I knowed Red from Cisco. His family lived on a tenant farm a few miles from us one year.
“What the hell you doing here?” I asked him.
He scrunched his eyes together like he was thinking hard, though I don’t know how come, my question didn’t call for no hard thinking. “Looking for work,” he said at last. “Was picking ’round Matador, but it’s all done. My life’s in my knapsack here—extra pair of pants, harmonica, three pecans. And my fortune’s here,” he pointed to his pocket, and laughed. “Two dollars, two cents. What you been up to, Little Snakes?”
“What else? Picking. East o’ here.”
The basket come around again, and I throwed another silver dollar in it. Red screwed up his mouth sideways. “Oughtn’t you be holding onto that?” he said.
I didn’t answer him.
Now the Baptist girls was singing a song about how some kings was coming to see the Baby Jesus.
“Red,” I asked him after a little bit. “Your folks have Christmas?”
“Ma sometimes made yeast cake,” he said. “But you know my Pa. Old drunk. Never knowed if it was Monday or Thursday or the Fourth of July. Y’all?”
“Hell, no,” I said. “That was our moving time. We was always on our way over the fence, Christmas time.”
Red give me a little smile. He knowed my Pa, like I knowed his Pa.
“So, Little Snakes,” he asked me, “what’cha gonna do for work now?”
“I’m thinking. You?”
“Dunno. Maybe go to Del Rio. Fix fences, something.”
“Hey Red,” I said. “Wanta rob a train?”
I was only kinda kidding at first, but then it wasn’t a joke no more. I got serious. I really wasn’t caring about nothing. Just didn’t care. Maybe it come from a madness deep down inside me, way way down deep, so deep down I didn’t even know where it first come from. A madness at the whole stinking world.
But who knows? You think you know how come you do things, but them “how comes” is kinda like a onion. There’s a top “how come,” and you peel that off, and there’s another “how come,” and there’s another under that one. You can go on forever that-a-way, asking “how come?”, ’til there ain’t nothing left a’tall, no answers, and no onion, either.
Fact is, right then, I didn’t care about nothing.
Why rob a train? Why not rob a train?
Red wasn’t so sure at first. He didn’t say yes; he didn’t say no. So I told it to him this way: “It ain’t gonna be no habit, Red. We’ll just do it for a one-time thing.”
I already knowed something about how trains was robbed. I knowed all that from Ma’s outlaw stories. Sometimes—to get a train to stop—the robbers’d block the track, and swing a red lantern, pretending they was warning the engineer that another train was stalled up ahead. Or they’d mess with the rails, loosen a few of ’em, which would make the train fly right offa the track. A lotta times they’d just do it the easy way, and that’s the one I landed on. The outlaws’d wait for the train at one of its stops, a water tank or some outa-the-way station, and they’d swing on up the back of it.
Once you got on that train, all you had to do was rob it. And that wasn’t so hard, if you caught the passengers by surprise, and talked rough to ’em. Or at least that’s the feel I’d got from Ma’s story about Little Al Jennings. Little Al was a pint-size desperado from Oklahoma—barely five feet—and here’s what he said about train stickups: “Folks get so dazed that they act like trained dogs.”
So which one was me and Red gonna rob?
I knowed just about ever’ train in Texas. You could call out a number, and I’d tell you where it was from and where it was going.
No. 43?
Katy passenger from Chicago. Stopped in Dallas, Waco, Temple, San Antone.
No 12?
International & Great Northern freight from Laredo. Stopped in Cotulla, Pearsall, San Antone.
And so on.
I thought on all the ones I knowed, and picked the Southern Pacific, No. 9. It was a passenger, New Orleans to Del Rio, and had Pullman cars with rich folks. It stopped for water close to midnight in a country spot called Cline, about twenty miles west of Uvalde. Nobody’d be expecting trouble there.
There was something else I liked about No. 9. After it left Cline, it snaked west through miles and miles of that wild South Texas brush. That brush’d be good for our escape. In the old days, that’s where outlaws and Mex’kin bandits was always hiding out from posses and sheriffs and Texas Rangers and each other in the cover of that thick brush.
