by Will Cook
The conductor kept the Mexican’s admirers from getting aboard the train, and they stood there on the platform, talking and calling their good byes, and some of the young girls cried. Hinshaw pushed his way through them and paused for a moment in the vestibule, making an eeny-meeny-miney-mo decision as to which coach to take. He took a left turn. People were jamming the aisle, finding seats, stowing luggage, and he pardoned his way through and sat down across from the Texan and his prisoner, and none too soon for he edged an irritated drummer out of it. The man said something unkind and went on down the aisle, which was just as well for Hinshaw had toyed with the idea of hitting him in the mouth.
The Texan’s voice pulled Hinshaw’s attention around.
“You’ll have to move, sonny.” The Texan looked at him with eyes as unfriendly as two shotgun bores.
Hinshaw looked around and found the coach crowded. “I paid for a seat, and I’m sittin’ in it. If you don’t think that’s right, ask the conductor to look at my ticket.”
“That was an official request, not an argument. I’m Captain Guthrie McCabe, E Company, Texas Frontier Battalion.”
“Marty Hinshaw. My pleas….” He stopped and stared as McCabe pulled his long-barreled pistol and, with the muzzle, flicked aside Hinshaw’s coat, looking for hidden firearms. “Why, you nosy old… .”
“Now don’t get your collar too tight,” McCabe said gendy. He put his pistol away. “Just didn’t want some armed stranger sittin’ across from me. Just a precaution, you understand.”
The prisoner smiled, revealing straight, white teeth. “He is a nervous man, amigo. A sick old man with a bad leg who will never get where he’s going.” He raised his free hand and stroked his mustache. “I am grateful for the company. We will talk and pass away the monotony of a dull trip.”
“About the only thing I ever say to Mexicans,” Hinshaw said, “is get to work and get out of the way.”
The Mexican’s face pulled into severe planes, and a dark anger came to his eyes. “It is the kind of thing I expect from a Texan. Are you God, señor? Are you better than me? You are a fool. I have killed with my hand thirty just like you, proud Texans who only spit on the Mexicans.”
Guthrie McCabe smiled faintly. “This ain’t just any tamale-eater, son. This is Pedro Vargas, the bandit they call El Jefe.”
“Well what do you know,” Hinshaw said. “Three years ago I saw Laredo a week after your bunch rode through. They were still burying the dead.”
“It was a glorious day for Mexico,” Vargas said.
“Your government’s ashamed of you,” McCabe said flatly. “Don’t use the name of Mexico to excuse your hate and killings. There’s a new rope waiting for you in Laredo, amigo.” Pedro Vargas smiled and shrugged his shoulders, dismissing the idea. This did not bother McCabe. “It’s kind of a game between Vargas and me, son. I’m bound and determined to see that he hangs, and he’s determined not to. I’ve been chasing this rattlesnake since Nineteen One. Going on four years now. Twice I had him, and twice he slipped away. But this time it’s going to be different, ain’t it, Pedro?”
“You ask the wrong man, señor. I have much gold and many friends. Texas is a long way away, eh?” He reached out and poked McCabe in the chest with his finger, and paper in an inside coat pocket rustled slightly. “The warrant, she is no good in Louisiana, eh? You break the law a little, so I break the law a little, too. Why you make such a big fuss? Because I shoot you in the leg? Señor, I am sorry. I meant to shoot you in the heart.” He moved his leg suddenly and jarred McCabe’s thigh, and the old man grunted in quick pain.
Hinshaw then saw the growing stain of blood that had been hidden beneath the folds of McCabe’s coat. “That’s a fresh wound!”
“Barely six hours old,” Vargas said, laughing softly. “You will not take me back to hang, old man. By morning the fever will come and the sickness, and, when your eyes get heavy, I will be on you. I will sleep, but you will not. How long do you think you can last, eh?”
“I’ll last,” Guthrie McCabe said. He looked at Martin Hinshaw. “Son, you’d better ask the conductor for another seat. One’s enough to watch. I can’t handle two.”
“You don’t have to watch me,” Hinshaw said. “I wouldn’t help this greaser if….”
