Читать книгу The Wolves of El Diablo - Eric Red - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

That very morning around the time Pilar armed up and rode out of Santa Sangre, the same steam train had been traveling in the opposite direction and Federale Colonel Jesus Higuerra was taking a smoke break.

The Mexican officer had been standing on the rear platform of the armory wagon above the coupling knuckles to the brake van enjoying his cigarette. Noxious clouds of soot from the locomotive smokestack billowing back over the train gave him more smoke than he bargained for, but the fresh desert wind felt good in his rugged face. The comandante was fifty-three years old, a career soldier whose straight-backed posture and noble chipped face was that of a professional warrior. His starched khaki uniform fit impeccably on his tall muscular frame, gold tassels adorned his shoulder and brass buttons beaded down the front of his tan coat. Ribbons and medals were pinned on his chest. An officer cap was screwed on his head, his Colt .45 pistol holstered in his belt, and his black boots were shined to a polished sheen. While the Colonel’s uniform was soaked with sweat from the hundred and twenty-degree heat, the open dry desert air was a refreshing respite from the stuffy coaches.

His alert observant brown eyes took in the hard country hurtling past on all sides of the rolling stock. There wasn’t much to see. The train traveled through the El Diablo territories, the asshole of Mexico. It was a Godless place. Pestilent, flyblown. Nothing lived in this dismal wasteland. A vast panoply of desolate mesas, plunging crevices and brutal ugly canyon unfurled in an endless barren panorama far as the eye could see. A dead colored landscape of bone white and shit brown. Higuerra puffed his cigarette, passing the time watching the exaggerated shadow of the train playing across the arid terrain in the harsh sunlight. Trackside, a dung-colored ribbon of surging muddy river carved through the dry badlands. The river had a name: Rio Muerta, meaning River of Death.

Higuerra did not need to consult his timepiece to know the train had nearly reached its destination ... his own internal clock told him so from having made this exact railroad journey each month for the last five years. Once in the town of Rio Muerta, the sixty troops under his command would collect their precious cargo and depart for the two-day return trip to Mexico City, where the trip originated. Then next month they would do the commute all over again. Such was the mission he had been assigned. His current duty did not sit well with the proud Colonel. It was the job of a bagman, not a soldier. But orders were orders. He obeyed without hesitation and did his duty without complaint.

Taking his last drag of tobacco, the Federale exhaled smoke and pitched the cigarette butt off the railing just as his Sergeant Raul Gomez stepped through the door onto the rear platform, his appearance a signal for the Colonel to return to duty. The short junior officer cut an intimidating figure, squat and homely with a battle scar that cut from his brow to the cleft of his jaw, but his eyes were filled with respect and loyalty to his superior. Colonel Higuerra saluted and Sergeant Gomez returned the gesture, following on his superior’s heel off the platform back into the arsenal coach.

The comandante’s direct gaze fixed on his subordinate as they strode in brisk lockstep through the central aisle past the stockpiled weapons and ammunition of the armory wagon. Fifty Remington and Winchester repeater rifles were racked in rows. Stacks of pistols hung opposite. Kegs of gunpowder and oiled wooden cases of different caliber cartridges were piled generously against the walls. The wagon stank with the smells of gun oil and steel. There was ample firepower to protect their cargo from any attack. “We pull into Rio Muerta in ten minutes,” Higuerra snapped. “The train is on schedule so the crates will be on the platform ready to be loaded,” he barked as they stepped carefully around large boxes of ammunition stacked floor-to-ceiling.

The two soldiers passed a massive Gatling gun sitting on its tripod mount. It was big as a small artillery cannon, which it partially resembled. Behind the huge twelve-barrel rotating cylinder on the firing end were draped .50 caliber cartridge belts flopping out of the breech near the rear hand trigger crank. Many crates of replacement ammo belts were stacked beside it. This latest modern weapon was capable of bringing down a full cavalry detail of men and horses. Fully loaded, the Gatling gun was ready to fire. The Colonel had triple checked this before the train pulled out. The valuable cargo they were about to transport was securely protected with weapons such as these the train was armed with to defend it. “Get the troops ready and in position to guard the shipment for the trip back,” Higuerra continued. “I want the train underway at twelve ten sharp.”