To do the stickup part right, me and Red needed to get us some guns. And overcoats to hide ’em in.
I knowed where to get all that. Them days, ever’ town had wagon yards where people from off the farms and ranches camped while they was buying groceries and supplies, getting tools ’r wagons repaired, and such. So we snuck into one of them yards and checked out a bunch of wagons. Sure enough, we found us two old scruffy black overcoats and a pistol. We snatched ’em. Later that night, we kicked into a hardware store and got us some rope and a knife and two .30-30 Winchesters.
Next day, me and Red headed west. It was a long walk, them twenty miles to that water stop, but I never minded hard walking. Hell, when you grow up a farm kid, the only way you get anywhere is by moving your feet. And just following a mule’s ass up and down them middles took you over about twenty miles ever’ day—even if you wasn’t getting nowhere.
Outside Cline, me and Red hunkered down ’til it come dark, and while we was waiting, we told a few jokes. It felt good being around somebody that I knowed from when I was a kid. I think Red liked it too, you know, being around somebody that knowed him like I knowed him. Then, about eleven o’clock, fifteen minutes from when the train was due, we sneaked over near the freight house.
While we was waiting, we took off the overcoats and ripped out the linings for masks. I told Red to wrap his all over his head, like a kerchief. If we was gonna get fingered, that red hair of his woulda done it for sure. ’Course, when Red done that, he looked just like them old ladies from the Old Country you see shuffling down the streets in them little farm towns that’s heavy with immigrants.
“You’re looking like a grandma,” I said to Red. “So I’m gonna be the head man on this one.”
“Okay by me,” Red said. Even if he had a drunk for a Pa, nothing bothered Red.
The train come in right on time. We was watching Red’s pocketwatch. And when them wheels squealed to a stop, all the muscles in my arms and legs stiffed up and my stomach balled. But it wasn’t that I was boogered. It was just my body getting ready for the go.
At 11:37, I remember the minute exact, the “highball” blowed.
I signaled Red to follow me, and we hopped onto the back car. And just as the wheels was starting to turn again, I come eyeball to eyeball with the brakeman. He was a shrunk-up old man, all bent over and crooked, but when he seen us he pulled hisself up straight as a nail.
“Hey!” he said. “You can’t git on this train!”
Me and Red pulled our rifles out from under our coats. I jabbed that .30-30 in that brakeman’s belly.
“The hell we can’t,” I said. “We’re on.”
The old man’s chest caved in and his knees started shaking. I knowed me and Red wasn’t gonna shoot him, still, most brakemen them days deserved a little boogering. Like I said way back, when I was a kid hopping trains, brakemen’d hit me with their clubs, if they could get close enough, or throw rocks at me. They was mean, dirty rats.
I give the brakeman another poke. “This is our train now.”
Red tied his hands good with rope.
First car we come to was a special and there was only two men in it. One of ’em looked like a officer of the SP. Long gray whiskers, sticky and brown near the mouth from tobacco juice, and a paunch that hung over his belt like a cliff. His wallet was thick as the Bible. “I’ll take that, mister,” I said. And I throwed it in a coffee sack Red was carrying. No wo
rds come outa the big man’s mouth but I could tell, him being a railroad man, that he took train robberies personal.
Well, I’ll tell you what, when that big man pressed his lips together and give a couple of grunts, something swole up in my chest.
And it felt good, that swell.
The other fella had got so scared he was trying to push hisself under a bench, down on the floor, and you could just see the tips of his boots. Well, I tugged on the tips of that old boy’s boots, and I pulled and I tugged, and I pulled and I tugged, it was like pulling a big old long bull snake outa its hole. Finally, out come two rail-skinny legs, and a big shiny silver belt-buckle, and a red-and-white checkered shirt, and the longest, skinniest neck I ever seen, and a long, bone-white face with two eyes popping outa it.
“Please don’t kill me,” the fella kept saying. “Please don’t kill me!”
It made me wanta chuckle, him being so scared of nobody else but me and Red, two old farm boys.
“You wanta keep breathing, Slim,” I said, “gimme your money ’n slide on back under that bench.”
