The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [191]
“Slow the train,” she ordered.
“Estás loca,” Enríquez replied.
“Do it. Slow the train before we get to the canyon.”
“Why?”
“So they can see me.”
“I must be as mad as you.”
“When we reach the mouth of the canyon,” she said, “you must order them to stop.”
“What!”
“The warriors,” she said. “They want us in the canyon.”
Tomás reeled out the door, said, “Are we dead yet?” and slammed back into the car.
“Father is drunk,” she noted.
“Who could blame him?”
Enríquez sent word ahead to the engineer. The train slowed. The brakes squealed loudly as the smokestack billowed great clouds.
“Here it comes,” the forward lookout shouted. A fighter nearby briefly rose and waved his arm over his head. They all took aim.
Teresita stood in the center of the flatcar. Enríquez himself manned the bullet spitter on its tall tripod. Tomás hid in the train car, crouched between the seats. Soldiers splayed themselves on the roof, and they huddled behind sandbags on the aft flatcar.
“Slow,” Teresita said.
“It is slow.”
“Stop! Now!”
Enríquez signaled his men.
The train, already crawling, slowed and stopped. It chuffed. Its nose was into the narrow gap between stone walls.
“Ease ahead,” she said.
Enríquez signaled again. The train lurched. The locomotive cleared the gap, then the coal car. The flatcar entered the gap, and she called:
“Stop!”
Enríquez signaled and fell behind his machine gun and yanked back the handle.
“Calma!” he called.
“Don’t shoot,” she said.
“Calma, muchachos!”
“Don’t shoot.”
She could feel them watching her. She knew they were there. The bushes all around her were alive with her brothers, her friends, her followers.
She raised her hands and held them before her. Then she stretched them out to either side. She stood there, still and thin and somehow frightening.
They were aiming at the train.
Enríquez saw a warrior rise from the brush and aim at him.
“Hold your fire,” he told his men.
“Harm no man!” Teresita called.
The warrior lowered his rifle and watched them, confused.
“Calma,” said Enríquez.
One of the People could contain himself no longer. He let out a yell and ran at the train. He was dressed only in a loincloth. His face had streaks painted along the cheeks.
“Harm no man!” Teresita called.
The warrior ran up to the train and smacked it with his palm. He yelled. Smacked it again, and ran back to the brush.
Men yelped. Invisible men. Hooted. Enríquez felt his hair rising on the back of his neck.
Tomás cracked the train-car door and said: “I think I just pissed my pants!”
“Calma!” Enríquez called.
The locomotive double-chuffed as they stood, exposed. Cha-chuff. Cha-chuff. Cha-chuff.
“Miss Urrea,” Enríquez said, “I believe we are all going to die.”
Teresita called out to the hidden men:
“Brothers! It is my destiny to go! I choose to go! Kill no man! Harm no man!”
Silence.
“Move,” Teresita said. “Now.”
Enríquez waved frantically. His men were hiding in the engineer’s cabin. One of them finally looked and pulled his head in. The locomotive gave out one huge chuff and the train lurched again.
“Viva la Santa!”
The cries came from the sage and the creosotes.
“Viva Teresita!”
“Viva la Santa de Cabora!”
The train was moving slowly, slowly—it was agony for Enríquez.
She never moved. Stood with her hands raised, staring into the canyon. Enríquez could not believe his eyes. Ten, thirty, fifty, a hundred armed warriors rose around them.
“Don’t shoot!” she shouted. “Don’t shoot!”
He did not know if she was shouting to them or to him, and it did not matter. She was shouting to them all. And the warriors came forward. They ran, they jumped down to the tracks. The train slowly accelerated, and the warriors raised their rifles. But they did not shoot. They formed a double line that stretched ahead of the train and vanished around the bend in the tracks. Each man stood silent, staring up at her, and he held his rifle over his head to salute her.
Enríquez stood, made his way to her side. Tomás was on the step behind them, then he came forward to join them.
The warriors stood