“Yes, sir!” Sergeant Gomez responded. The soldiers pushed through the door at the other end of the car out onto the forward platform of the arsenal wagon, assaulted by the deafening din of steel wheels on iron rails and surging wind in their faces. They held onto their hats. The army train was eleven cars long from locomotive to caboose and the officers were headed towards the front of the train where the two empty cargo wagons were. Crossing the clanking hitches, Higuerra stepped onto the rear platform of the next coach and shouldered through the door into the mess wagon, which served as galley and also the brig. Beside the stove and sink where the pots and pans and provisions were kept, sat a barred cage of an iron jail cell heavily bolted to the floor and ceiling. The cell was presently empty. The cook, a Federale private, was busy chopping vegetables and tossing them in several large copper cauldrons but took time to salute the Colonel as the officer strode past.

The next car was the horse wagon. The Colonel and Sergeant crossed the knuckle onto the rear platform of the coach, entering the door into the unmanned car. The officers walked across the straw and dung-strewn floor past the stable stalls where twenty magnificent cavalry stallions were saddled, tacked and tethered. The horses were watered and provisioned. Nearly all the animals were standing, most chewing on the hay from the managers bolted to the side of the wagon. The coach swayed and shook as the train rounded a bend in the line and the men grabbed a stall to keep their balance. The standard-issue quarter horses stood proudly, unfazed by the bumpy train ride, for they were trained for combat. Higuerra patted his own horse on the rump as he walked past. The powerful black steed was the largest of the quarter horses and the Colonel’s pride and joy. As the Federales passed to the other end of the coach, the few other horses who bothered to acknowledge their presence looked at them in disinterest, then idly turned their heads away.

Exiting the horse truck onto the forward platform at the front end, Colonel Higuerra and Sergeant Gomez stepped over the juddering couplings onto the rear platform of the second of the two troop wagons. Both Federales pushed through the door with a military snap to their step.

“Atencion!” the Colonel snapped as he and the Sergeant entered into the sweltering heat of the troop car. The windows were open but the hot desert blasting in did little to cool it. Twenty uniformed Federales of all shapes and sizes stood against the walls or sat on the rows of seats, at ease and talking or playing cards, awaiting orders. The men instantly jumped to their feet and snapped to attention. The garrison was hand-picked with top soldiers in ages from twenties to thirties. Perspiring tough athletic brown faces soaked with sweat from the humid triple digit heat looked back obediently at the comandante. The close, stuffy air of the car smelled of body odor, canvas, boot leather, and khaki. Colonel Higuerra clicked his boot heels together and straightened at attention, smiling at the proud sight of his crack troops and the pride mirrored in the faces of each and every man. His boys loved him, the Colonel knew, and he loved them right back. The mission they were on may be shit but he led a fine battalion.

The comandante heard the muffled steam whistle blast from the locomotive and could already feel the train was slowing. The coach lurched in deceleration. Higuerra barked orders to the men. “Fall in! All soldiers will immediately assume battle stations. Collect your weapons from the armory on the double!” He pointed at the two most able bodied soldiers. “Munoz and Garcia, you will report to the cargo wagons and help load the crates. The rest of you, move!”

Rows of dutiful Federales filed past Higuerra in tight-knit formation through the door heading back to the armory wagon as the Colonel proceeded to the next car with his three soldiers.

The routine was repeated in the forward troop car as the comandante ordered thirty more of his troops to gather their guns from the back of the train and take armed position inside the coaches and on the roof of the railroad. Colonel Higuerra walked forwards against the tide of Federales filing to the back of the train to arm themselves. His face was stern but his eyes twinkled at the men. Presently, the clump of boots on the ceiling above signaled soldiers on the roof taking up position atop the slowing steam train as it chugged into the station platform. Higuerra noted with satisfaction the highly trained Federales under his command made a good account of themselves and performed like a well-oiled machine. The air resounded with the metallic chorus of rifles being loaded, bolts engaged, and gun hammers cocked.

Through the windows, the first scattered structures on the outskirts of the sprawling mining town of Rio Muerta came into view. Colonel Higuerra, Sergeant Gomez and the two soldiers he requisitioned crossed the front platform of the forward troop wagon onto the fancy officer’s coach. The men passed through the luxurious carpeted interior of the car, bypassing the comforts of the plush leather couches and brass-railed bar as they made their way into the rear of two cargo cars, just as the military train was pulling into the station platform.

