Until Darkness Disappears (A Saga of Texas)

by Will Cook

  The train rumbled into the station and stopped. The conductor got down with his step, and they had to get aboard. Alice went first and paused in the vestibule as Rhea said: “Do you want to kiss me, Bill?”

  “I guess I do,” he said, and clumsily put his arms around her. His embrace was brief, but he was smiling when he let her go. “That was good, Rhea. I can wait.”

  “Yes,” she said. “The waiting isn’t really long.”

  She turned and went into her coach. Grady stood there until the train pulled out. Afterward he drove back to Ranger Headquarters and put up the rig.

  Major Manners was in his office, and Grady sat down. Manners said: “What’s the smile for?”

  “I sort of got myself engaged, I guess,” Grady said.

  “To the older one?”

  “Yep,” Grady said. “When she comes back, I’m leaving the rangers.”

  “A married man’s no good to me,” Manners said gruffly, but there was a warm light in his eyes. “I always knew you were a special kind of man, Bill.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Grady said. “I’ll be leaving in about an hour for Carlisle’s place. I figure I’ll camp on the prairie in one of the old buffalo wallows and keep an eye on the squirt. If he makes one mistake, he’ll never live to make another.”

  “Keep him alive,” Manners said. “Keep yourself alive. Every day, along about sundown, there’ll be a pair of rangers patrolling away from sight of the house. Contact them and pass any information back to me. I want to catch Fred Early red-handed.”

  “Vargas has been pretty quiet on the other side of the river. Ain’t it about time for him to pull off another raid?”

  “His pattern of activity is changing,” Manners said. “Gary and I were discussing this. He compared it to some of the revolutionary armies in Europe. In the beginning Vargas raided for money and guns. Gary tells me that this is the pattern until there is enough stolen money to buy arms and a source of supply established. Since Fred Early is running guns and ammunition, Vargas doesn’t have to rely on raids for that purpose. He’s building up for something big. And I’m beginning to agree with Gary’s theory.”

  “What’s that, Major?”

  “That Vargas is going to launch a full-scale attack against Texas.”

  Bill Grady laughed. “Hell, he’ll never make it.”

  “No, but how many will be killed before he’s stopped? Two thousand? Three? How many towns will be ashes? There’ll be scorched earth from Del Rio to Brownsville. How many ranches will go? Eighty? A hundred? And cattle? Thirty-five or forty thousand head. God knows how much in money. Probably a million dollars in the banks alone.”

  Grady’s humor vanished. “The Army had better get here in a hurry.”

  “It’ll take six weeks to establish strength,” Manners said, “and Gary assures me that this is moving very rapidly, indeed. So we’re going to have to break Vargas before he breaks us. To do that we’ve got to cut off his supply of guns, assuming, of course, that he still needs more before he can move into the field. I want him to start raiding again, scrounging for what he needs to support himself. An army can’t grow on scrounging, Bill.”

  “Seeing as how we can’t kill it, we keep it from growing, huh?”

  “That’s it exactly. Laredo was hit hard once and survived. We can take those raids and come back for more. And that’s what we’ll do, hold him off, take the punishment until the Army gets here. Then between the Mexican army and ours, we ought to be able to fight him on his terms.”

  “I never clearly understood what his terms were,” Grady said, rising. “Well, I’ll see you when I see you, Major. Don’t wait up for me.”

  Martin Hinshaw approached the Carlisle place just after dawn, and it built a tightness in his stomach, riding in cold this way. Two men came out as he dismounted by the porch; they carried rifles in the crooks of their arms.

  One said: “I know you. Beat it. There’ve been enough rangers around here.”

  “I got kicked out,” Hinshaw said, and tied his horse. “Got a new job. Your boss.”

  “Like hell,” the man said, and Hinshaw kicked him in the groin. The man dropped his rifle and rolled on the ground, his knees pulled up tight.

  Hinshaw pointed to the other. “If I get any argument from you, I won’t kick you. Now show me Carlisle’s room, then get all the men together who live here.” He brushed past the man and went into the house. Like most men who live alone, Carlisle’s place was a litter ground. Hinshaw turned and found the hand standing in the doorway. “Get this place dunged out from top to bottom. Don’t waste time about it, either.”

