yard coming up. There has to be at least a full troop of Rurales stationed there. Can’t make out if there’s an Army post nearby. Also, we’re going to have to work out some hand signals. We can’t shout the length of the train, even if nobody’s shooting at us.”
Robles, the man at the throttle, asked, “Do you expect much shooting up ahead in Torreon, Captain Gringo?”
“I doubt they’ll offer us the keys to the city. There’s a chance we’ll have the advantage of surprise. But it’s a switchyard we have to pass through and they can screw us by merely shunting us to the wrong track.”
“Ah, but with no signals from the north telling them to do this—”
“The line’s still open to the capital and if I were running this railroad and half my lines were out I’d be stopping everything that rolled until I could figure out what was going on. I’m hoping they won’t be that smart, but Lee hoped Pickett could make it up Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, too. We’ve got to have some alternate plans.”
The professor asked, “I agree, but what are these plans of yours?”
“Let’s get some signals down pat. We don’t know what’s coming up. So we’re going to have to decide the details as we go.”
The yard boss at Torreon was sweating and swearing as he stared down through the smoke-grimed windows of the switch tower at the utter chaos below. The tower smelled of wasps’ nests and sunbaked corrugated iron, and the yard boss wished he was somewhere else. Anywhere else. Something weird was going on up the line to the north and they kept sending him conflicting orders. He was doing his best to keep the main lines clear, but trains kept piling up down there and it was hard to see with all that smoke and steam rising from the stalled through trains and the puffing switchers trying to make some sense out of things in the cluttered yards.
A switch-engine crewman climbed up to the little office and called out, “Hey, that troop-train commander just made a very unpleasant remark about your mother. He demands we clear him to run north to … to whatever in hell is going on up there.”
The yard boss shrugged and said, “His mother sucks off little boys. I can’t release that troop train until I get the block signal cleared from the next division.”
“But boss, there’s something wrong with the wires. We’re not getting the green light from up the line!”
“Jesus, tell me something I don’t know! You want for me to have two locomotives face to face out there in the desert? Tell that troop-train commander I have my orders, too. Nothing rolls out of here for the North until someone shows me a clear track to the North. If he wants to go south, it’s no problem.”
“But boss, he says there’s fighting in the North!”
“There is always fighting in the North. If it’s not Yaqui or bandits it’s those crazy Texans stealing our cattle. They didn’t give me this job to wreck trains. My job is to keep them from bumping into one another. How many northbounds do we have stuck down there, now?”
“Five. Three are freights. Aside from the troop train we have that passenger special for Laredo, and they are pestering us, too. Some rich Texas gringo has a private car attached and he’s being very tiresome about his importance. He says he is a friend of El Presidente and makes threats about your behind if we delay him further.”
“Fuck all Texans, rich or poor. I’m doing the fool a favor by holding him on that siding until we know what’s going on up the line. If it is bandit trouble it’s his ass he should be considering. That expensive varnish he’s riding in would tempt any bandit and … Oh, oh, what have we here, up there at the far end of the yards?”
Both men stared at the oncoming smoke plume of a locomotive southbound from the mysterious North as it chuffed slowly down the main line. The yard boss reached for the bank of levers in front of him and said, “It looks like someone got through, whatever it is. I’ll put him in the slot between the troop train and the special to clear the main line. Then we’ll see what he can tell us. Hmm, No. 443. What’s that freight doing this far south?”
“I see soldiers waving at us from atop the tender, boss. It looks like they’re expecting to go through.”
“I don’t care what they intend. I’m switching them to that siding until somebody makes some sense around here!”
“They don’t look like they want to stop.”
“They have to stop. Siding No. 7 is a dead end to the south and … Ah, they see this and they’re slowing down. Go down and tell the engineer I wish to speak with him.”
But before the other could leave, the yard boss gasped, “What the hell?” as the sound of gunfire filled the yards below!
As the guerrillas pumped shot after shot into the stalled troop train just to their left, Captain Gringo opened up with the machine gun and raked the packed cars from engine to caboose! Caught flat-footed, the federales died still wondering what was going on as lead slugs slammed through flimsy wooden walls and screaming flesh. Some few soldiers tried shooting back. A greater number dove out the far side of the shot-up train and ran for cover as the renegade freight slowed to a stop, still spitting death from along its entire length.
The yard boss saw cotton-clad guerrillas leaping from the stalled freight to the roofs of the passenger special on their other side as a tall man in an Army uniform rose to his feet in the tender, with the machine gun cradled in his arms. The yard boss gasped, “Oh, no you don’t!” and reached for his bank of switch levers. Then the tower glass dissolved in a flying cloud of shards as machine-gun fire raked the tower and threw him away from the switches with his half-severed head hanging by a bloody shred!
The other crewman hugged the floorboards, whimpering, as glass and bloody tatters of shattered flesh and splintered wood cascaded over him. When the savage gunfire faded away he stayed there for a time, wondering if he was still alive. Then he staggered to his feet and risked a cautious glance through the shattered windows.
The slot between the stalled freight and the next freight over was empty. The passenger train was no longer there. The federales, recovered a bit from their surprise, were under the troop train, pumping lead into the mysterious freight as they lay on their bellies between the wheels. They didn’t seem to grasp the fact that the freight was no longer filled with guerrillas, though they were making hash out of screaming, abandoned ponies.
The survivor tottered to a rear window and peered out. He saw the engine of the captured passenger train moving swiftly away, backward, in a cloud of dust and smoke. Too late, he thought of the switch his friend had tried to throw. The train varnish was past the last switch and out on the main line, now and, though running in reverse, moving like the powerful express it was!
“Crazy!” he gasped, running to the ladder and moving down it fast. At the bottom he met a wounded federale officer with one shattered hand tucked inside a bloody tunic and the other gripping a .45. The officer shouted, “Quickly! The telegraph office!”
“Great minds run in the same channels, Lieutenant. That’s just where I was headed!”
Together they ran for the telegraph shack, where they found an excited man taking down a message from the madly clicking wire. He glanced up to snap, “They’ve bypassed the knocked-out wire to the north. It’s a message from General Obregon in Chihuahua. He says rebels have seized a train and are headed for Oaxaca!”
The railroader gasped. “That’s insane! They’ll never make it to Oaxaca!”
The officer snapped, “Who cares about their mental condition? What’s the next switchyard they have to pass through between here and Oaxaca?”
“Aguascalientes, about three hundred kilometers or a full day’s run from here. Wait, there’s a switchpoint at San Alto, halfway.”
“Good. Let’s get it on the wire. If we can stall them up here on the meseta … Never mind. This is what I want you to send.”
The telegrapher jiggled his key with a morose look and sighed, “I don’t think I can send anything, Lieutenant.”
“What do you mean you can’t? I order you, damn it!”
“You can order me to fly and I won’t be able to do that, either. The line is dead to the south, this time. They must have stopped just south of town to cut the wires. There’s no way to tell Aguascalientes what’s headed their way!”