The nice thing about San Luis Potosi was that it was the biggest and oldest mining town in Mexico. Cortez had dug the first silver there with Aztec slaves. They’d been digging silver ever since, and the lunar landscape was a maze of gutted hills and spoilbanks nearly as high. The town was a rabbit warren of miners’ shacks and towering frame shaft works surrounding the small business district near the railroad station. On the map, rail lines, in use or abandoned, formed a plate of spaghetti running through and around the cratered hills.
The federales in their wisdom had thought to post a guard detachment surrounding the Potosi yards. They had no way of knowing the guerrillas had moved down from the north with the innocent morning traffic, but wouldn’t have been unduly worried if they had. They had a battery of Hotchkiss guns to deal with any foreseeable emergency.
Captain Gringo and his bank-robbing team had changed to the simple white cotton of the Mexican peone and had their guns hidden under their serapes, so they drew little attention as they strolled down from the mining area with the men of the noonday shift. They walked into the bank just before it was too close for siesta. There was one uniformed guard in the bank but he was very philosophical when Robles shoved a pistol in his ear and told him to be quiet.
The tellers were philosophical, too. It wasn’t their money, after all, and they felt rather sorry for the bank robbers. Where did the fools think they were going with the sacks of double eagles? As soon as they left, a phone call to Los Rurales would mean the end of this farce and the prompt return of the money, minus the usual skimming of the police, of course.
So the robbery went smooth as silk and they were out with the cash and legging it back up the slope when the bank manager walked over to his desk and picked up the phone. He called the nearby Rurale post and said, “Good morning, sergeant. This is Castro, at the bank. I hate to disturb you so close to siesta, but some pobrecitos just held us up.”
“The bank was robbed? Which way did they go?”
“Up into the hills, as usual. They doubtless have some ponies waiting for them just outside of town. I know it’s hot, but if you hurry—”
“I’ll have Montoya’s team cut them off to the east. They’ll never make it to the Sierra Oriental. For a moment you startled me. I thought it might be that bunch with the stolen train. But I can see the main line from my window as we speak. Nothing going on along the tracks. Probably some local boys who should know better. My respects to your lovely family, Señor Castro. I’d better get in touch with the other units within riding distance.”
As both men hung up, Captain Gringo and his men topped a rise and were running for the train, stopped on an old mine siding. Robles asked, “Are you sure this abandoned track runs anywhere, Captain Gringo?”
The tall American said, “I told you. It joins up with the main line to Queretaro six or eight kilometers south of here. If we time it right we’ll be rolling through the Queretaro yards about sundown. With any luck, they’ll take us for the evening train to Pachuca.”
The bank robbery caused no pins to shift at headquarters. There were always bank robberies, and the Army left them to Los Rurales. There seemed no connection between the ragged band who’d held up another local bank and the guerrillas with the stolen train. There seemed to be no reports at all about the goddamned train. It had to be somewhere, but where could that somewhere be? A bored lieutenant sat by the map table as his superiors enjoyed their siestas. Perhaps the rebels were taking a siesta, too. It was the lieutenant’s considered opinion they’d wised up and ditched the train on some siding to fade back into the bandit-infested countryside. Sooner or later someone would find the train and report in. Then it would be a simple matter of drawing a circle one day’s ride or afoot from the last contact and simply mounting the usual cavalry sweep of the whole area. The villagers might try to hide them. Villagers always did. But some peon always talked. A few leaders hanging in the village plaza had a way of loosening tongues. It was all so routine and banal. The dapper young officer was glad he was a headquarters man. This galloping about amid dust and screaming women was most wearing on the soul.
Aboard the stolen train, many of the guerrillas were enjoying a siesta. Some of the newly paid soldiers of the revolution were gambling their new-found wages while others ate, made love, or simply dozed content. Back in the private car, Rosalita and Flo were experimenting with lesbian love alone. Captain Gringo and the machine gun were needed forward.
They rolled south through the Valley of Mexico unmolested, stopping only once for water at a small town and passing on, unsuspected. The rail traffic was heavier this far south, and a passing train drew little attention. Switching tactics again, Captain Gringo had cut no wires after pulling back on the main lines. He knew they’d be expecting him to if he was in the area. If anyone thought to report the position of this locomotive, the new numbers they’d painted over the old ones fit the timetable as well as was to be expected on a casually run railroad.
