Valley of Fire

by Johnny D. Boggs

  Actually, the easiest way was to take the train south, get off at Socorro, ride east to that lava flow. But that was also the easiest way for us to land back in the Las Vegas pit.

  Fenn motioned us to hide behind the mound of hay them two geldings was eating, then he turned down the lantern. Above the hissing, I heard footsteps outside, and spotted the glow of a lantern as the brakeman made his way toward the locomotive and tinder.

  Geneviève and I knelt in the darkness.

  “I guess I shouldn’t have pushed that coffin out of the car,” she whispered.

  “I’m glad you did.” I did not add providing that brakeman don’t notice that it ain’t in here.

  “Evenin’.” The brakeman had stopped to chat with Fenn.

  “Hello. I told the conductor I was riding in here with my dearly departed brother.” Fenn motioned toward the coffin that wasn’t there.

  “I heard. Sorry about your loss.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You need anything? Got coffee in the caboose.”

  “Not now, but thank you. Maybe the next stop. When is that?”

  “Bernal. We stop every seven, ten, twelve miles or so.”

  “Coffee would be fine then. At Bernal.”

  I heard more footsteps.

  “Ah,” the brakeman said, “here comes the conductor.”

  When Fenn turned to look up the tracks, the brakeman pulled a pistol. I didn’t see it. Didn’t see the brakeman at all, but that metallic sound of a hammer being cocked I heard just fine.

  “I must ask you, sir, to step out of the car.” That brakeman was a cool one, and smart. He’d struck up a right friendly conversation, easing Sean Fenn into a false sense of security, and when Fenn had turned his attention toward the conductor, the brakeman had drawed his pistol, and pointed it at Sean’s belly.

  The nun turned to me. “Telegraph?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

  My head shook. “Fenn’s set-to back at the depot.”

  Fenn jumped out of the boxcar, and the conductor began demanding, his accent harsh. The chickens started squawking, and the goats bleating, but I got most of what riled and suspicioned the conductor and other railroad folks. What had been the meaning of that gunplay back at Las Vegas? Innocent passengers and AT&SF employees could have been wounded, or killed.

  More folks was out there than just the conductor and brakeman. If one of them happened to take a look-see inside this car, my neck was good as stretched, and the nun was good as excommunicated, burned at the stake, put on the rack, or whatever they done these days.

  Don’t know if Geneviève was praying, but I sure was.

  “Take his gun,” the conductor said.

  The boxcar door slid shut.

  More shouts, but the only thing I caught was, “We have a schedule to keep.”

  The horn sounded.

  “We will deliver him to the sheriff in Santa Fe,” someone said. “Till we learn what was the cause of the shots in Las Vegas.”

  Moments later, we was moving again.

  Either my luck held, or God had answered my prayer. Sean Fenn was out of the picture, and I was alone with a beautiful nun.

  A goat peed on my boot. I cussed.

  All right, we wasn’t exactly alone. I hurried to the side, turned up the lantern just a bit, found the Winchester and shell belt. Thankfully, nobody had stuck his head inside the car, they’d been too much in a hurry to get Sean Fenn tied up—I assumed they had tied him up, or maybe put a ball and chain on his leg, and manacles on his wrists.

  “We can stop in Bernal,” I told the nun. “Get off there with these two horses. Can you ride bareback?”

  She didn’t answer. She stood at the door.

  “Don’t matter,” I said. “I think I can borrow a couple saddles and bridles at this farm I know about. No sidesaddle, though. Not likely anyway. Sorry, Sister.”

  “I don’t think we’ll be getting off at the next water stop, Mister Bishop,” she said.

  I got her meaning. Leaning the Winchester against the wall, slinging the shell belt over my shoulder, I pulled hard on the door.

  They’d locked the damned thing.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lordy, I slammed the stock of Fenn’s Winchester as hard as I could against them wooden planks in that door. The Sister backed away from me like I had lost my mind, and, looking back on it, maybe I had. After all, I had been locked in a pen in Las Vegas that wasn’t fit for a man. Now I was in a car full of bleating goats and cackling chickens and . . .