Wind and dust rushed in through the open cargo bay doors as the Colonel took his place by the opening while his three Federales waited at attention behind him. The soldiers looked out on the buildings of a populated settlement where moments before there had been nothing but badlands. The tableau spread out before them was an impressive but improbable vista, actual civilization rising like a phoenix in the farthest burning reaches of the desert wastes.

The dynamic mining boomtown of Rio Muerta bustled with industry in the baking midday heat. The place churned with aggressive, grubby activity. Miners with hard hats and tools trundled down the dirt streets, clutching picks and shovels or leading burros laden with supply packs. Horses carrying grimy vaqueros in the saddles trotted this way and that. Over thirty wooden buildings and camp town tents comprised the bulk of the town. The air smelled of cooked meat, charcoal fire smoke, oil, dust, and sweat. Workers swarmed like cattle in a slaughterhouse stockade. Every time he came to town, the Colonel was struck by the incongruity of the very existence of a vital place such as this amidst hundreds of empty miles of the barren harsh desert that led up to it. El Diablo was deadlands where nothing grew and nothing lived, not even vermin. Yet somehow in the middle of nowhere, this fancy town with all these people had sprouted up like a mystical oasis; it was out of place, wrong somehow, like a mirage.

But Rio Muerta was no mirage.

The town was real, with its own heart and lungs, and in its veins ran silver.

Up and down the busy streets of the boomtown, dusty wooden buildings were new and freshly painted, the nineteenth century gingerbread architecture every bit as up to date as modern American frontier towns like Tombstone and Dodge City that Rio Muerta indeed resembled. Saloons, hotels, bordellos, casinos, feed and dry good suppliers, gun dealers, mining equipment purveyors and other shops all looked prosperous and expensive.

It was the silver, Higuerra knew.

Silver was being dug out of the ground in prodigious quantities in Rio Muerta and money flowed into town as steadily as the river that was its namesake.

The Colonel held his ears to muffle the ear-splitting shriek of the locking brakes on the locomotive’s driving wheels followed by a screeching, banging clamor as the train, with a concussive collisioning of bumpers, began to slow towards a stop. The engine spewed off boiling steam that wafted around the open cargo doors. Through the billowing mist, in the low rise of canyons at the edge of town, Higuerra spotted the distant mineshaft portals like rat holes in the rock. Herds of itinerant miners and raggedy prospectors filtered in and out of the shafts like ants, pushing rusty steel mine carts loaded with rubble along the rails leading deep into the ground.

Brakes hard on, the railroad ground to a jolting shuddering halt, so positioned that it brought up the cargo cars precisely alongside the ornate arch above the station platform adorned with the huge black block letters:

RIO MUERTA

The railway tracks stopped here—it was the end of the line.

The train had arrived.

The platform was deserted.

Where was the cargo, the Colonel wondered? It should be here by now. The officer was a prompt man who broached no tardiness. The delivery was late and his garrison had a schedule to keep.

Rio Muerta was under the protection of the Presidente of Mexico himself. The reason for this was why Colonel Higuerra and the Federales were here today ... it was why they returned once every month, tasked to pick up shipments of silver from the mining town and deliver it by rail under armed guard directly to the presidential palace in Mexico. The cargo was the same every time: ten wooden crates containing five hundred pounds of pure silver “donated” by the town bosses to Presidente Francesco Cinquegrana. Each shipment was worth in excess of ten million pesos, or twenty million U.S. dollars.

The job the Federales were here to do was essentially to deliver a gigantic bribe. Being a decorated policia federale with a distinguished combat record and a chest full of medals, Higuerra found the duty dishonorable and demeaning, amounting to nothing more than a bag man.

The fact the town had bought off the authorities and operated outside the law gave him pause, because for years there had been rumors of miner disappearances in Rio Muerta. The word among the itinerant laborers was that to go work in the Salazar mines in Rio Muerta carried the risk of never being seen or heard from again. But mining was a hazardous profession and the job carried risks anywhere, so if minors disappeared there were invariably five or six more to replace them.

Personally, the Colonel did not take the tales of the disappearances seriously. Rio Muerta, he knew, had a forbidding history dating back centuries before the mining operation had even been built. Higuerra took the recent grim rumors circulating about the town with a grain of salt. If this was a bad place, so be it. In an hour’s time, the Colonel and his troops would be on the train back to Mexico City with their cargo of silver, long gone.