His wallet had a hundred dollars in it.
Then we hit the Pullmans. Pullmans was the sleeping cars on trains, with dark-green curtains that come down over the berths. Me and Red had never been in a Pullman before. We didn’t know there was top berths and bottom berths, so we just robbed the bottoms. I raised the curtains, one by one, and told the folks inside, “Give us what’cha got.” Then Red put the loot in his coffee sack. It was only if we found a woman alone we’d drop the curtain without taking no money. That was the code of the Old West: You don’t rob a woman alone.
It was all coming natural to me—throwing just the right sharp in my voice, aiming the barrel just so, shifting my eyes here and there, here and there. ’Course, most of them passengers was so sleepy they was acting just like Little Al said—like dazed dogs.
They was throwing out pocketbooks, watches, necklaces, wallets, rings, ever’thing but the nightclothes on their backs. There was only one lady, a curly-headed gal, who give us hell and wouldn’t give up her wedding ring. But her old man finally yanked it offa her finger and told her to hush up.
Then, quick as me and Red was done with the Pullmans, we pulled the cord that stopped the train and hit that wild country a-running.
NINE
Cactus, cactus, cactus.
It was a moonshiny night, near bright as day, and all you could see in ever’ direction was prickly-pear cactus. Acres and acres of ’em, high as your head. They growed in clumps, their pads was big as skillets, one pad atop another atop another. And their thorns was all over, sharp as needles.
But we didn’t have no choice. We had to charge right though ’em.
While we was winding this-a-way and that-a-way, getting all ripped up by them thorns, we couldn’t help but wonder if somebody’d get up a posse to chase us down when the train got to the next town.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Posses was the one thing Little Al’d said he didn’t like about the train-robbing business. When the laws and vigilantes and yapping dogs grows into a group and sets out on your trail, thirsty for blood.
The next town from where me and Red’d hopped off was called Spofford, about four miles down the track. But it was such a little dot on the map it probably didn’t have no laws to put together a posse. And even if there was a posse after us, it’d be a job to find us. That country—the Mex’kins called it la brasada—was a mess of thorny brush and cactus and varmints.
I knowed it from when I was a kid.
If you wasn’t careful, you couldn’t go a foot without something stinging you, or biting you, or stabbing you. The thorns in them prickly pear plants’d sling right into your pants, break off and stick in your leg for days, and fester. And there was a nasty little bush called “catclaw” that had long thorns with hooks at the ends, and that’d dig in and not let go.
Then there was the rattlers, fat diamondbacks slithering all over the ground, or coiled up on rocks, like ropes. They growed so long in that brasada a five-footer was called a “baby.” Some of ’em was eight feet long and fatter’n your fist. If you put your foot in the wrong place, and got bit, you’d have you a problem a lot worse’n a cactus stick.
“Watch your feet, Red,” I said to him.
I set out to find us a trail.
I knowed just how to travel through that wild country so you wouldn’t come outa it scratched, torn, or dead. When I was a kid, I loved prowling that brush. I always liked seeing new country, the wilder the better. The key is: you find you a animal trail—carved out by hooves or paws or claws—and follow it far as it goes, then you find you another. And lots of times, they lead straight to waterholes.
Me and Red found us a cow trail. It was about a foot wide and it snaked right through all them pears, clear and clean, like some South Texas Mex’kin had hacked it out with a machete. And that’s what we walked along all night. We come to a couple of little draws and we lapped that water like we was thirsty dogs. There was crackles and rustles and crunches on both sides of us, and a couple of times I seen the glitter of little eyes in the brush, and way off, we’d hear the howls and yelps of coyotes. But we was both carrying long sticks and we kept ’em scraping the ground in front of us, and we didn’t have no trouble—until daylight come.
Me and Red’d just waded through a little creek and we was picking up the trail on the other side, just turning a bend, when I heard something. It was low little grunts and sharp high pops—grunt-grunt, pop-pop, grunt-grunt, pop-pop.
Then, WHAMMO!
All of a sudden, the bottom part of my left leg felt like somebody’d took a knife and gashed me with it, fast and hard.
