Jailbreak

by Giles Tippette

  I said, “What the hell you got there?”

  “Flares,” he said. He tapped the nails at the end. “You use these to jam ’em into a cross tie so they’ll stay upright.” He gestured at the tops which appeared to have some kind of little cardboard caps over the ends. “Then you yank these off and they shoot out a red flame and black smoke. Engineer sees them and he stops.”

  “I’ve seen them,” I said. “Just never up close. Why do they use them?”

  “Might be they’s trouble ahead on the track. Might be this station has passengers or freight. But they’ll stop.”

  “Then what?”

  Lew grinned. “Then me and the good capitán step up in the cab of the locomotive and commandeer the damn train in the name of the policía federal. We’re hot on the trail of some gringo bandidos.”

  “Thought you said the train was going the wrong way.”

  “It is. But hell, Justa, them damn things run backwards. Ain’t you ever seen one backing on to a siding?”

  “We are going to back all the way to Nuevo Laredo?”

  “That is unless you want to wait for one along about eleven tonight. Personally I don’t recommend it. Far as I’m concerned I can feel the hot breath of them rurales on the back of my neck right now.”

  I shrugged. “Let’s hope it works. I’ve had about enough of that desert. And so has my horse. You sure this train ain’t guarded?”

  He shook his head. “Naw. They got a brakeman and a conductor. At least according to Pancho in there. But we ought to be able to handle them.”

  I said, “Well, you go in there and question the hell out of that son of a bitch. Make it clear we’re going to let him go when we leave. That is if he hasn’t lied to us. If he lies... well, you know what to tell him. I’m going out and look around.”

  I walked on outdoors and taken a long look down the rails that led to the border. They just seemed to stretch out forever, running across that plain straight as an arrow and seeming to come together far off in the distance to merge into one rail. All around me I could see the heat waves shimmering off the basin floor and just a few minutes back outside was sufficient to remind me of just how miserable and uncomfortable and dangerous that barren plain was. Well, that train was going to have to stop. That was all there was to it. We had to stop that train somehow because I couldn’t see us making it another sixty miles, not even with the horses watered and rested. And I couldn’t see us dodging the rurales much longer.

  I heard a step behind me. It was Norris. He had a very determined look on his face. He said, “I want to talk to you and I want to talk right now.”

  “All right,” I said. I looked him over. He was pretty bedraggled-looking, nowhere near our usually neatly dressed and groomed family businessman. I said, “And I got a few things I want to say to you, also. So start talking.”

  A little zephyr had come up and we stood there facing each other in the heat and the swirling dust. I was good and angry and it appeared he was too, though he’d always prided himself on not losing his temper—a claim I’d always thought was somewhat disputed by a certain amount of facts. I saw Hays come to the door of the shack, sucking on his teeth and drinking at a dipper of water. With a motion of my hand I waved him back. I reckon he understood quick enough because he suddenly disappeared and shut the wooden door after him.

  “Spit it out,” I said. “Before it poisons you.” I had taken note of where my horse was hitched next to the shack on the shady side. There was something in my saddlebags I was mighty interested in showing Mr. Norris Williams, but I wanted him to get all his licks in first.

  Norris put a finger out at me. He said, “Let’s get something quite straight here. No one asked you to come riding to my rescue like Sir Galahad. I was quite capable of attending to my own business.” His face was starting to flush. “You seem to have this inherent feeling that none of us can function without your benevolent supervision. Well, I am here to tell you that in my case that does not apply. I did not approve of your arrival, I did not approve of your leaving business matters back home, I did not approve of your approach and language to me, and I certainly did not approve of the unlawful method you took to free me from my illegal incarceration!”

  “You through?” I asked him mildly.

  He drew himself up. “I am just beginning. For most of my adult life you have taken the presumptuous and uncalled-for assumption that I could not handle myself in any situation outside of one where books and papers and bankers were involved. Well, let me make it clear to you that I had that situation well in hand. I had been falsely jailed and through some contacts I’d made with my jailers—by the way, the sympathetic jailers that you drew guns on—I was in the process of availing myself of some legal counsel that would have settled the whole misunderstanding without your untimely interference.”

  My hackles starting to rise a little sooner than I’d meant, I said, “How much did you give them?”

  “How much did I give who? What are you talking about?”

  “Your goddam sympathetic jailers. Them two peons that was going to get you legal counsel. Come on, how much money did you give them?”

  He stiffened. “I don’t believe that’s any of your business.”

  I said, matter-of-factly, “Oh, yeah it is. Because it is all going on your bill and I want to know how much more to add. If you were stupid enough to give a couple of jailers what little money they hadn’t already stolen from you then you ain’t got the sense God gives a piss ant. Them two old boys couldn’t spell lawyer much less get in to see one, even if they had been so disposed to do so in your behalf.”

  He put out his finger again. “Now you look here! I’m tired of your high-handed ways. I am tired of you treating me as if I could not manage my affairs in your so-called rough-and-tumble world. If you’d of stayed out of it I’d of come home with clear title to that land and had it cleared of nesters. But oh, no, you had to barge in!”

  I said, “How much money you leave home with?”

  “That is none of your business.”

