Sunstone

by RW Krpoun

  “That’s how I see it, too, but right now the damn fools are paying top dollar so its best to make hay while the sun shines.”

  “That’s true. My baby brother is taking care of my bonus money, and all it is with him is horseless carriages.”

  Ben waved a dismissive hand. “Fancy gimmicks. Good enough for the big cities, but not for anything really practical.” He pointed. “There, that’s the wagon you can have. US Army surplus, pretty stout. Those mules should do you fine as well.”

  The team did look solid and well-cared-for. “Thank you.” I offered my hand. “Good luck.”

  He had a solid grip. “Thanks-same to you. In this damned country you need all the luck you can get.”

  One of the guards led the mare across the tracks and tied her to the wagon while I explored the stuffy interiors of the boxcars. It was quickly apparent these two boxcars had been used as a dumping ground for odds and ends, odd-job lots, and the sort of junk a travelling enterprise acquires in said travels, plus for some reason quite a bit of dynamite. A short distance from the boxcars was a stack of fifty-pound sacks of grain that no one seemed attached to, so I threw four into the wagon.

  I went through both boxcars fast as the train chugged up to the station, getting a feel for what was available before settling into serious decisions. I loaded twelve cases of dynamite, each case holding two dozen one-pound sticks, ten thick rolls of fuse, and around three hundred blasting caps, the latter making me decidedly nervous. There were several bales of old khaki uniforms in one boxcar, and I used a dozen of them as padding, wrapping the boxes of blasting caps within several layers of mothball-scented cloth before tying them down with rope I found in the boxcars.

  The rest of the contents were military surplus equipment and partial or damaged cases of ammunition. Luckily the former included a score of tan Stetsons in a gunny sack-about half had been badly crushed in handling, but I found an intact one that fit, for which I was grateful. I threw a few dozen empty cartridge boxes and belts drawn from a dozen militaries into the wagon, along with a bundle of short-handled shovels, six mattocks, and a bunch of bayonets.

  I salvaged around three thousand rounds of 7x57mm from damaged cases and boxes gone soft and tearing from wet, using bags, boxes, and musty old Navy blankets as containers. I grabbed another thousand rounds of various calibers, including both .30-30 for Mac and .30-06 for Captain. Next came several boxes of 9mm for Nhi and best of all, five boxes of .45 ACP for the Model 1911, which was good news as I didn’t have much besides what was in the magazines-those new pistols are handy things, but they eat a lot of rounds.

  I wasn’t too proud to shift through loose rounds dumped helter-skelter into buckets and piles, leftover from trades or weapon demonstrations, I guess. I got a couple hundred rounds of .45 Long Colt, a popular round down here just as it is up north, and a hundred-odd cartridges for my Krag, plus five buckets filled as heavily as I could lift them with rounds grabbed randomly just for luck. There still were several thousand rounds left in the jumble, but time was passing and I had other business before me, the most pressing of which being staying alive. And there was not much room left in the wagon.

  Climbing on top of the wagon’s bench I checked to the northeast as guards and some hastily-hired peons loaded Burgmann’s crates and cases into the train’s five flatbed cars. The wealthy had already loaded onto the two passenger cars with the gunmen, and the engine crew were just finishing taking on coal and water.

  There was a solid column of dust to the northeast-Green Coat coming to secure recruits for his master and to cut the rail line. Lucky for Burgmann and his men the train was facing west, so they would escape. The peons, on the other hand, were in trouble, although the more enterprising weren’t waiting for the train; they snapped up the abandoned horse-drawn transport and were generating their own dust cloud heading away.

  “That’s them, huh?” Ben observed from alongside the train. He gestured towards the dust cloud when I turned to look.

  “Yeah.”

  “Crazy men with bare hands?”

  “Yup. How long until the train leaves?”

  He looked a touch uncertain about the whole business, but he glanced down at the locomotive. “About three minutes. I was coming to warn you, because once it pulls out keeping your wagon will be a full-time job.”

  “Thanks. I’m going to take care of one detail and then leave.”