  He spent the rest of the day getting settled. One man left the ranch to go to Laredo to talk to Early, to see if this was really so, that Hinshaw was the boss. Hinshaw let him go because he understood how Early meant this to be. If Hinshaw was tough enough to force his authority on them without a letter or prior notice of change, then he would be able to handle anything that came up.

  The ranch ran little stock, but the wagon yard was large, and two wagon makers were employed as well as a blacksmith and a harness maker. Three other men made up the work force, plus a cook and a servant in the house. The three men seemed to have no function other than to act as guards, and Hinshaw, with one kick, had already reduced that to two. The injured man was unable to get out of his bunk without help, and he would be doing no riding for a week or so.

  Hinshaw spent the night in a state of suspended judgment, and he realized that Early really had him on the hook, for all he would have to do to get rid of him would be to deny ever hiring him, and Hinshaw would have a gunfight on his hands.

  The hand returned from Laredo around breakfast time the next morning. He sat down to eat while everyone watched him. Finally he said: “We’re expecting company tomorrow or the next day. The boss wants him treated nice.” He looked at Hinshaw when he said it.

  “I treat everyone nice,” Hinshaw said. “Who’s the guest?”

  “You’ll know when he gets here,” the man said.

  That day he got to know some of the men at the ranch or at least their names. The two wagon makers were named Carl and Luke. When Hinshaw went to the shop in the barn to watch them work, Carl stopped him at the door.

  “We know our jobs. We don’t need any help or advice or anything.”

  “I was only going to look around,” Hinshaw said.

  “There’s nothing to see,” Carl said. He was a strapping man with heavy arms and a hammer in his hand, so Hinshaw shrugged and went back to the porch to sit.

  The next day, Pete, one of the guards, hitched up a buggy and drove to town to meet the train. He didn’t go to Laredo, but to a small spur junction fourteen miles northeast of the Carlisle Ranch. He returned late at night, and the visitor went immediately to his room and locked the door, and at breakfast time the cook fixed a tray.

  As he started to take it in, Hinshaw said: “Put that back in the kitchen. If he wants to eat, let him come to the table like the rest of us.”

  Pete said: “That’s not friendly.” He looked at Hinshaw and saw that he wasn’t going to change his mind, so he shrugged and went on eating.

  The cook took the tray back, and Hinshaw went to the visitor’s room and knocked. “Breakfast is on the table, if you want to eat.” He went back and sat down. Ten minutes later the man came out. He was rather small and round-bodied, and he wore glasses and a flowing mustache. He said nothing at all, just sat down and ate, and afterward returned to his room and locked the door.

  Pete left again with the buggy and returned with Fred Early. The men were eating supper, but Early didn’t seem hungry. He went into the parlor, sent Pete for the visitor, and closed the door. An hour later he came out and sat down at the table.

  To Hinshaw he said: “Tomorrow morning we’re going out a few miles north of the place for a demonstration.”

  “All right. Need anything special?”

  “Tell Carl to bring an old wagon. We’ll nee
d the buggy and a saddle horse for myself.” He sliced his steak. “Getting along all right?”

  “I’m getting paid a lot for sitting,” Hinshaw said. “Never knew a man could make so much money without knowing what he was doing.”

  “It’s not what you know, but who you know,” Early said. When he finished eating, he picked his teeth and lit a cigar. “If this works out right, I’ll have a piece of merchandise to sell at a good price. Carlisle used to be in charge of all the wagon freight. In a week or so you may have to take some wagons across the border to Nuevo Laredo for me. Just trade goods. Nothing to worry about.”

  “I don’t worry about it,” Hinshaw said frankly. “You give the orders, and I’ll take them.”

  Early laughed softly. “I wondered how you’d get along out here. They tell me that Charlie’s swollen up like a pair of apples. You play rough.”

  “That’s only because I was unfamiliar with the rules.”

  “The only rules you have to remember are the ones I give you. Treat me right and you’ve got a soft place. Treat me bad and you won’t last.” He leaned back in his chair. “I saw Rameras before I left Laredo. He’ll be up and around in a week or so.”