The day wore down uneventfully as they steamed through fiat farmlands. The fields were huge, but the scattered pueblos lay widely spaced, for most of the land was owned by El Presidente’s barons. The peones who worked the crops of their masters lived clustered together in little mud-brick slums rather than on the land. He knew this, but the professor kept jawing about it, and the need for land reform, as the American tried not to fall rudely asleep. The tense moments at the bank up the line, or the wild, all-night orgy before it, had worn him down more than he’d intended.
When the professor wasn’t boring him about his Utopian dreams, he bickered about his rank. The old man should have been pleased his men were well fed and had been paid for the first time in months. He seemed worried about it, or, rather, worried about who was in command.
Captain Gringo let him prattle on. It seemed the less important people were, the more they wanted to insist they were men of destiny. Sooner or later they were going to have to have a showdown about it. But Captain Gringo had more important things to worry about – like staying alive another night between the federales and those two crazy spitfires back there. If only he could give Rosalita to somebody, he’d probably survive Flo. Jesus, Flo had looked marvelous in the morning light and, after the novelty wore off, it was more fun with one beautiful woman, the old-fashioned way. They’d all been showing off more than they’d really enjoyed it. It’s hard to work up genuine passion with a third party watching and commenting lewdly on one’s performance.
The afternoon sun got tired, too, and was low in the west as they rolled innocently into Queretaro. Captain Gringo was wide awake now. It was the biggest town they’d tried to bluff through, and he hoped he knew what he was doing. Robles was at the throttle, wearing an engineer’s twill cap. The machine gun had been tucked out of sight in the cabin. As they rolled through a signal Robles muttered, “Shit! They seem to be running us off on a fucking siding! They must be on to us!”
“It may be just routine. I see a yard man up ahead and he doesn’t seem excited. I’ll do the talking. Give me that hat.”
As they slowed down he leaned out and called, “What’s up? We’re running late for Pachuca as it is.”
The yard man called back, “Orders. Have to clear the northbound line for another troop train. Something big is going on up North. You’ll be switched back as soon as los federales pass.”
Captain Gringo moved over to the controls and said, “Robles, go back and make sure everyone stays calm and away from the windows. I’ll sound the whistle if it’s time to panic.”
As Robles left them, the professor said, “You didn’t even look at me when you gave that last order! Would you have my people think I am a mere figurehead?”
“You want to run after Robles and tell him it’s time to surrender?”
“Of course not. I was about to suggest the same plan. But you are becoming most arrogant, and I won’t have it.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Let’s quibble about rank when it’s safe to worry about it, all right? I’m not trying to steal your army, Professor. I’d be better off on my own right now. Just let me get you all to a safe place and you can give them close-order drill and pushups to your heart’s content. If you want, I’ll just be on my way alone the minute it’s safe to leave you.”
“I didn’t say I wanted you to resign your commission.”
“What commission? Face it. We’re a ragtag band of frightened people, not an army, not a revolution, not a fucking thing that makes any sense at all! If the stupid government you have down here would just leave those poor peones alone they’d be perfectly content to grow corn or herd cows. As I see it, this so-called revolution is simple self-defense.”
“On that much we can agree. Karl Marx explained that class struggle was inevitable.”
“Shit. This isn’t class struggle. That stupid Diaz and his bloody-minded Rurales seem to shoot people as a hobby! Nobody but you gives a fig for Marx or Adam Smith. They just want to eat and sleep and fornicate in peace. I could end this revolution overnight if I was Diaz. I’d just leave the poor bastards and their women alone.”
“That’s what I just said. What is this funny-looking train we’re drawing up alongside?”
Captain Gringo hit the brakes as he stared out at the armored train between them and the main line. It was a string of five or six former boxcars, with thick boiler plates riveted to them as if they were small rolling battleships. There was a gun turret atop each armored car, with the muzzles of what looked like Hotchkiss guns thrust wickedly out the slits. He marveled, “Oh, nice. You see how they have the engine in the rear? That son-of-a-bitch could shoot its way through anything. I wonder what it’s doing here, and if there’s any ammo for those little cannon.”