  “See you around.”

  I was no expert, but I am the sort of man who picks up a lot of odd knowledge. Using a bayonet from the surplus gear I broke open the four remaining cases of dynamite. I cut and discarded the first yard of fuse on a fresh spool, then cut and lit three two-foot sections, watching them closely. They were burning at about ten seconds a foot, which was fine for my purposes. Cutting eight five-foot sections, I used the tool I had found in the gear to crimp blasting caps to one end of each length; these cap-tipped fuse-ends were inserted into sticks of dynamite, two per case, and the stick gently crimped around the fuse. I shoved the fuse-bearing sticks towards the bottom of their cases, careful not to foul the lay of the fuses. Carefully stretching the eight fuses toward the door, I dug out my match case as the train sounded its whistle and the links crashed as the locomotive lurched into motion.

  Holding three matches in my teeth, I drew out a fourth and stashed the case. Flicking the match alight on the boxcar’s dirty floor, I lit two fuses, flicked another alight and continued down the line. I got all eight fuses going within a couple seconds of each other; a rail-builder would have sneered at my methods, but I was confident that at least one burning fuse would reach a blasting cap, and one was all I needed. More would be better, but even if only one charge went off Green Coat would be looking elsewhere for explosives.

  The train was pulling clear of the station with some peons in hot pursuit, while the rest wandered into the now unguarded area, looking around and chattering to each other. As Ben predicted, there were more than a few sets of eyes on my wagon.

  Unslinging the Krag, I swung myself up onto the seat and released the brake, setting the carbine across my lap as I caught up the reins. I had just slapped the mule’s backs with the lines and gotten then going when a heavy-set peon with his hat in his hand and a big ‘I am your friend, Yankee’ grin on his face started to step in front of them. I pulled the Colt and put a bullet close to his ear, which sent him scrambling off. No one else thought I looked like a likely candidate for new friendship as I rattled away from the boxcars.

  My wagon was facing the wrong way, but instead of trying to cut around the station I got the mules to trotting and headed along the rail line until I was clear of Arteaga, such as it was, then swung around and headed down the road that cut across the tracks and ran north, cutting back through the railhead in the process. The peons were still milling around the station trying to sort out what to do next, and if I had had better Spanish I would have stopped and told them exactly what to do, which was to discard everything and take to their heels.

  Because a line of figures a quarter-mile distant were advancing at a slow lurching walk from the northeast, with small flanking groups moving out at a clumsy trot due east and due south; Green Coat obviously intended to trap as many of the potential recruits as possible.

  I slowed once I was a hundred yards from the rail line, badly torn: I hated abandoning those people, but with a language barrier I wasn’t going to accomplish a whole lot in the time I had to work with.

  At least they had noticed the approaching figures, and while too many were shifting around to get a better look at the odd group that was approaching the smarter ones were taking to their heels. They caught a break a minute or so later, what Captain would call an unintended consequence: the boxcar containing the leftover dynamite blew up with a truly spectacular blast with several smaller explosions sort of intermingled into the initial eruption. It converted itself and the boxcars to either side into kindling, and knocked down a dozen or so bystanders, several of whom were certainly seri
ously injured.

  The explosion did what common sense didn’t: it got the mass of peons moving, and luckily they instinctively headed away from the blast, which was also away from Green Coat’s advancing main body.

  The mules hadn’t liked the explosion, although they didn’t bolt, but it took me a bit to get them calmed down; by the time I could return my attention to the scene the railhead was deserted save for a few people tending family members injured by the explosion. I regretted those injured parties’ suffering, but took consolation in that they weren’t going to survive the advancing crazies in any case.

  The eastbound flanking force was two hundred yards away and closing on my position at a tireless if ungainly trot, save one member who was lagging badly. I grinned and flipped up my carbine’s leaf sight, delicately sliding the sighting bar to two hundred twenty-five yards. Laying down on the wagon’s seat I lined up the straggler and squeezed the trigger.