  “So?”

  “I need Rameras,” Early said frankly. “He’s the only man who can come and go in Vargas’s camp. It doesn’t do a man any good to have merchandise if he can’t reach his market. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “Everything you do and say makes sense,” Hinshaw said.

  “Rameras will take my proposition to Vargas. If he deals, we’re both going to come out ahead. There’s a five-hundred-dollar bonus in it for you.” He shrugged. “Of course, if you make a mistake, it’ll be a nickel bullet.”

  “I don’t like lead in the gut,” Hinshaw said. “This must be big.”

  “Very big,” Early said, his eyes bright. “I’m not a fighter, Hinshaw. My kind are never in the front of a battle, but without us there wouldn’t be any battles. Let the fools have the glory and the heroics. For me I like the manipulations, the logistics of war, big or little. God, how I envy the Rothschilds . . . they financed empires, you know. Broke them, too, when it suited them. Vargas would be a petty bandit if it wasn’t for me, and he knows it. I am the real builder of his army, and he won’t move a horse or a man unless I want him to.”

  “That’s a lot of power for one man to have.”

  Fred Early smiled. “Hinshaw, you speak like a baby… so innocent. Do you know how much money I have? A million dollars, give or take a few hundred thousand. I made it by buying items for twenty-one cents and selling them for two dollars and ten cents.” He brushed ash off his coat. “Or rifles for twenty-one dollars and selling them for two hundred and ten dollars. These small merchants with their fifty percent are fools. It’s not for me.”

  “No,” Hinshaw said solemnly, “you sure ain’t a fool. I guess, if you go on, you’ll own railroads and steel mills and whole towns and all the people in them.”

  “Exactly. What can stop me?”

  “Not much, I guess. It gives a man something to think about, doesn’t it?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Alice Cardeen looked out the window of the day coach for a long time, then she said: “Are we out of Texas yet?”

  “No, dear,” Rhea said. “Why don’t you sleep, Alice?”

  “I’m not tired.”

  Rhea Cardeen frowned and watched her sister who seemed only to have a dull interest in the passing land. A young man in a brown suit sat across the aisle. He kept glancing their way and smiling politely. Rhea kept freezing him out until finally he gave up and read a newspaper.

  She thought of Bill Grady, big, ungainly Bill Grady with his soft words and gentle hands. He was her hope for a new happiness, and the promise in his eyes was the courage for her to go on. Had she been alone, she knew, she would never have left him, but Alice never smiled now and her mind always seemed far away on another plane, and it wouldn’t be good to leave her alone. Perhaps, she reasoned, the change would bring her back to her old self. When that happened, she’d come back to Texas and Bill Grady.

  By her estimation they were only forty or fifty miles east of Laredo and the roadbed followed the natural floor of the shallow valleys formed by undulating land. The coach swayed and rocked along, trucks clacking over the rail joints. It was a lulling thing, and she hoped it would make Alice drowsy.

  The sudden clamping on of air brakes threw her against the forward seat, then the engine and forward cars ground through the ties. She heard the thundering crash as the locomotive went over on its side, and the baggage coach plowed into it. The coach in which she rode teetered dangerously, but did not go over, and the din was unbelievable—women and children screaming and men shouting for order.

  Above this came the rattle of machine gun fire, and she grabbed Alice and threw her to the floor as bullets shattered the glass all along the coach and puckered the sides. Some were hit and fell, thrashing, in the aisles. Then the firing stopped, and a silence, broken only by moans, spread along the length of the derailed train. Next the sound of horsemen thundered down over the brow of a hill, and the Mexican bandits boarded the train from both ends.

  Alice began to whimper, and Rhea said: “Oh, God, not twice!”

  They came into the coach with their laughter and brutality and drawn pistols and stripped purses and jewelry from the women and relieved the men of their wallets and pistols. Then one of the bandits stopped and looked at Rhea Cardeen and laughed.

  He spoke to another man who raced away and came back a moment later with Pedro Vargas. He holstered his pistols, grabbed Rhea Cardeen by the hair, and pulled her to her feet.