“It’s a trap! We’ve pulled right beside an armored troop train!”
“Relax. I don’t see any of those turrets aimed our way. The troop train that guy mentioned is on the line, moving this way. This thing seems deserted. It’s probably a backup unit they’re keeping here against a real revolution. Yeah, I remember seeing trains like this back home. Between wars they just sit and rust. Nobody’s used anything like this since our Civil War. Hmmm—”
He set the brakes and stared across at the empty cabin of the armored train. He said, “They’ve left it unguarded because the yards are guarded and it’s sort of lost among all these other freight cars. I wonder if there’s water in the boiler.”
As he started to climb out, the professor gasped, “No! They’ll see you!”
But the American knew he was invisible between the two locomotives as he swung across with his gun drawn. He saw at a glance that the tender was full of coal. He read the water gauge and muttered, “Hell, they must have run it in just a few hours ago! The boiler’s still lukewarm!”
He opened the firebox door, saw the coals were still glowing, and quickly threw some coal in as the professor joined him, protesting, “This is insane! You can’t be thinking what I think you’re thinking!”
“You want to give some orders? Start by getting our people over into these cars. We’ve an open switch behind us and the steam should build up fast. Move, damn it! Nobody can see us making the switch between these packed-in cars.”
The old man bleated like a lost sheep, but then he leaped back aboard the passenger train to follow instructions as the American fed scoop after scoop to the new boiler.
The transfer only took a few minutes. The awed peones were more crowded in the dark interiors of the armor-plated cars, but the cars had been fitted for comfort with benches, and they were settled in when he made a quick turn of inspection.
He found Robles with the two girls in the forward car. He ignored the grinning Flo and Rosalita to ask the peon, “Do you know how to load and fire a Hotchkiss gun?”
“Please, Captain Gringo, I do not know what a Hotchkiss gun is!”
“All right, you’d better drive. I see there’s a signal cord running the length of this rig. One yank means stop and two means go. Three means reverse, and anything else means blow the whistle and run like hell. What are you waiting for, a good-bye kiss?”
Robles nodded and moved back to do as he was told. Robles was shaping up nicely. Captain Gringo climbed up on the wooden platform under the overhead turret and glanced out the slit. He had a nice field of fire. He yanked open the breech of the Hotchkiss and threw a shell in place from the rack at his side. It looked like 35mm shrapnel. There wasn’t time to worry about it. If it shot, it shot.
He called down, “Everybody hang on. Here we go!” and yanked the cord. Nothing happened for a moment. Then they were moving out of the slot for the main line. A yard man was waving a red flag at them, but what could he do? One of the other guerrillas, watching through a gun slit over the bench he knelt on, fired and blew the yard man’s face off. Captain Gringo grimaced, but issued no orders. Trigger-happy sons-of-bitches were just what the doctor ordered at the moment.
They backed through a switch on to the main line, on the wrong track. He watched through the gun slit until he saw they’d crossed over to the southbound line, albeit headed backward to the north. He signaled a stop, then yanked three times. The drivers up ahead caught and whipcracked them the other way as Captain Gringo cranked the turret around. He was now at the wrong end of the train, but so what? Where was the right end?
As he got his Hotchkiss trained in the direction they were now going he spotted a signal tower up ahead. He fired the Hotchkiss, blowing the boxlike office off its spindly leg and taking care of anyone thinking of getting cute with the remote-control switches. The little turret was full of the acrid fumes of hot brass as he fired once more, missed, and blew away the base of a telegraph pole with his third shot. So much for idle chitchat on the wire to the South. He patted the hot breech of the Hotchkiss and said, “That’s a good old hoss! You shoot nice and you shoot nasty, baby. You and me are going to get along fine!”
Then he threw another shell in the chamber.
Someone was tugging his pant leg. He called down, “It’s all right. Just leaving this yard tidy. Someone run forward and tell the professor to put Barbosa and Prado on the machine gun. If they can’t shoot it, nobody can. Tell ’em to follow my lead and smoke up anything I’m shooting at.”