  The shot hit ten yards short and about a foot to the right; the straggler skidded to a halt, did a double-take, and then turned and raced away. Unfortunately for him running directly away was no harder a shot than coming directly at the shooter. I adjusted for the wind and distance and saw dust puff from his jacket as the round punched him off his feet.

  Sitting back up as he thrashed away his life in the tall grass, I took up the reins and urged the mules into a trot. Green Coat was out his dynamite and a crazy-herder, and maybe his recruitment here would not be as fruitful as he had expected.

  You take your comfort where you find it.

  I only had an hour of daylight left, but there was enough moon to see the road by so I kept the wagon rolling until midnight, stopping only to water the animals. With the grain I could push the mules hard for a while, and a while was all I needed. Water wasn’t too hard to find, but I was lacking any sort of food, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that, and these were hardly the only meals I had missed in my life.

  I slept from midnight until about an hour before dawn, and sunrise found me rolling down the road at least two miles from where I had slept. With some misgivings I had fused a charge amongst the dynamite and had saddled the mare; in case of trouble I could flee on the mare and keep the dynamite out of enemy hands, although I did not like to think about the mules’ fate.

  By my journal it was October thirteenth, which meant if Brother Paul had the right of it the necromancer only had thirteen days and today left to do whatever it was that he was planning to do. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t make his move while Green Coat was off securing the flanks, so I figured that I could get to the scene of the massacre well before the killing started.

  Thinking on that as the miles jolted away under the iron-rimmed wheels of the wagon I wondered what the delay was. After all, the necromancer had apparently been planning this for a long time-why had he not raised his crazies and moved on the orphanage before the important period began? I made a note to ask Brother Paul about that when I got back.

  I pushed as hard as the mules’ health would allow, which given that they were both big brutes who hadn’t been worked too hard in the previous weeks and were eating all the grain they wanted, was a pretty brisk rate. The mare was keeping up without issue either, trailing on a twenty-foot lead line for her comfort.

  There were no signs of life at the farms and tiny villages I passed, and I didn’t stop to check on any despite my hollow stomach. Speed was more important than food-I needed to get back to the orphanage with the news and hopefully the dynamite and ammunition.

  The necromancer’s minions had been at work on the road for certain: twice I found carts with their animals slaughtered in the traces and their cargoes unlooted; in the second I found half a case of canned corn, for which I was deeply grateful, and several empty tequila bottles, which I took.

  An hour before sunset I stopped at a shallow stream, rubbed down the animals, set out grain and picketed them to graze. After napping for two hours I hitched them up and set off again, much to the mules’ vocal displeasure.

  We travelled through much of the night and I nodded off a few times as the weary mules plodded along, a sour-smelling old khaki tunic draped over my shoulders. At three in the morning I pulled the cart off into the lee of a ruined shack I knew was about four miles from the orphanage and watered the animals. We got about three hours’ sleep and were back rolling across the rutted road well before sunrise.

  Jolting along, eating cold corn from a ragged hole in a can with a mess kit spoon stamped with a double eagle crest, I watched the darkness and tried to organize my thoughts, which was not an easy task. I was tired, fairly hungry, thirsty, and nursing a variety of bruises and aches from getting tossed around by explosions and then riding a spring-less wagon fast and hard across terrible Mexican roads for more hours than I could remember. If I survived this mess I was going to use this to explain to my brother that there was no way one of those fragile contraptions he was so impressed with could ever make the same trip.

  My plan, such as it was, consisted of arriving at the presido at the crack of dawn, just light enough to see what was what, a time most men are not at their best. I was hoping the Chuj would be minimally alert, because getting shot at while sitting on a wagon loaded with ammunition and explosives was not what I wanted to do.

  As I drew close and the horizon brightened I stopped to pull the fuse and cap from the dynamite; it was making me too nervous.

  My timing was off: the sun was nearly clear of the horizon as I rumbled down the last half mile of the road, and it clearly illuminating the cart the Chuj had dragged across the rutted lane as a barricade. Apparently the death of their friends or orders from on high had prompted better security, or maybe they were tired of seeing us scamper in and out like prairie dogs popping out of their holes.