  “Horses.” I whispered the word, lowered the rifle, finally letting it drop on the hay and dirt. I rubbed my hands, sore from all the pounding I’d done.

  “Horses,” I said again, louder and made a beeline for the stoutest of them two bays.

  Taking halter and rope, I led a gelding away from the hay. Sister Geneviève said nothing, just stood in the shadows, watching. I moved the horse close to the door, turned him around, and swept off my hat, tossing it toward the nun.

  “Sister, take my hat. Walk over to the door. Stand on one side of this hoss, and start waving the hat over his tail.”

  “What?”

  I repeated those instructions, and she done what I asked, though I could tell she didn’t care much for my genius. When she started waving the hat, I tugged down on the lead rope, clucked a bit, and finally the bay kicked.

  You should have heard the string of cusses the nun dished out. She was lying on the floor to the left of the horse, scrambling away from the gelding. The cusses, of course, was directed at me. Never occurred to me that nuns didn’t know that horses kick at things that are behind them.

  “Reckon I should have warned you,” I said. Would have been laughing, if I hadn’t been so worried about getting hung.

  She found her feet, brushed off the strands of hay and dust, and it’s probably a good thing I couldn’t see her face all that good, because I warrant she was giving me the evil eye.

  “Again,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Again. Wave the hat. Watch her legs.”

  “I’m not getting my head stoved in, Mister Bishop.”

  “We don’t get that door open,” I reminded her, “there’s a mighty good chance we’ll both be heading back to Las Vegas . . . where Felipe Hernandez won’t be happy with you at all.”

  She bent over, picked up my hat, and slammed the dust off it against the rocking side of the car.

  The whistle blew.

  A moment later, the horse kicked again, the hooves slamming angrily against the door. Sister Geneviève dropped the hat.

  “Again.”

  Three more times, I got that gelding to kick. The last time, the nun had almost gotten her hand smashed. Figuring she needed a rest spell, I dropped the halter rope, eased the horse away from the door, and walked to check on any damage. I was mindful not to get behind that big bay.

  “Always give a horse a wide berth walking behind it.” I decided I should give the nun a lesson in horses. I’d known folks to get their brains knocked out being careless around a horse, even a gentle one. “Or keep your hand on the horse when you walk around it. That’s what I do when I’m saddling one.”

  “Enlightening.” She didn’t mean it.

  One of the planks was busted, and I managed to pry it off, bending back the nails. I tossed the chunk to the rear and reached through. The air was cool. I couldn’t see, so I turned up the lantern, then tried again.

  “Can’t . . . reach . . . that . . . bar.” I pulled my hand inside, found the nun, and told her, “Couple more kicks should be all we need. Grab my hat, and we’ll do her again.”

  “No.”

  “Sister . . .”

  “You hold your own hat, Mister Bishop. Let her kick at your head.”

  “Ain’t a her,” I corrected. “It’s a boy horse. An unfortunate boy horse.” I had to laugh at that

  I brung back the horse, handed the rope to the nun, picked up my hat, and got on the gelding’s side. It taken
awhile before the legs came up. I stepped quickly to the side, keeping my battered old hat from getting battered some more. The hooves against the wood sounded like a cannon shot. The bay snorted and shook his head in anger, jerking Geneviève around a bit.

  I inched closer to the gelding again, started waving that old hat. He didn’t take long before he kicked again, and finally, wood splintered.

  “Once more,” I said.

  After the third kick, I told the sister to pull the horse toward them goats, and I yanked off another bit of broken wood. I found the bar in the lock, pulled it out, and dropped it along the rails.

  A moment later, the door was open, the air was blasting, and the horn was tooting.

  “Damnation!” I said. “Are we already that close to Bernal?”

  ’Course, it was still pitch black. Couldn’t see nothing outside. I turned down the lantern, picked up the rifle and cartridge belt. “Quick, Sister. We’re going on top.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll climb to the roof then I’ll pull you up behind me.”

  “Are you loco?”