“Don’t tell me the story of your life,” McCabe said testily. “I can see it for myself. You’ve got a suit about gone in the seat, and your boots are run over, and your luggage ain’t much. Vargas buys men like you for a hundred dollars. He likes the down-and-outers because they’ve got a grudge against something, and, when he’s through with you, he sends you down the road or leaves you layin’ beside it.” He let his eyes roam past Hinshaw to all the passengers. There was no trust at all in this old man. “I got the most wanted bandit in Mexico chained to my wrist. This train has to stop three times between here and Brownsville. Any of those places it could be boarded. If that happens, bullets are going to be zippin’ around thick as flies around a honey house. So, if you’re just a nice young fella down on your luck, you, of course, won’t have any interest in stayin’. However, if one of Vargas’s New Orleans’ pals stuffed a hundred dollars in your pocket and told you to get him away from me, of course, you’ll think this seat is just fine.”
“You have a nice way of putting that,” Hinshaw said. “I paid for this seat, and I’ll sit in it. If you don’t like that then go to blazes. Think what you damned please. The way my luck’s been running lately, I could buy a suit with two pair of pants and burn a hole in the coat.”
“Such pride,” Vargas said. “Put two dollars in a Texan’s pocket, and he thinks he is king.” He laughed. “When I go to the cantina and hear a song that pleases me, I snap my fingers, and one of my men opens a bag of silver, and I throw a handful at the señorita’s feet.”
“Yeah, I know how you operate,” Hinshaw said. “I saw you at the station kissin’ and huggin’ the girls. Take away the silver bangles and you’d just be another greaser with slick hair.”
The insult touched a raw spot in Vargas’s mind, and he would have lunged out of his seat had not McCabe jerked him back. “He don’t like to be called a greaser, son. He likes to think of himself as Pedro Vargas, although he likely took the name off a headstone. He’s El Jefe, friend of the poor and Texan-hater. But his ma was half Apache, and he never knew who his pa was. So you’ve got to watch that talk. When a man’s got cur blood in him, a growl sets him off.”
“Before I die,” Vargas swore softly, “I will cut out your heart, McCabe.”
“You might try,” McCabe said. “Vargas, you just can’t understand that Texans hate Mexicans, and Mexicans hate Texans. We didn’t start it. It began a long time before either of us was born. But we ain’t going to change it, either. Likely it’ll never be changed. To a Texan you’ll always be a greaser, and we’ll always be gringos to you. Now you wouldn’t like it none if us Texans came across the border in bands and raided your towns just because our grandpas died at the Alamo. You never learned to let a thing go, Vargas. Hell, we can get along without liking each other.”
The conductor came down the aisle with a distressed look on his face. He didn’t like the law riding his prisoner in a day coach full of people. He stopped and punched Hinshaw’s ticket. McCabe fished two fingers around in his vest pocket and handed the conductor two twenty-dollar gold pieces.
“You should have bought your ticket at the station,” the conductor said petulantly.
“I should have written to my mother once a month, too, but I didn’t.” McCabe put his change away. “At the first stop clear this coach, and before you give me some stupid argument, let me remind you that I’m a peace officer of the State of Texas, and I can clear this whole damned train in the interest of public safety. In the meantime, bring me a telegraph blank. Better make it a whole pad. I’ve got a lot of friends I want to write to.”
The conductor, who was undisputed boss of the train, was irritated at being told what to do, yet he knew the authority McCabe ha
d and went on down the aisle, punching tickets.
“We’re still in Louisiana,” McCabe said, “so he’ll take his time, knowing I can’t do anything about it. But he’ll mind when we cross the border into Texas.”
“How long have you been shoving the law down people’s throats?” Hinshaw asked.
“Since Eighteen Sixty-Seven,” McCabe said. “I’m sixty and then some, but I don’t look it.”
“I’d have sworn you were seventy,” Hinshaw said.