  There was a Chuj swaddled in a heavy blanket on the cart’s seat with a rifle across his lap and another one clumsily clambering out of a bedroll well to the side of the road. I obligingly pulled the wagon to a stop well short of the barricade and hitched the tunic higher around my neck as I waited for Bedroll to get himself sorted out and come over. There are few things more disarming than a cooperative and unexcited man.

  The cart was blocking the road, but the ditch to the left wouldn’t present much trouble and there was nothing to the right to impede my passage except Bedroll, who was juggling a shotgun while he struggled into a coat, hissing at the morning chill. I expect to these Yucatan boys it was pretty brisk up here.

  I slumped into the tunic, draped cape-like over my shoulders, the arms hanging empty, and waited. When Bedroll finally reached me I jerked my chin ahead and to the left. “Provisiones,” I slurred, then as if struck by an idea I lifted the half-full tequila bottle from the seat and offered it to him.

  The Chuj, a youngster with a broad, flat face and only about half his teeth, looked startled, then grinned and accepted the bottle, holding it up for his friend to see. Cart Bench grunted something and climbed down, keeping the blanket around him as Bedroll pulled the cork with his teeth and took a long pull of creek water.

  He broke a tooth when I shot Cart Bench twice in the chest-having turned towards his friend with his bounty my Colt’s muzzle was only about a foot from his left ear. He spun, spitting water and blood, dropping the bottle and trying to get his shotgun into play as I shot him square in the forehead, blood and brains chasing his hat from his head.

  I gave Cart Bench one square in the brain pan for good luck and to deny Green Coat a recruit, and cracked the reins against the mules’ backs, rising up to shrug off the tunic as the wagon bounced and jolted around the barrier and then back onto the road. Tossing my hat over my shoulder into the wagon bed I urged the mules into the closest thing to a run that they were willing to make-you can run a horse to death, but a mule wouldn’t have anything to do with such nonsense. Luckily these mules were apparently military surplus, because the gunfire hadn’t upset them.

  We pounded down the road into plain view of the old fort, my imag
ination playing merry hell with the thought of the boxes of blasting caps getting such treatment in the same wagon bed as cases of dynamite, but the wisdom of it was proven out by a rifle shot from behind me and to my left. It came just close enough to get the mules’ attention, and they picked up the pace a bit.

  The shooter tried four more times, but he was a good piece away and apparently excited or not too bright-as best I could tell he was shooting at the wagon instead of the team, and missing pretty broadly at that. Although you would not suppose that jungle-dwellers would produce good long-range marksmen.

  Our failure to establish some sort of signal system for returning in a hurry was weighing heavily upon my mind at this point-if no one at the gate recognized me, I could end up shot by friendly forces, or made a stationary target outside the gates while more Chuj rallied to the alarm. I don’t know how tight-knit a community those fellows were from, but I expect they would have a desire to address certain issues with the Yankees who kept killing their compatriots.

  The Lord was watching over me, though, and the gate began creaking open even as we crossed the first range stakes; the mules were encouraged by the sight and picked it up another step, so that we pounded through the gate in decent style and an enormous cloud of dust.

  A few rifles were barking from the wall above me as I hauled back on the reins-as is commonplace, once mules decide to get going, they are not easy to convince to stop. Mac, a rare grin splitting his mug, was springing down the steps from the wall as I set the brake and the gates slammed closed. “I owe Captain a dollar.”

  I fished my hat out of the wagon bed. “You came closer to winning than you might imagine.”

  Nhi crashed into me from a full run to a hug as I jumped down from the wagon, and for a minute it was certainly all worthwhile.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Luckily the Chuj are spread pretty thin; after those two it was a straight run to the gate,” I concluded the tale of my actions as I raked bits of scrambled eggs and chicken into a fresh tortilla. My audience was Brothers Andrew, Lars, and Paul, Captain, Mac, Nhi, and an uninvited Tobias.