  With a sigh, I done some explaining. Nuns knowed all about goodness, about God and commandments and Heaven and Hell. But they didn’t know much outside of missions and churches and monasteries.

  Chances are, Sean Fenn had said there was a notorious outlaw in the livestock car. Knowing Fenn, he said that bad man-killer, Micah Bishop, was holding a nun hostage. When the train stopped for water at Bernal, the conductor, brakeman, and anybody else they could hornswoggle would be standing outside, demanding my surrender. Or, maybe, Fenn had kept his trap shut, but those railroad boys would get suspicious. Or they’d want to check on the goats and chickens and horses. Any other similar notion might lead somebody to open that door.

  I said, “Bernal or Rowe or Lamy. Eventually, somebody’s gonna open that door. And I don’t want to be inside here when they do. They get us trapped inside this car, there ain’t no way out. On the roof, we got a chance.”

  “What chance?”

  “I don’t fancy being locked up inside. In a jail. Or in a boxcar. You coming?”

  “Why don’t we just jump off? Walk back to Romero?”

  “Because I don’t fancy getting my neck broke, neither.”

  “Nor do I, Mister Bishop.”

  “I won’t drop you.”

  She didn’t move.

  “Do you want to get to the Valley of Fire or not?”

  Not that I really wanted to go down south, but I couldn’t very well leave this nun in the boxcar. I’d played my hand. The door was busted and open. Certain-sure, them railroad boys would be looking inside. And if they found a nun . . . well, then the nun would start talking and pointing, and I’d be hogtied and headed back to Felipe Hernandez and the gallows tree.

  That persuaded her. She moved past the gelding, and soon stood, holding onto the wall, the air blowing the hood down and making the hairs on her head fly every which way.

  “I’ll go up first,” I said. “You hand me the Winchester and shell belt then I’ll help you up.”

  Even in the dark, I could tell how pale she was getting.

  “I’ve done this a thousand times,” I said. “There’s nothing to it.”

  I’d done it, maybe, twenty times. Never in the dead of night. And never . . . “Son of a bitch.”

  It had started raining.

  Lots of folks think it never rains in New Mexico Territory, but it does. Summer months bring in the monsoons, and them thunderheads can dump a river of water on a body in just a short time. But monsoons usually strike in late afternoon, not around midnight. This was one of those rare nighttime showers, slow, steady, cold, and making an Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe boxcar dangersome and slippery.

  Well, I’d started the ball. After jamming my hat on my head, I got a good hold on the wood, and swung myself into the night, into the rain. Wind and rain blasted me considerable, but I didn’t mind. Fact is, it felt kinda cleansing, washing off the stink of dead rats, the stink of that Las Vegas cell, the stink of goat pee. Wasn’t no trouble for me to climb right up those slats like I was on a ladder. I found a hold on the roof and just pulled myself up. Easy as pie.

  I slid around, leaned over the top, yelled down at the nun that it was her turn.

  Her head—the hood was back up—appeared like a timid mouse.

  Then a notion struck me. “Sister, you need to turn down that lantern.”

  “But then I won’t be able to see a thing.”

  That took some studying. The brakeman and the conductor knowed there was a lantern in here, but it had been turned down when they hauled away Sean Fenn. Now it was turned up. Maybe they wouldn’t recollect. On the other hand, that could suspicion them some.

  Hell’s fire, the door had been locked, and I didn’t reckon they’d be dumb enough to think the horse had gotten loose, wandered over, kicked open the door, which somehow managed to slide open. Oh, yeah, and knock the coffin out, too. Nah, they’d figure some friends of Sean Fenn was in here and them boys had gotten the door open and leaped out when the train had slowed.

  Or . . . they might think them friends of Sean Fenn planned on helping him escape—which would mean they’d search every inch of the train, roofs and all.

  Or...

  “The hell with it,” I decided. A body could think hisself to death. “Give me your hand.”

  Immediately, my mind figured something else out.

  “No, hand me the Winchester first.”

  She disappeared just for a second, then pointed the rifle’s barrel at my direction.

  “Get your finger out of the trigger guard,” I told her.

  “What?”