“Now if there’s one thing I hate, it’s some young squirt with a smart mouth,” McCabe snapped. “Sonny, when I was thirty-one, I was the only peace officer in an eighty-square-mile piece of Texas. I battled varmints, Indians, the Army, and just about everything else that got in the way. For ten years I made up my own laws as I went along, and I didn’t have any warrants, either, because there wasn’t a judge who could write one out. My authority I wore on my hip, and people say that times have changed, and I guess they have because I traded that old single-action off and got me one of those self-cockers which speeds up my authority when I need it speeded up.” He patted his holstered revolver, then looked out the window at the scenery as the train moved along.
Hinshaw studied him. He was an old he-bear, all right, tough as Mexican beef and mean as a clawed cat. Hinshaw could well imagine the trail this man had left behind. He’d probably put a few in boothills scattered over the state and likely had more enemies than a man could count. But he would have friends, too, for he was the kind who drew to him staunch men, cut from the same tough cloth. Of course, there would be women here and there who would weep like blazes when he got it, and Marty Hinshaw was pretty sure that was the way McCabe would go, with a couple of spent shells in his gun, his enemy dead nearby, and no overpowering regrets about anything.
He looked at the Mexican and found him with his eyes closed, but Hinshaw knew he wasn’t sleeping. The Mexican bandido was biding his time like a fox watching a hen on a roost, and, when the sap ran out of McCabe, he’d make his move, and it would be fatal to the Texas Ranger.
But none of this was really Hinshaw’s business, and he kept telling himself that he had learned long ago what to poke his nose into and what to keep it out of. Yet he felt a surge of respect for this old man, a compulsion to invite himself into this game, as though he owed the old man a debt that had to be paid off now, before it was too late. Hinshaw did not really understand the source of this feeling, but it was there, too strong to ignore.
McCabe’s leg was giving him a fit. Hinshaw detected the tightness around the mouth that pain built, yet the old man was a stoic.
It took the conductor more than an hour to bring the telegram blanks, but McCabe didn’t voice any objection over the delay. He took the blanks, thanked the conductor, then fished a pencil out of his pocket. He handed the whole thing to Martin Hinshaw. “You write for me.” He thought a moment. “Sheriff Lyle Dunniger, Victoria, Texas. Have in custody, Pedro Vargas, alias El Jefe. Am on westbound out of New Orleans. Will arrive at your station.” He looked at his watch. “One fifty-two a.m., day after tomorrow. Suspect attempt will be made to remove prisoner while train stopped. Request yourself and five deputies at my disposal until the train departs. Sign that . . . McCabe, Texas Rangers.” Hinshaw finished it. McCabe read it then snapped his fingers to get the conductor’s attention.
The man came up, annoyed at the peremptory summons, yet he took the wire and three dollars, then went forward with it. McCabe sighed and seemed more at ease.
Pedro Vargas stopped looking out the window and said: “In thirty-nine hours, I will be a free man. Don’t you think a Mexican can read the telegraph code? There will be a hundred bandidos waiting in Victoria.” He laughed softly. “Five deputies.”
“At my calculation,” McCabe said, “one good Texan is worth thirty Mexicans in a fight. The odds are on our side, Vargas.”
Marty Hinshaw shook his head. “McCabe, my old man had pride like that. He carried it right to the grave with him.”
“Then he didn’t die whining,” McCabe said. “Now shut up. I want to rest.”
It had stormed badly the night Hinshaw had left. Stormed outside the house and inside, too, Hinshaw remembered, for his father had always been a man of violent argument. He remembered that neither had thought to light the lamps, and the flashes of lightning now and then illuminated them as they shouted and swore and accused each other.
The remembering was no good, and the arguing had been no good, either. He had never convinced the old man that he had his own way of thinking, his own way of handling a trouble. A trouble that had started before he was born, started over nine hundred acres of Texas land, started really when Cortes took Mexico, and the Texans came and took Texas away from the Mexicans.
He just couldn’t explain why he had no killing hate against the Rameras family. The old man couldn’t understand it, either; he believed that what he felt was good enough for his only son to feel. The old man wanted a fight with the Rameras clan. He had waited for it night after night with the lights out and weapons by his side. Martin Hinshaw didn’t want it or think it would ever come, so he had left, and the Rameras clan had come, and his father was dead. Now he was sitting with another old man who was going to die, and all he had to do was change his seat, but he was held by the hand of his conscience. He wouldn’t run from this.