Whoever it was stopped jerking his pants. So he assumed they agreed with him. He stared through the gun slit down the long gray length of thick Krupp steel. He’d take time to show the others how those other turrets worked, once he figured out how to turn this goddamn train around. With the unarmored locomotive ahead they were vulnerable. This rig had been designed to back in stinging, like a scorpion. He’d have to work out more signals, too. It was going to be tough running a train from the rear unless someone forward could tell him what in hell was going on up front.
He felt the train hesitate then resume speed under him as Robles obviously spotted something, then decided to bull on through.
Captain Gringo spotted the smoke plume of an approaching train on the other track. So far, so good. Then as the locomotives passed each other he spotted the red, white, and green flags on the oncoming smoke box. It was the troop train they’d been shunted aside for. They were barreling in from the south wide open. If they’d heard the thuds of distant cannon fire … They had. The windows facing his way were open and a long row of rifles were sticking out of the troop train, spitting fire and lead!
Captain Gringo fired into the car just behind the oncoming locomotive as, up ahead, the machine gun began its woodpecker song of death. The shrapnel shell exploded inside the other train just as the locomotive whipped past. Wood paneling, men, and parts of men slammed against the steel plating of their armored car as rifle bullets tinged off like hail on a tin roof. By the time he’d reloaded, the two trains had almost passed one another. He spied the long line of machine-gun pocks down the shot-up rear car and fired just in time, blowing the last third of the last car to bloody froth and kindling wood. And then they were through and tearing south with a clear track ahead.
Captain Gringo cranked the turret around for a look behind them. He saw that the shot-up troop train had stopped, its whistle shooting a long, desperate scream of white steam to the sky.
He watched it start to become a black dot on the horizon behind them. Then he frowned and muttered, “What the hell?”
The dot refused to vanish in the distance as it should have. It was growing larger. The crazy sons-of-bitches were chasing them in reverse, which was very brave, no doubt, but very stupid. He trained the hot barrel of his little cannon down the ribbons of steel to their rear and muttered, “All right, you poor bastards. It’s your funeral!”
The pursuing troop train’s commander wasn’t really stupid. It just took Captain Gringo a few minutes to figure out what he was up to. The madly backing shot-up troop train chased them for about five miles, then suddenly slid to a halt in open country. He nodded as a distant figure leaped down and ran for a faraway telegraph pole. Then he swung the barrel and began potting at the passing poles to his left, grinning, “Not tonight, Josephine!”
He blew out the wire again on his third try. The sun was very low now, and the kicked-up dust clouds glowed redly against a darkening skyline. It would soon be too dark to pick off telegraph poles. If those other sons-of-bitches were smart enough to ghost him, hanging back just out of range, until they could hook up to undamaged wire, they’d wire ahead, and he didn’t think they’d be wiring home for money.
He signaled his own engineer to stop and start backing up, teeth bared and Hotchkiss trained as the other train began once more to loom larger.
Orange flames of gunfire began to wink at him from the other train as the federales caught on. Machine-gun slugs began to spang into the steel of his turret and, down below, a woman screamed. He held his fire until the federales frantically signaled their own engine and began to pull away, running back for the shot-up yards to the north. He saw he wasn’t going to get much closer, elevated his barrel, and lobbed a shell as far up the track as he could. It came down behind the enemy locomotive, and while it blew hell out of another car, the troop train was still retreating in good order, trying to throw his aim off with machine-gun fire his opposite number must have known was futile.
Captain Gringo grunted, “He’s a pro. Thinking good on his feet and trying to save his people without simply hauling ass in panic.”
He fired into the rear car of the troop train, watching it shatter in a big orange fireball with mixed emotions. He hoped he’d gotten the enemy officer in command. But the guy had been a soldier.
He yanked the signal cord, and once more Robles braked and whipped them the other way with a spine-popping reversal. Captain Gringo watched as they started putting distance between themselves and that damned troop train. It was nearly dark and, damn, the son-of-a-bitch was backing after them again! He hadn’t blown away anybody smart enough to matter!