“Ayaaaaaa! Ayaaaaaaa!” I couldn’t help but holler.
“What? What? What?” That was Red. He was a way behind me.
I fell to the ground, grabbed my leg, hollered again.
“Ayaaaaa!”
I was in the middle of a ambush. All around me was a dozen balls of black bristly hair, about two feet high, a-grunting and a-popping. Only thing, it wasn’t really a ambush. It was more like a retreat. Fast as I seen ’em, they was gone. Crashed back into them prickly-pear stands. I couldn’t see a one no more.
All they left behind ’em was a kinda musky smell in the air.
“What the hell?” Red’d caught up behind me and when he seen me on the ground, blood spurting outa a hole in my pants, he looked more boogered’n when we was robbing that train. “What the Jesus!”
“Javelinas,” I said.
“What?”
“Goddamn javelinas! Herd of em.”
“What’s that?”
“Crazy little wild musk pigs.” I’d forgot that Red didn’t know nothing about the brush country. “They don’t mess with you if you don’t mess with them. But they got tusks sharp as razors, and can’t see worth a damn. One of ’em blowed right into me.”
“Aw, no. You okay, Little Snakes?”
Red still had that kerchief around his head, and he looked like a worried old grandma, crouched over my leg, watching that spurting blood. And I gotta say it, that gash did hurt like the devil! I knowed one old boy from way back that had a javelina tusk cut right through his hand—in through the palm and out the other side. But I checked out where I’d got stuck by the thing, and I pulled the skin this-a-way and that-a-way, and I wiped off as much blood as I could, and I didn’t see no bone.
“Thanks for the worry,” I said to Red. “But a pig’s better’n a posse.”
When the sun was good and up, we was eight miles or so from Spofford. It was devil’s country, all right. And me and Red looked like devils ourselves, thorns all over, a bloody kerchief tied around my pig cut. I wasn’t walking fast as I liked to, that stab’d give me a sore leg. But I figured we was far enough into the brush to be safe from a posse.
“Let’s see what we got,” I said.
We went over to a mesquite tree and I cleared away some grass and weeds from under it, and Red
spilled out his coffee sack.
More’n sixty years later, I can still see that big pile on that bare spot in the middle of that brasada: men’s wallets, women’s pocket-books, paper money, gold and silver coins, watches, broaches, rings. And when we opened the wallets and pocketbooks, out spilled more bills, jewelry, papers, name cards, combs, and stuff that we didn’t know what it was for.
For a little bit, me and Red just kneeled in front of it all.
“Jesus Christ,” was all he could say.
I didn’t say nothing right off. There was more money in that pile than Pa or any of them other farmers would’ve ever had if they worked them wore-out cotton fields until they died.
“Alright, Red,” I said finally. “I’ll sort the soft, you do the hard.”
For the next half hour, we set that money to a-jingling and a-rattling and a-rustling and a-crinkling. We didn’t have no paper or pencils to figure out exactly how much it was, so we just split it—good as we could—into two piles: silver dollar here, silver dollar there; ten-dollar bill here, ten-dollar bill there.
That other stuff, the rings and watches and such, they wasn’t as easy to split up, but we done it fair as we could—one ring here, one there, one watch here, one there. The things that wasn’t worth nothing—the papers and pictures and such—we stuffed down a armadillo hole.
After that, I done some rough figuring and come up that me and Red had more’n $2,000 each, cash money. The rest we wouldn’t know ’til we fenced it all. But it was at least hundreds of dollars more.
Was I sorry for it, for taking all that loot?
I didn’t care. I just didn’t care. That was the first time in my life I’d broke a federal law. But except for them two men in the special, all the folks we robbed on that train was riding in Pullmans. And anybody that’s got enough money to sleep in a Pullman most likely has money to spare.
Hell, the only thing I was sorry for was that we didn’t get more.
Later, I seen a story about the robbery in a newspaper and it told how we’d missed them upper berths and had passed up a little room with a rich Mex’kin man and his daughter who had $20,000 in money and jewelry. Goddamn! We’d seen that door, but we thought it was a toilet.
All Honest Men Page 10
