The Creed of Violence - Boston Teran [53]
The locomotive surged and the coal car listed into a decline beside the tracks, only to be vaulted up again where it broadsided the engine. For a few moments this architecture of ruined metal and mangled steel plowed on at full speed and then the housing plates separated at the seams and there was a violent hiss and a rush of flame and the remains of train cars exploded into a volcano of dust and debris.
John Lourdes swept from the plateau and down a ravine with Rawbone in hard pursuit. Their horses struggled up a steep incline from where they could see through the settling smoke that the first train was a hissing mass strewn over the tracks.
The second train was a mile back and coming on fast. It was under heavy fire from a cavalry of poor wretches hunkered down in their saddles and firing over the outstretched heads of their mounts.
John Lourdes wiped the sweat and dust from his field glasses and surveyed the landscape again. If the train could get past the wreckage, he saw where the tracks traversed a rising battlement of hills and the train would have to slow drastically. He yelled to Rawbone and pointed to where they were to ride. The father shouted back, as his mount shouldered wildly, that the train would never get through. But the son had already spurred his horse toward where the walls of the canyon burned with daylight.
They came up out of a ravine. The ground before them was clouded with dust. They dashed past a howling band of outriders making for the train. They were in the midst of gunfire now, charging toward a shaly ridge with their weapons drawn. A pack of rurales swept off after them in pursuit. One of their mounts was shot from under him and the man was flung to the earth and his own compadres trampled over him with stunning disregard.
Rawbone had not come unprepared and he took from his shirt a grenade and flung it back at their pursuers. A rain of metal shards ended the pursuit. Men and mounts were torn asunder with ruthless efficiency. Belts of flesh and leather marked the earth where they once had been.
The great Mastodon thundered toward the smoking gauntlet that littered the tracks. Doctor Stallings stood in the locomotive with the engineer while Jack B was atop the tender hunched down as he fired and fielded orders. There were men in the cars trying to hold back the blood from their seeping wounds. There were men dead. There were riderless mounts with their wild manes charging alongside burning railcars. The dust and smoke from this nightmare frieze rose up out of the earth for miles.
The engineer looked to Doctor Stallings. "She won't get through," he said.
"Throttle it," came the order.
"We'll wreck."
"Throttle it."
"We'll wreck."
"Then we'll wreck."
The engineer did as he was ordered. They could feel the pure force of the speed as the huge wheels began to reverb against the rails. The hammering of the pistons driving steam through the valves grew to near deafening.
A horseman with a bow and arrow rode upon the locomotive's shadow. Tethered to the shaft was a lit stick of dynamite. Doctor Stallings turned and fired. The horseman was taken from the saddle just as the arrow left the bowstring. It rattled between the engine and the tender and exploded just beyond. The first car shook, windows shattered, men were thrown to the floor.
The distance between the train and those scorched and battered remains that formed a breastwork along the rails closed with fiendish speed. Doctor Stallings heard the engineer asking the Almighty to remember him in heaven seconds before hell arrived on impact.
Across that barren pan, above the rifle fire and the shouting and cries of the wounded, were the crushing grate and shrill of steel on steel unlike anything the mind could conjure sending a shock wave down the length of the couplings such that the women in the last car were flung over and atop each other.
Son and father