He had to break contact. His unknown opponent knew the rules of irregular warfare and wasn’t going to let him!
Perfume mingled with the brassy fumes in the turret as Flo rose in the gloom beside him, putting a hand around his waist to steady herself as the car rumbled down the tracks. He asked her what she wanted, and before Flo could answer, Rosalita had squeezed up his other side and said, “We can’t see what’s going on, down there.”
Flo added, “It’s just a big tin box. There’s no place to pee and I have to!”
He said, “The middle car is fixed up as a rough command post. There’s a latrine as well as fold-down bunks, a table, and stuff.”
“So I can pee. Where are we going to sleep tonight? We’re packed in like sardines and there’s no privacy.”
“Welcome to second class. Nobody’s going to get much sleep tonight. We’re in a running gunfight with one determined son-of-a-bitch and I want you both below. It’s not safe up here.”
Rosalita rapped the steel plates near her head and laughed, “Pooh. This feels most bulletproof.”
“Yeah, but the gun slit’s three inches wide, and the biggest machine-gun bullet made is less than an inch in diameter. We seem to have running stand-off, here. Neither one of us are letting the other get within point-blank range. But that other guy’s next move should be a sniper with a sharpshooter’s medal and a scoped rifle. So adios, girls. Go powder your noses or something.”
Flo dropped down without argument, a born survivor. Rosalita insisted, “You are my toro and I want to help.”
He said, “You can go forward to the other turrets and start passing ammunition, then. It looks like I’m going to need it. Get some of the men to help you.”
When he’d finally gotten rid of her it was quite dark outside and black as a bitch in the turret. The thin atmosphere of the Mexican highlands wasn’t conducive to lingering twilight, and he couldn’t see more than a few hundred yards down the track. He could make out the rising smoke of the troop train against the sky as stars began to appear. He couldn’t estimate the range worth a damn. The silvery sheen of the tracks back there simply faded into blackness somewhere between them.
A blossom of flame winked on and off back there, and a full second later he heard the report and the pang of a steel-jacketed bullet against the rear of his car. He didn’t fire back. He knew they couldn’t see his position worth a damn, either. Why give them his range with a futile cannon flash?
The federales fired again, growing bolder or perhaps wondering how far out in front he was. He didn’t tell them. As long as they were following he didn’t have to worry about the trackside telegraph line. If the troop train stopped, he’d have to send someone out to cut it the hard way. The only advantage they had, aside from the armor and the Hotchkiss, was that nobody to the south knew they were coming. The forward locomotive was all too vulnerable, and not even these armored cars could roll through an open switch or over a blown-up culvert.
The tentative running fight dragged on almost two hours as each unanswered troop-train rifle shot seemed to be coming from a little closer. The troop train, being lighter, was gaining on them. Captain Gringo depressed the elevation of his little cannon and waited, like a cat crouched outside a mouse hole. They were in range now. They probably didn’t know it. They could see his smoke plume and little else. They probably thought they were farther back. The most recent shots had been way too high and were passing over the turret like angry bees, not hitting a damned thing. They were shooting at where they imagined he was as they crawled right up the muzzle of his gun.
He felt the wheels under him slow slightly and wondered what it meant. Then the train gathered speed and sped on as the night around him exploded in harsh yellow light!
They were passing through a town. Right through the station. A row of those new electric lights had been strung along the station platform, and as they whipped through he saw open-mouthed people on the platform, staring wide-eyed in his wake. And then they were past the town and into the night once more.
He yanked the signal cord and muttered, “Good boy” as he felt the brakes catch under his vibrating heels. As they slid to a stop his muzzle was trained directly into the illuminated corridor of the lit-up wayside stop. Now, if only those other bastards would just be a little bit stupid.
They were. He grinned as the shattered rear of the troop train materialized in his gunsights. They were moving pronto in hot pursuit, the poor bastards.
On the station platform, two American visitors were sitting on their baggage, discussing the terrible rail service that had kept them waiting for a northbound train for hours. As the armored train whipped past in a cloud of cinders and dust, one of them gasped, “What in the hell was that? It looked like some kind of military thing.”