  “I can find out damn quick when we get home. If we get home. Now, how much? Two hundred? Three? Five? All I got to do is go the bank or look at your accounts.”

  He stared at me a long moment. He finally said, “Around six hundred.” He said it in such a still voice I couldn’t quite hear him.

  I said, “How much?”

  He glared at me. He was flushing and no mistake. He yelled, “SIX HUNDRED! ARE YOU SATISFIED!”

  “And how much of it have you got left?”

  He glared at me, his mouth a thin line.

  “How much?”

  He said, bitterly, “You know how much. Nothing.”

  “You get the clear title?”

  Boy, his face was blazing. He said, “You know damn good and well I didn’t. Justa, I warn you, I’m about to take a poke at you. You have insulted me, degraded me, avoided me and I don’t know what else.”

  I said, “Well, get ready for a little what else.” I walked over to my horse and rummaged in my saddlebags until I located the clear Spanish land-grant title Luís had gotten for me. I went back and waved it in his face. I said, “You see this? Take a look at it. Take a damn good look. It cost me fifty dollars and about fifteen minutes of my time. Do you have any idea what it cost to have you go after the same goddam thing? Would you like an itemized account?”

  He had taken the paper and was looking at it. All the injured pride and anger were rapidly running out of him. He kept looking at the paper as if he didn’t believe it. Then he said, with some heat, “Well, maybe you didn’t have the same difficulties I did.”

  I pointed at the shack. “You mean Davilla? I didn’t have any trouble with him. You want me to fetch him out so you can punch him in the mouth again?”

  He said, “He’s got a broken wrist.”

  I said, “Hah! I recall an occasion that didn’t stop you from kicking a guy in the balls who was shot all to hell just because he’d kicked you in the ba
lls some days previous.”

  At least he had the good grace to look ashamed. He said, “I’m not proud of that and I’d thank you to quit bringing it up.” Then he looked at me, trying once again for righteous indignation. “But that ain’t got nothing to do with you butting into my business. I was getting matters handled.”

  I said, “Let me tell you, Norris, you are my business. And everything else that has to do with the family is my business. I’m the goddam boss, or have you forgot?”

  Looking away he said, “No, I haven’t forgot. How could anybody forget around you. But I wanted to go on record as saying I was doing fine on my own.”

  He was starting to exasperate me. I poked him in the chest. I said, with anger, “Listen, Norris, you are my brother and I care about you. We got the same blood and the same mother and dad, but I swear if you don’t stop that you-was-handling-matters bullshit I’m going to knock your goddamn head off. Listen, you dumb shit, you couldn’t have got out of that jail with ten Mexican lawyers and a Gatling gun because you don’t know how they operate in Mexico. You don’t know nothing about it! And that’s you all over. You ain’t content to know books and business, you’ve got to mix in with things you don’t know the first thing about! You could have got your sorry ass killed!”

  He said, “Don’t you yell at me!”

  “I damn sure will yell at you! Do you have any idea how many men you got killed over your stupidity? Fortunately none of them were mine or I’d beat you within an inch of your life!”

  He said, “You rolled a bomb under your own brother’s bunk! A bomb!”

  “It appeared to be the only way to move you. I’m just amazed you weren’t pigheaded enough to just sit there and let it blow the ass off you. We didn’t have no time. Do you understand that? I didn’t have time to sit there and debate the question with you. A lot of men’s lives were on the line! Every son Dad has was either in that jail or right outside. And there you sit like some frog on a log. Aaaah!”

  I’d never wanted to hit anybody as bad in my life. It was taking every bit of self-control I had to just content myself with jabbing him in the chest. I finally got to doing it so hard he had to fall back a step.

  He said, “Given time—”

  I cut him off. “And another thing. Considerable money has been lost on this affair, both as cash outlay and as time lost from the ranch. I can guarantee you are going to pay back every cent. You can look to have deductions made from your salary and from your share of the profits until you pay back the business what your harebrained actions have cost it!”

  A voice at my elbow said, “Justa, quit yelling! Shut up!”

  I looked around. It was Ben. I gave him an amazed glance. I said, “Who the hell you think you’re talking to?”

  “You. Everybody in the shack can hear you. It ain’t fitting.”

  I said, “Let them. I don’t give a damn.”

  He pointed off to the southwest. “Then maybe you’ll give a damn about them.”

  I looked where he was pointing. Outlined against the gray of the far-off mountains I could see a string of little black dots. I could not judge how far off they were. The heat waves and the sameness of the country made it difficult to read distances. I said, “Send Lew out here and tell the rest of the men to commence cinching up their saddles and collecting provisions and water. We may have to make a run for it.”

  “What about Señor Elizandro?”

  I just shrugged. There was nothing I could say. If we had to ride for it he was dead either way, whether we left him to the rurales or took him with us. Ben went inside and, as I turned to go to my own horse, I said over my shoulder to Norris, “And if I miss my wedding and lose Nora on account of you, you’re going to wish you had stayed on top of that bomb.”

  Lew came out as I was finishing with my horse. We walked around to the other side of the shack and I pointed out the dots. Lew shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted. He said, “Hard as hell to tell. I’d make it maybe three miles. But that’s a guess. It could be two.”