But the truth was, he couldn’t wait to get the hell out of here.

The platform remained empty, the crates of silver still a no show. The stern Colonel stood at crisp attention by the lip of the cargo hold doorway, glaring out on the platform and the streets of the town. He didn’t like to be kept waiting and his leather boot tapped impatiently as his hawk gaze scanned the bustling streets for the arrival of the supply shipment.

A clatter of hooves and wooden wheels on the platform and a squeaking creak of a wagon under the strain of great weight announced the silver cargo had arrived. “Alerto!” Higuerra snapped to the three soldiers who came forward to the doorway.

A horse-drawn mining wagon rolled laboriously down the platform. Ten massive wooden crates were loaded on the transom in back, stacked precariously. The horses strained to pull the heavy wagon and the axles bent and groaned under the load of the vast riches it carried.

Two very big men who struck formidable figures rode up front, driving the rig. They looked identical. Both had striking dark complexioned faces with strong hard angular Hispanic features denoting Aztec blood. The similarities of the men were legion—same jet black hair and matching onyx waxed handlebar mustaches as beneath thick ebony brows, twin pairs of black bullet eyes radiated a fierce charismatic force of will. Higuerra knew the unmistakable Salazar twins on sight. The Colonel had met Romulus and Remus Salazar many times, since the brothers always insisting on the formality of hand-delivering the silver shipments themselves to the Federales to transport to El Presidente.

The Colonel couldn’t tear his eyes from the approaching figures in the wagon. Even if one had never met these two before, it would be instantly obvious from the robber baron authority they projected that they ran the town—one look and anyone would know that in Rio Muerta these men were top dog. First there was the clothes: both Salazars wore custom tailored suits of expensive and flamboyant aristocratic elegance, each decked out in double-breasted jackets, silk vests with pocket watches on fobs, pressed shirts with ties, and pleated trousers—only the weathered Stetson hats and rugged cowboy boots and spurs broke the image of upper class gentlemen. Holstered twin gold-plated Colt .45 revolvers bulged at their hips in identical holsters. While the rest of the populace of Rio Muerta dressed in shabby work clothes or rags, the Salazars were always clad presentably enough for high society balls in New York or San Francisco. Despite this refinement, the Salazars were no dandies—the twins were physically formidable presences who owned a sense of animal danger that let you know they were the last men you wanted to interfere with. In this way, they reminded Higuerra of some of the rich and powerful gangsters and crime bosses in Mexico City. No question, the twin bosses of Rio Muerta struck impressive and remarkable figures indeed.

Now the carriage had pulled up right beside the open doors of the train cargo car hold and Romulus jerked on the reins for the horses to stop. The transom of the wagon was flush with the floor of the train car, so all the soldiers needed to do to transfer the crates was slide them from the wagon into the hold. As Romulus and Remus stepped off the carriage, they courteously greeted the Colonel and his men with warm affable handshakes, welcoming grins and gracious respectful gazes, banishing any air of aristocratic inapproachability. The Salazars oozed grace and class—the disarming charm of their presence made one feel both honored guests and a peer. Colonel Higuerra knew it was all a façade but even he could not help experiencing a twinge of flattery as his hand was clasped munificently in both Romulus’s gloves. Remus shook hands the same way. Even for gangsters, the Colonel had to admit, these guys were good.

Higuerra looked over his shoulder and barked orders to his men to commence offloading the crates from the wagon and load them onto the train. His soldiers jumped into action, leaping off the cargo car into the wagon and began struggling to slide the crates into the hold. The Colonel remained where he stood and did not leave the train car because he didn’t want to set foot or touch the ground of the corrupt town. More importantly, this vantage positioned him above eye-level to the Salazar twins so they had to look up at him, in a deferential position. Both brothers stood a foot taller than the comandante, who didn’t want to give them the advantage of looking down at him.

“Halto!” Higuerra shouted to his men. He looked at the twins. “With respect, señors Salazar, please open the crates so we can confirm the contents. We do not want to make the trip twice.”

Romulus looked up at Higuerra with a bemused twinkle in his eye. He took his time taking a big cigar out of his vest pocket, biting the end of it, then firing the stogie with a match he struck against the side of the train. Then, puffing smoke with a smooth grin, he snapped his gloved fingers. Remus cooperatively clambered into the back of the wagon. Politely brushing past the four Federales, he grabbed the top of a crate and pulled the lid off, tugging the nails out by sheer tensile strength.