The other had just said, “I don’t think it means anything. They just like to wave guns around. There hasn’t been any real trouble down here since Diaz took over. They say he’s a bastard, but at least he knows how to run things quietly down here.”
And then the troop train rolled into view, its rear car shattered and spitting bullets into the blackness beyond as disheveled men in federate uniforms crouched in the gaping maw. As the other people on the platform started running, the two Americans came unstuck and joined the general evacuation, not looking back. So neither saw the first shell rake the length of the already shot-up car to explode against the far bulkhead. But they both flew forward on their faces as the shock wave belly-flopped them to the dirt. As they lay face down, a second and a third explosion showered them with shattered glass and splintered wood. Then Captain Gringo put one into the space between the ties and rolling train, blowing a wheel rim off the track. The nearest car, derailed, took the ones following it with it as the troop train accordioned into a massive mound of wreckage filled with screams and blood.
And then the last shard of wreckage stopped bouncing and for a moment the only sounds were the distant chugging of the armored train, off to the south, and the moans of dying men.
One of the Americans rolled over and sat up, muttering, “Jesus H. Christ! What was that you said about them running things quietly down here?”
The other raised his head gingerly, and as people moved toward the track to help the injured, said, “I don’t understand it. When my company sent me down here hey said Diaz ran a very stable government.”
“Yeah? Well somebody ought to tell these crazy Mexicans. If I ever get out of here I’m not coming back. You can’t do business in the middle of a revolution, and if they’re lot having a revolution I don’t know what else to call it!”
It was 3 a.m. by the time Mexico City had a handle on the situation again. In the map room a general who could have used a shave as well as some sleep stared at a new pin and groaned, “That stolen armored train hasn’t moved for forty-five minutes. Does anyone have even a guess where it might be right now?”
Another officer said, “That’s the last contact, sir. They’ve been knocking out the wire, of course, but this close to the capital there are alternate lines. When they stopped for water, there, a Rurale rode hard to another line two kilometers away and—”
“Spare me the details. Let’s say the rider took at least half an hour to report it in. That means they had a thirty-minute lead before we even put the fucking pin in the fucking map, and that was forty-five minutes ago!”
He leaned forward with a stub pencil and drew a circle around the pin, adding, “They could be anywhere in here. A seventy-five-kilometer radius to search, black at the pit, and they have Hotchkiss guns and machine guns! Oh I love it! What’s the latest on that shot-out troop train?”
“There are sixty per cent casualties, sir. They have two cars back on the track and are in pursuit. With the wires down we’ve lost contact with them, too.”
“Who’s the incompetent son-of-a-bitch in command?”
“A Major Martinez, sir. He’s an experienced officer.”
“An idiot, you mean! He let those cockroaches make us look like fools by letting them steal an armored train right out from under him. I want him relieved of command as soon as he next makes contact. Tell him he’s to report directly to me for his pending court-martial! I want whoever left that armored train unguarded, too. Don’t bother to court-martial the motherfucker. Just shoot him against the most convenient wall!”
A junior officer cleared his throat and said, “Forgive me, General. I agree about the guilt of the man in charge of the armored train. But it was not the fault of Major Martinez. He was nowhere near when it happened.”
“Bah! He let them roll right past him. Then he lost more than half of his command before losing contact. I’m going to bust his ass. His men will expect me to. It’s a matter of morale.”
The other officers exchanged glances. Then a bolder one said, “Martinez is most popular with his men. Perhaps if we asked El Presidente—”
“You want me to wake him up at this hour to ask him how to discipline a man who has botched his assignment? Mother of God! I am surrounded by boobs and idiots. Martinez is to be relieved, and I’ll hear no more of it. The subject under discussion is that fucking armored train. If any of you were this mad Captain Gringo, where would you be headed with it this instant?”
There was a moment of silence. Then someone sighed and said, “Since we agree those rebels are led by a madman, his plans present us with a problem. He was last spotted running directly toward us, skimming the foothills of the Sierra Oriental to his left. He could be pulled off on any of a hundred sidings. He could have reversed direction and be heading back to the untamed country he came out of. He could be trying to get over the mountains to the coastal jungles. He could be coming right at us with those Hotchkiss guns. He could be doing anything!”