  I had to shout, for the wind had turned into a gale. Smoke stung my eyes, and the rain didn’t do much to dampen the cinders blowing in my general direction.

  “Take your finger off the trigger! I don’t fancy getting my head blowed off. Accidental-like or on purpose.”

  “Oh.” Funny. That nun had acted like she had plenty of experience holding that little .22 pepperbox, but the rifle seemed foreign to her.

  She took her hand out of the lever, grabbed the stock, and hoisted it up. As I reached for the barrel, the train rounded a curve, the boxcar tilted, the wheels screeched, and the Winchester disappeared.

  I would have cussed my miserable luck. Didn’t hear the rifle bouncing along the tracks, but I did hear Sister Geneviève scream for God’s mercy. That’s what stopped me from cussing.

  I almost slid off the roof, but I managed to grab the nun’s hand before she went falling into the night. My right hand gripped her wrist, the other held tightly onto my hold on the roof, which was getting wetter and slipperier. The train finished rounding the curve, the car straightened, and the nun slammed against the car.

  Her free hand locked on my wrist like a vise.

  Unfortunately, the shell belt had been draped over that shoulder, and when she reached up to grab my wrist, the belt dropped alongside the tracks. Well, those were .44-40 cartridges, and since the rifle was long gone, and since I had no weapon, and the nun only had that little pepperbox, it wasn’t like that was a major catastrophe.

  She swung back and forth like the pendulum on a clock, into space and banging against the door. One of the horses snorted. The goats sang out. Oddly, enough, them hens stayed quiet.

  Finally, the train began to slow down. I turned my head toward my hold on the roof, grunted, groaned, strained, and somehow managed to pull the nun up alongside me. When I had caught my breath, I turned to her and said, “Like I told you, Sister, there’s nothing—”

  “One more word from you, Mister Bishop,” she warned.

  I couldn’t see her face. Didn’t have to. I inched away from her, then noticed something.

  The train was slowing, the horn was blasting, and we was stopping.

  “Lay flat,” I told her. “Don’t talk. Don’t move. Don’t breathe.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  We had reached the water
stop at Bernal.

  I could make out the glow of the brakeman’s lantern as he made his way from the caboose. I could hear the commotion as they filled up with water ahead of us. Naturally, the brakeman stopped by the boxcar on which we was riding.

  “That’s odd.”

  I recognized the brakeman’s voice.

  “What’s that?”

  He wasn’t alone, but it wasn’t the German conductor talking.

  “You locked this door, didn’t you? Back when we hauled that slippery gent off at Romero?”

  “Yeah.” He must have seen the open door. “Yeah.”

  After they climbed inside, I heard them moving around noisily right below us, leading the gelding to the other end, tethering her to the picket rope.

  A minute or so later, they was back outside in the rain.

  “Must have gotten loose.” The fellow who wasn’t the brakeman had to shout because the wind wailed like singing coyotes and the rain fell harder. Cold. Downright icy. Miserable weather to be in.

  “Yeah,” agreed the brakeman, who had shown such savvy and coolness when he had captured Sean Fenn. “And got angry, kicked the door, knocked out the bolt.”

  “Horses is a wonder.”

  “Let’s get out of this rain.”

  A moment later, they was gone. They hadn’t noticed the coffin was missing. They hadn’t asked how the horse managed to slide open that door. They hadn’t even questioned the lantern that was lit. Nor had they turned down the light.

  I had expected them to figure out everything, shout out a warning, but they acted practically stupid. Must have been the rain.

  The train started moving, slowly at first, then picking up speed.

  Sister Geneviève was speaking to me again. “Are we getting off here?”

  I had done some more figuring. “No. We’ll ride a spell.”

  “Outside. In the rain.” She wasn’t happy.

  “Rowe is two stops down. After Fulton. They’ll stop for water. We’ll get off a little before we reach Rowe.”

  “And break our necks.”

  My head shook, not just to disagree with her lack of a positive attitude, but to get the rain off the brim of my hat and out of my eyes. “The train will be climbing by then. We’ll slow to a crawl.”