  “My little bird, you flew away,” Vargas said, smiling. “We must build a stronger cage.” He jerked her into the aisle and threw her to her knees. The young man in the brown suit was thinking of something gallant, and he got to his feet to do it but sat down again when a Mexican pressed the muzzle of his pistol against his stomach.

  “Bring the other one, too,” Vargas said, and went forward.

  They were taken off the coach and surrounded by shouting Mexicans. Alice stopped her crying and said: “Bill will come for us, won’t he, Rhea?”

  “Yes, dear. Be quiet now.”

  She nodded. “Will it be like before, Rhea? Will it?”

  “No,” she said, and knew that it wasn’t really a lie. It would be worse, and she closed her eyes and tried not to think about it. She’ll die this time, she thought. Die slowly and hard. It was almost too much for her to think about.

  A grinning Mexican stood near her elbow, and she turned to him and smiled and slipped her arms around him as though she thought him beyond resistance and tried not to think of what she was doing. Her hand reached for his holstered pistol.

  Inside the coach, the young man in the brown suit watched this, and it made him sick to see her loving the bandit. He watched her whirl away suddenly and heard the gun go off. He spoke softly to the man standing next to him. “God, she shot the other girl! God, she just up and killed her!”

  Martin Hinshaw first thought that Fred Early wasn’t going to take him along. The wagon and the men had already left, and Early dawdled with his breakfast. Finally he came out on the porch and said: “Get your horse.”

  They rode to a place a mile or so from the ranch buildings, and Early’s guest was already set up to demonstrate his weapon. He had a machine gun on a tripod, and it was unlike anything Hinshaw had ever seen, slimmer, lighter, more mobile than the heavy Gatling guns the Army used. The ammunition was contained on a belt of metal links and small caliber, not much larger than .30-30 rifle cartridges. Slung on his shoulder was another gun in a leather case.

  “Dis a new veapon,” the German, whose name was Schilling, explained to Early in an accent thick enough to saw. “Ve are developing many new arms. As you can see, dis machine gun iss small enough for one man to carry. Herr Spandau, the inventor of the veapon, claims it will fire nearly five hundred rounds a minute.�
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  Fred Early whistled. “The old gun wouldn’t do better than two hundred, and it was heavy as hell.”

  “The German army iss being equipped with many of these new guns,” Schilling explained. “I am sure you can see the mechanical advantage one vould have vith such a veapon.”

  “And you have some to sell? If they’re so good, why?”

  Schilling smiled. “Ve vish to test the veapon.”

  Early looked at him sternly. “I know you Germans. You’ve tested the hell out of this thing. What’s wrong with it?”

  “You are a suspicious man.” He shrugged. “Actually the veapons I have for sale are not quite acceptable by the German army.”

  “They work, don’t they?” Early asked. “I can’t sell Vargas something that doesn’t work.”

  “The veapons vill function,” Schilling said. “Ve are making rapid advances in many veapon fields. The machine guns I have for sale have been improved upon. Yet ve vould like to place them into the field for… testing. It iss the theory of certain German officers that one of these guns vill equal a company of riflemen. Naturally dis vill remain a theory unless tested. Ve have here a situation dat iss ideal. The forces on one side are armed vith rifles and pistols, vhile on the other ve arm them vith these new veapons. If the Mexicans defeat the other force, ve vill have some assurance that the veapon iss effective.”

  “What are you going to d o . . . read about it in the newspapers?” Early asked.

  Schilling smiled. “Ve have men in Corpus Christi who vill send us information. Now I vill demonstrate the veapon, firing at the oak sides of the vagon parked six hundred yards away. You vill see how powerful the machine gun iss.”

  He threaded ammunition through the mechanism, pulled on the crank handle, then squatted behind the gun and began firing. As the empty shells ejected out the side, the metal links fell apart. Without attracting any attention, Hinshaw picked up an empty shell and a link and put them in his pocket.

  Schilling fired several hundred rounds, and then they went to examine the wagon. The wooden sides were splintered and shot through. Early said: “It’s powerful, all right. What I’d like to. . ..” He stopped when Schilling pulled on his arm and pointed.