The Creed of Violence - Boston Teran [52]
From a craggy plateau John Lourdes and Rawbone scouted the hills before them. A hundred miles beyond, the Gulf washed up on the beaches of Tampico.
"You can smell the salt air from here," said the father. Then bringing his horse about, called out, "Mr. Lourdes." He pointed. To the west of the train, tracers of dust were piling up across the benchland.
John Lourdes got out his binoculars. "It's not dragoons. And they're coming on like religion."
"They're going to hit the train."
The bandoleer of flares was slung over John Lourdes's neck. He shoved the binoculars back in his saddlebags. He got out the signal gun. The father rode up alongside him.
"Before you warn them. You know what I'm going to say. Tampico ... the oil fields. You don't need them back there. If they make it, well ... and the women are not your province. Tampico ... the oil fields." John Lourdes loaded a flare.
"You can fill notebooks till you fall over dead but what you need to write ... Justice Knox shouldn't have entrusted you with this. You're not the right man for it." His eyes were black and hard, the neck cords strained. "You wanted to get there, we can get there. It ends when you say it ends, right. There it is out there. The practical application of strategy means you stay indifferent and take advantage when advantage can be taken. Isn't that why you ended up here, why I ended up here? Answer me, Goddamn it."
ONE FLARE SIGNALED all was clear, two flares there was trouble and hold back. To that John Lourdes added a third option in his note. Three flares meant trouble, but come on quick. When Doctor Stallings, standing atop the tender, raised three fingers, Jack B ordered the trains out and weapons readied.
From the plateau John Lourdes could see banners of gray smoke against the haze and he knew the trains were on the move.
"You ... me ... and the truck!" shouted the father. "Alright ... I hope the BOI taught you how to board a moving train under fire."
The trains went through a gap in the hills. Small islands of dust with riders at the fore descended scrub ridges and rose up magically out of distant swales. Rurales with bandoleers crisscrossing their chests like ancient baldrics and filthy hats and straw sombreros, and they carried carbines and flintlocks and five-shot Colts and machetes and bows and arrows and their saddlebags and stirrups winged outward and the fronds of their hats bent back as they drove to flank the trains.
There were bursts of rifle smoke along the length of the cars and riders crumpled out of their saddles and horses crushed down upon their hooves and flipped over brokenly. Against a barren sky John Lourdes scanned that tableland with binoculars to see how and where fate might intervene for them to get back on the train.
As the lead train cleared a long shelf of battened stone, a mass of trampling shadows surged from hiding. The men in the coal car out front of the locomotive leaned up from their parapets and poured fire down into the clustered features of men close enough to touch.
A rurale with a leather breastplate and hair to his shoulders whipped his horse up alongside the rails and was cut down as he flung a stick of dynamite. It disappeared within the black hull and caromed off the casement with fuse hissing. Men scrambled to reach it but were too late.
The explosion rocked the coal car. Men were thrown over the rim. The black wheels lifted, then slammed down, missing the rails. The wheels sawed ties and scored earth and the plough-shaped pilot rammed the coal car housing and all that tonnage lifted and scythed across the engine tearing the stack and the menagerie of steel and steam was engulfed in smoke. A part of the frame housing tore across the connecting