The Creed of Violence - Boston Teran [44]
HE SAT ON the truck seat, smoking in the dark. A troubled anger cauled his insides as he stared into the swiftly passing desert where hills rose close to the tracks near claustrophobically, only to disappear in the lifetime of a second.
It was not about whether John Lourdes would die or not; for purely selfish reasons he did not want him to die. But if he did, well—
He looked back at the passenger car cradling and pitch dark. Maybe it was the women with their raven hair and Indian faces and poisonous mix of delicacy and strength. Maybe it was the smells that clung to their clothes and hair. Lemon and vanilla, the musk of candlesmoke. Maybe it was the discarded family he should never have Goddamn gone back to El Paso for, as that act had fated him to this forsaken place and hour. These moments, this feeling, he knew from other times as prison. Not where you were the prisoner, no, but where you were the walls.
The beam of a flashlight tracered across his face.
Rawbone looked up. Jack B approached while Doctor Stallings remained at the far end of the flatcar. "The kid with you. I heard he's sick bad."
Rawbone pointed his cigarette. The light swung toward the passenger car silhouetting that shawl-covered window.
"We don't pay slackers."
Rawbone did not look at Jack B. Instead he busied himself investigating the tip of his burning cigarette.
"Next stop, we're tossing him."
Rawbone smoked, then said, "Promise."
The light moved in on his face till it was more than a trifle too close. Still, there was no acknowledgment and the standoff was broken only by the warning cry of a train whistle well up the tracks.
TWENTY-FOUR
HERE CAME A second, longer warning call and the men began to lean out the car windows and crane their necks or stand at the edge of the flatcars, looking to where the trackline reached well into the black. Even in the women's car faces were hard-angled against the glass that steamed with their breath. The fleeting whistle soon fell away and there was only the sound of the Mastodon moving into that vast and murky landscape.
A guard on the tender shouted for Doctor Stallings and pointed a carbine as direction. Far off into the dead of night there appeared a pyre of flame. Singular and wind-taken. Doctor Stallings ordered the men to weapon up. He told Rawbone to remain on guard at the truck.
It took another quarter hour moving through the desert before they came upon a burning water depot and junction station for the Mexican Telegraph Company. A half-dozen slotted wood structures stood out in the dark like incinerated cages. The water tower had collapsed and was a smoldering ruin. The first train stood beyond the destruction. Guards from the coal car formed a protective perimeter. The second train stopped well short of the fires. Doctor Stallings and his officers moved in quick order upon the scene. The man in command of the first train waited on the tracks to report to Doctor Stallings. Rawbone leapt from the flatcar and came up the line enough to hear what was being said.
The fire was no mean accident of nature nor the foolish result of a human mistake, for there was no person nor animal, no vehicle nor wagon anywhere to be found. The man talking to Doctor Stallings pointed to a cross near three feet high made of wood slats that had been set in the sand beside the tracks. A printed sheet had been staked to it. It was a copy of a decree by the president pro tem Madero, from exile-the revolution had officially begun.
Mr. Stars and Stripes read the sheet after Doctor Stallings passed it to him and, when finished, slapped that paper with the back of his hand and said, "We got ourselves the