The Creed of Violence - Boston Teran [55]
John Lourdes stood.
"Mr. Lourdes?"
"We've been cut loose."
The train cars were moving forward through a sweeping passway toward the ridgeline, but it took only a few moments for their section to slow and the one ahead to pull away. The guards trying to tamp down the flames stopped and just stared dumbly.
John Lourdes knelt again and leaned out over the end beam, craning his neck to check the undercarriage.
The father, in pain and bleeding, called to him and John Lourdes steadied back up, his face strained. He stared down into that decline of hills from whence the train had come, trying to calculate how far-at least a mile he thought-before that first turn up from the desert floor where the track was cut through the rock face.
"Mr. Lourdes?"
"The air brakes should hold ... if they haven't been damaged. But if they have-"
The women were on the landing and called out trying to understand. The father came up slowly, favoring his wound, so the son lent him a hoist. The train reached the sun line and soon there was only the faint trailing of its engine smoke.
"They'll come back."
John Lourdes was waiting, feeling, listening-would the brakes hold? "You know what it takes to stop a train on the downgrade? It's like keeping back an avalanche. And reversing it back uphill ..."
"They'll not leave the munitions."
"Neither will we. Get the women up here and off this train, but ahead of it."
John Lourdes crossed to the passenger car landing and pushed past the women and their questions and ran on through the car as the father cursed out orders for them to get over and be quick. Rawbone helped them with a hand or caught them when they jumped and he herded them to the front of the flatbed while he damned their womanly souls.
John Lourdes surveyed the bracings under the back landing and knew there were extra chains on the flatcar for the maneuver he had in mind. When he turned, he saw Teresa standing off alone watching him. But the wary eyes and the collected silence were now clouded with fear and confusion. He went to her and as he put out a hand, his boots had the first hint the cars were slipping backward. The air brakes were failing.
The last of the women jumped from the train and crowded up on the tracks. John Lourdes brought Teresa and, with Rawbone, lifted her down from the flatcar. The train was inching backward and stopping the car became imperative before it picked up speed. By the side railings were piles of heavy chain. John Lourdes dragged one loose and hoisted it up on his shoulder, then ordered Rawbone to bring another as the brakes were giving way.
John Lourdes was at the rear of the passenger car kicking off the door when Rawbone dumped a coil of chain at his feet.
"What are you trying?"
John Lourdes was gasping and his shirt soaked through. As he started to explain, the father went down on one knee and favored his scored shoulder.
The son intended to swing one chain through the door and out a landing window and noose it. He'd do the same on the other side of the door with the other landing window. Then they'd get enough chain and hook it to both nooses and drop it over the landing platform and onto the tracks and up under the wheels to form a kind of wedge braced to the car.
The father looked about and questioned, "Will it work?"
"I saw it done once, but not on an incline like-"
Framed in the far passenger door was Teresa. Most of a heavy chain was slung up on her shoulder and the rest dragged like a metal umbilicus. She was bent and straining torturously with each step.
"What in the name of madness," said the father.
She'd fashioned a reason to act, watching them haul the chains, and she'd climbed back up onto the flatcar with the women grabbing at legs and skirt to restrain her. She couldn't negotiate the door dragging all that iron and when the men reached her Rawbone took all that weight upon himself.
John Lourdes, with his palms facing down, patted at the air as his way of asking Teresa to hold where she was. Rawbone carried that iron monstrosity to the rear of the car. John