The train stopped at Beaumont. McCabe took off his hat and laid it over his drawn revolver, the muzzle pressed against Vargas’s side. They sat that way for twenty-eight minutes until the train pulled out of the station.
Hinshaw could not understand how McCabe hung on. For thirteen hours he had sat motionless in his seat, one arm outstretched to brace himself against the rock and sway, a blossom of fever in his cheeks, and eyes that became increasingly bright. Hinshaw guessed that McCabe was afraid to move for fear that he’d just keel over if he did.
Pedro Vargas slept soundly, as though he possessed a soul of untroubled innocence. A beard stubble was sprouting thickly on his cheeks, and his clothes were showing the soil of travel. All this pleased Marty Hinshaw who thought of all Mexicans as unbathed.
Guthrie McCabe sat the three and a half hours into Houston, then pulled a surprise. At gunpoint he ordered Vargas to leave the coach, and, in the same manner, he ordered Hinshaw to help him, for the leg was so bad now that he could not stand unaided. None of this made sense to Hinshaw, but he went along with it. Ten minutes later they were pulling out of the station, destination unknown.
Sagging back in his seat, McCabe seemed relieved. He motioned for Hinshaw to lean forward. “Hope this doesn’t inconvenience you,” he said, breathing heavily. “We’re on the Laredo train.” Vargas swore, and McCabe smiled. “That telegram was a blind, greaser. Your men will run themselves ragged, but we’ll be somewhere else. By the time they find out about it, you’ll be in the guardhouse at Laredo.” Vargas’s rage pleased McCabe to no end. “Now don’t get sore ’cause I pulled your fangs. With the best of luck I wouldn’t have had a twenty-eight chance. And this bullet in my leg cuts that down to practically nothing.” He braced himself as the train picked up speed. “I’ve got that rope danged near around your neck, El Jefe.”
He looked at Martin Hinshaw. There was a plea there, a brilliance Hinshaw had never seen before, as though McCabe had reached some summit and knew it, and it was his best ever. Then he sagged like a wax candle suddenly exposed to heat, falling toward Hinshaw.
Hinshaw didn’t reach out a hand to catch the old man. He went for Pedro Vargas who was making a stab for McCabe’s holstered gun. He hit Vargas then, viciously, knocked him back completely senseless. It was a good feeling, the shock in his arm, the pain in his knuckles, and it evened up all those times when he was a kid and had been caught by the Rameras boys and taunted and hurt and humiliated.
The conductor, alarmed by the commotion, came hurrying down the aisle, pushing aside the curious. “What’s happened here? What’s the matter with him?” He pointed to McCabe.
&nbs
p; “Is there a doctor on the train?” Hinshaw asked.
“No, there isn’t,” the conductor said. Then his expression brightened. “Wait a minute. There’s a nurse two coaches forward. She got on when we changed trains. I’ll get her.” He turned to the crowd. “Will you please take your seats? Clear the aisle, please. Step back.”
Hinshaw got McCabe back into the seat and braced him against the windowsill. Pedro Vargas lay on the floor motionless, and Hinshaw ignored him. He got his satchel down, opened it, and put McCabe’s revolver in it, then brought out his own, an old single-action .38-40 Colt. He had a holster and shell belt for it and was buckling it around his waist when the conductor returned with the nurse.
She wore no uniform, just a dark skirt and a white shirtwaist with a flurry of ruffles at the bodice and cuff. “This is Miss Sanders,” the conductor said. “She’s a nurse at the Mercy Hospital in Houston.”
“These gentlemen aren’t interested in my credentials,” she said evenly. She looked at Hinshaw, who stepped a pace back, letting her get closer to the seat. The conductor stood there, a fretting expression on his face. He seemed annoyed that this was taking place on his train.
“I’m sorry, but I have no medicine or anything like that,” she said. “We never carry anything. . . .”
“There’s a first-aid box in the caboose,” the conductor said.
“Then don’t waste time getting it,” she said.
Hinshaw put her down as a serious-minded girl who knew how to keep a fresh fellow in his place.
She looked at Vargas, then said: “Isn’t he the Mexican bandit? I’ve seen reward posters on him.”