  “When is that train due?”

  He jerked his head toward the shack. “Timetable they got tacked up says one-thirty.”

  I looked at my watch. It was two minutes after one. I said, “I hope to hell a miracle happens and they are on time.”

  Lew give me a glance. He said, “You loco? This is Mexico. The only thing you can depend on being on time around here is bad luck.”

  I put my watch away. I said, “Then it’s going to be a near thing.”

  He was studying the riders in the distance. “One thing, they can’t make no time in this heat. They appear to be walking their mounts. I don’t think they know we’re here. I figure they’re just from a station back in those mountains that have been sent to cut our trail. Maybe we moved a little faster than they thought.”

  “It’s still going to be close,” I said, grimly. “I don’t see how we can make it horseback, not if these patrols keep popping up all the way to the border. We ain’t got that many guns left.”

  I had Lew assemble everyone in front of the shack. I pointed out the danger presented by the rurales and told them what we were going to do about the train. I said, “It could be a tight thing. It could be that some of you are going to have to lay down some covering fire to keep the police back while we stop the train and ready a cattle car to take the horses. The horses are important because we will have to stop short of Nuevo Laredo and cross the river on horseback to get to the Texas side. I cannot promise you what is going to happen. All I can tell you is that you’d better do your best if you want to see another sunset.”

  After that Lew translated for Elizandro’s two men. I’d stepped into the building to check on Señor Elizandro. He was looking better, having lost a considerable amount of his infection and having eaten and drunk water. I explained the situation to him and asked what he wanted to do should we have to leave on horseback. He said, “I ride.” He said it weakly, but he said it with conviction.

  I was kneeling by him. I rose to my feet. “All right,” I said. “I will see that you are put on horseback.”

  After that I went to the man still tied in his chair. I didn’t know if his name was Pancho or not, but I got another bottle of tequila out of the cupboard and assisted him with drinking as much of it as I could get down his gullet. I wasn’t going to kill him to keep him from telling the rurales, but I was going to try and get him in such a shape that he wouldn’t make much sense. He was a willing participant.

  After that I went back outside. Everyone was milling around, looking up the track and then turning to trace the progress of the rural police. I took Ben aside to give him his instructions. I said, “Lew and I, along with Capitán Davilla, are going to take the cab of the locomotive. But Lew says the man inside has told him there will be a conductor and a brakeman on the train. They’ll be at the rear. They are your job. I would prefer you didn’t shoot them unless you have to. If you can, I want you to put them in the caboose and keep them still and not let them cause any trouble.”

  He shrugged. “Hell, I can do that, Justa.”

  I said, “But now comes the hard part. Let’s figure we stop this train and get it going in the other direction before those rurales get here. It’s a good bet they’ll be able to tap into the telegraph wire and we’ll have hell all the way to the border. If we get this train, I’m going to have us stop after about a mile. Be sure you have your carbine with you. You’ve got to shoot out another wire so they can’t telegraph ahead and have a train of soldiers coming to meet us.”

  He turned his head and studied me for a considerable moment.

  I said, “What?”

  He spit in the dust. He said, “I never reckoned I’d tell you this, but I might as well now.” He paused as if summoning some kind of strength. “You better not ever tell anybody I said this but I’ve bragged on you on occasion. On the way you think. Not often, you understand, but I’ve done it.”

  I looked away. I was plenty embarrassed. I f
inally said, “Well, that makes us even. I’ve bragged on you too. On the way you say foolish things.” Then I turned around and walked off.

  Norris came up to me. He said, stiff-lipped, “What can I do?”

  I studied him a moment. I didn’t see no remorse in his face, but then I hadn’t expected any. I said, “Well, first, you are liable to be firing through one of those windows at the rurales while we’re getting the train stopped. Once we do that I want you to open the door of the first car behind the coal tender and get all those cattle out of there. There’ll be a ramp in there they use to load and unload the cattle. Get that in position to load the horses. And get the men in. Have Senor Elizandro loaded in. Reckon you can handle it? You like danger. Might be a few bullets whizzing around.”

  He looked at me and then stalked away. Norris was going to learn or he wasn’t. It was up to him.

  After that there wasn’t much to do except stand out in the heat and look up the tracks and then back at the advancing rural policemen. The only sounds were the dancing of the dry wind and the occasional buzz of a fly trying to find his way into the coolness of the shack.

  Lew was standing by me. I said, “You like cold buttermilk and them little garden onions? Them little green onions?”

  “Yeah,” he said. He wasn’t paying me the slightest bit of attention.

  I said, “That’s what I’d dearly love to have right now—a big glass of cold buttermilk and some green onions.”

  He looked around. “What?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “How close you figure they are?”

  He rubbed his bewhiskered jaw and said, “Maybe twenty minutes away, maybe more. Hard to tell. I got to figure their horses are rode down by now. They won’t come in a charge, not unless they all of a sudden want to be afoot.”

  I looked around. Capitán Davilla, along with the rest of the men, was resting in front of the shack in what little shade he could find. I said, “How’s your compadre? I assume by now he knows what we’re up to.”