The general grimaced, and said, “Let’s consider the worst for us. If he were to get within the Federal District before dawn we’d be in a hell of a mess. So let’s assume hat’s his plan. We can live with any other.”
A junior officer piped up, “If I were Captain Gringo, sir, I’d try to get over the mountains. It would be suicide o run that trainload of bandits right into the outskirts of Mexico City!”
“I know that and you know that, Lieutenant, but does he know that, or does he care? The man’s a maniac!”
“But General, he only has light artillery and can’t really do anything important, stuck on the tracks. If we simply dig in and wait for him, with heavier guns—”
“You don’t think the rumble of cannon fire, heard in the capital by foreign visitors and embassies, is important damage? My God, I predict you’ll retire as a private! We’re wasting time talking about it. I want a full division sent north. Well out of earshot of the city.”
A major asked, “May I suggest we do something about the mountain passes, too, sir?”
“I piss in the mountain passes! I don’t care where those bandits are going as long as it’s not here! We don’t have the manpower to block off every possible escape route. We do have to keep the fighting well away from where any foreign journalist can hear of it.”
“But if they reach the lowland jungles, sir.”
“I piss in the lowland jungles, too! What are they going to do down by the coast, eat bananas and write letters to the editor? The important thing, right now, is to get them the hell away from Mexico City! Los Rurales can round them up at leisure once we secure the important targets. What are you all waiting for? Do I have to draw pictures for you?”
Meanwhile, aboard the armored train, they’d found a siding and turned it around, so they were running properly with the locomotive to the rear and the steel glacis of the armored end leading the way. Just where he was leading them wasn’t too clear at the moment to Captain Gringo. They were moving slowly, blacked out and surrounded by darkness. His map said there was a tunnel ahead. It ran through the spine of the Sierra Madre Oriental. Beyond the mountains the country dropped to the jungle-covered Gulf Plains and the track ahead ran to Vera Cruz. If anyone in headquarters had a map, they knew this, too.
The sky was beginning to get lighter ahead. He could see the jagged outline of the great sawtooth range’s spine, perhaps twenty miles away. As the stars started to wink out in the dawn sky he pulled the signal line and stopped the train. Then he crawled stiffly down to stand by track-side. It was chill and quiet, save for the distant protest of a sleepy bird. He’d stopped far from anything, on a lonely stretch of the east-to-west line. He lit a cigar and waited as the professor and others climbed out and crunched over to, join him. The professor asked, “What is wrong? Why have we stopped here?”
Captain Gringo said, “End of the line. We have to leg it the rest of the way.”
“What, and abandon this train? For God’s sake, why?”
“Simple. Our luck should be running out along these tracks. There’s a tunnel coming up. One squad of Rurales could bottle us in there, and that would be that.”
“How do you know this? I see no tunnel. We are still at least an hour from any mountains!”
“Professor, you don’t wait until you’re ambushed to find out if anyone is laying for you. You figure out where they could ambush you and then you go around it.”
“On foot, abandoning everything, just on a hunch?”
“A guy named Geronimo taught me a lot about hunches a while back. One Apache worth his salt can seal off a tunnel just by rolling rocks down on it. Your Rurales come in sets, and play as rough as any Apache. We can’t press our luck any farther by rail. So welcome to the infantry.”
There was a murmur of discussion and someone said, “I have too much for my mujer and me to carry on foot. I vote we keep the train.”
Another seconded the motion. The professor said, “It’s too far. Sunrise will catch us in the open on foot.”
“I wasn’t planning on following the track, Professor. We can make the foothills easy in the darkness left and hole up in the brush until it’s safe to travel on through the ridges.”
“Over the High Sierra, walking all that way?”
“Cortez made it, and he didn’t even know where he was going. Mountains are natural guerrilla terrain, Professor. We have a better than even chance my way. My plan is to fill up the fire box and boiler, tie down the throttle, and let this train tear-ass back the way we just came, empty. With luck it should roll west at least thirty or forty miles before it hits something solid enough to wreck it. They’d throw a circle around the wreck and move in careful and by that time—”
“Your plan is not my plan, and I am in command, here.”
Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “All right. Let’s hear it, if you have a better one.”
“My decision is to keep this train and its heavy guns for the revolution.”
“Swell. Who do you have who knows how to load and fire a Hotchkiss and, more important, where do you think you’re going?”
“You will man the guns, naturally. Our destination is Vera Cruz.”
“No to both ideas. I’m not sticking my head into a blind tunnel with or without a gun, and you’ll never make the coast with this rig. I’m not going to argue about it. We don’t have time. It’s been nice knowing you, Professor.”
He saw most of the others were in earshot, now. So he called out, “I’m headed into the Sierra on foot. Anybody coming with me?”
The two girls exchanged glances and Flo said, “I’m with numbers. If everybody votes to follow you, I suppose I’ll have to walk. If they don’t, I’m for traveling the easy way.”
Robles nudged his woman and stepped forward, saying, “I am with this crazy gringo. He’s been right so far.”
There were a few more, a very few more, who nodded in agreement. The professor blustered, “We do not need either of you to run the locomotive.”
Captain Gringo said, “That’s for sure. I figure you’ll get maybe another forty miles at the most.” Then he said, “All right. Robles, let’s get my machine gun and—”
But the professor snapped, “The revolution needs the machine gun. I shall not shoot you as a deserter, in view of your past services to our cause. But the heavy weapons stay with those of us who wish to continue in the service of the cause.”
The tall American considered pushing it. Then he shrugged. The gun was heavy and there wasn’t much ammunition for it left in any case. He caught Rosalita’s eye and asked, “You coming, kitten?”
The little mestizo lowered her eyes and said, “I don’t know. Flo has been so good to me and perhaps we should stick together.”
He didn’t argue. It was the first time a lesbian had stolen a girl from him, and he didn’t think he liked it much, but they were both getting to be excess weight for a man on the run. So he didn’t point out that Flo must have been aware her American passport made her the only one of them the Rurales wouldn’t shoot without further discussion. He didn’t warn Flo she was probably overconfident about documentation in a country where not many people could read, either.
He turned on his heel and started walking. Behind him, he could hear the footsteps of the half-dozen men and their women who’d thrown in with him. He didn’t look back as a taunting voice called, “See you in Vera Cruz, coward!”
Robles left his mujer, carrying his pack, and trotted forward to fall in beside Captain Gringo, asking with a boyish smile, “Are we really going to Vera Cruz, señor?”
Captain Gringo said, “Not hardly. First we put as much distance as we can between ourselves and those tracks. Then if it’s still dark enough we cut west and look for a place to hide out all day.”
“West, Captain Gringo? I thought you said we were walking over the Sierra, to the east.”
“We are, eventually. Those other poor bastards are sure to tell them which way we said we were going. So we’d better go someplace else.”
“I comprehend! You think Los Rurales will catch up with them and make them talk!”
“I don’t think it, Robles. I know it. But a soldier’s only responsible for his followers as long as they follow him.”
“I agree. This is simple justice. Listen! They are pulling out on the train again. Moving east as you told them not to.”
“I know. A professional soldier doesn’t worry about what other commanders are doing, either. He looks after his own, and that’s all he can do. Forget you ever knew them, Robles. We have enough on our own plate and I wish this brush was a bit higher.”
He turned his head to yell back, “Let’s move it out, troops. That goddamned sunrise isn’t waiting for us!”
They staggered on through the semi-arid wasteland as he kept a wary eye on the ever-brighter skyline. He said, absently, “There should be more cultivation this close to the capital. I thought the Valley of Mexico was fertile, Robles.”
Robles said, “Most of it is. This is salty earth we travel over. I know this by the vegetation. We call it salt-bush. You see, there is no drainage from the meseta to the sea, and in the low places, where it should be marshy, the salt accumulates over the years.”
Off in the distance there was a low rumble that sounded like thunder. But the sky was clear and the first explosions were followed by the tinfoil crackle of distant small-arms fire. Robles crossed himself and murmured, “Mother of God!”
Captain Gringo grimaced and said, “Yeah. Frankly, I thought they’d last a little longer.”