Sunlit silver reflected in the soldier’s faces making them blink. Inside was an impressive fortune in silver bars in gleaming stacks. Remus took a pair of thick leather gloves out of his jacket and pulled them on his hands. Only then did he pick up a silver bar and display it. Higuerra realized he had never seen either of the Salazars touch silver with their bare hands in all the runs the Federale train had made. The robber barons always wore gloves and heavy ones at that, as if they were afraid to touch the silver with their bare skin. Another one of their eccentricities or posturing, The Colonel decided, certain the gloves must merely be a dramatic flourish.

“Do you wish to count it for El Presidente?” Remus inquired with a trace of mockery in his voice.

“That will not be necessary,” Higuerra replied. He gestured for his men to load the crates. The lid was replaced and the soldiers got to work shoving the crates across the wagon and into the train cargo hold. It took three men and was a struggle. Remus jumped off the wagon transom and walked over to his brother. The Colonel turned his attention to the twins as the second crate was stowed in the hold.

“This is for you,” Remus said with a sly smile. He reached into his jacket and presented a gift to the Colonel, who looked down to see what it was.

A brick of pure silver.

It was a bribe.

Mortified, Higuerra couldn’t believe the brazenness of the graft in full view of his men. The Colonel had never taken a bride of any kind in his whole career as a soldier, and came down hard on anyone under his command who did. Many of the Mexican policia and Federales were corrupt, everyone knew, and bribes and payoffs were business as usual in Mexico. It was a moral cancer, the comandante felt. He wanted no part of it.

The Colonel shook his head.

Remus held out the silver brick in his glove, waiting, a questioning and even baffled look in his black eyes. Higuerra just held his gaze and didn’t blink, making no move to accept the silver bar that must have been worth fifty thousand pesos or two years of his salary. Feeling the eyes of his men on his back the Colonel just stood his ground, knowing his soldiers were watching to see what he would do. He intended to set an example for his troops and demonstrate he was incorruptible, as any good Federale should be.

Now Romulus took a step closer, nudging his head to indicate the proffered bribe. “Take it. This is how things are done. Consider it a gift.”

“I consider it an attempt to bribe a military officer,” Higuerra brusquely shot back. “I’ll pretend that I didn’t see that, but if you further attempt to bribe me, by the regulations of the Mexican policia federal, I will arrest you at once. Is that understood?”

Surprised by his remarks, the twins appeared taken aback, incredulous looks on their faces. The Colonel guessed they had never had someone refuse a bribe before or rebuke them, as he just did. The Salazars exchanged hooded glances with each other.

Colonel Higuerra stood ramrod straight, unblinking and unflappable—he had had his fill of this shit detail. It was bad enough this whole dirty miserable assignment carrying the payoff from gangsters to the leader of his country—this alone made him sick—but the Salazars thinking they could bribe him was the last straw. A man of honor could only shoulder so much.

“Take the silver,” Romulus had an edge to his voice this time that contained a quiet threat. The gentlemanly façade was now dropped. He and Remus were visibly threatened that a man, any man, could not be bought. It was not the way things in their world worked. The Colonel’s refusal was taken as a challenge.

Casting a quick, deliberate glance over his shoulder, Higuerra saw his three men all watching him attentively with sober respect. They had seen and heard the entire exchange while they had loaded the last two crates. On the train journey back, they would spread the word through the ranks that their commanding officer could not be bribed and this would inspire the men in their own conduct to be better soldiers. For the first time in a long time, Higuerra felt pride in his uniform. His head rotated back to face the Salazar brothers dead on, eyes implacable. “We have received the cargo and my train will depart at once to get back to Mexico City on schedule by order of El Presidente. Good day, gentlemen.” The Colonel saluted the twins sharply then gave a hand signal to the engineer in the drive cab of the locomotive it was time to get the train moving.

Seeing that they had lost and the officer who would not be bribed was turning his back on them and leaving town, a look of pure naked malevolence flashed in Romulus and Remus Salazar’s eyes. In that brief malignant gaze, Colonel Higuerra caught a quick chilling glimpse of the true depth of just how evil and unimaginably dangerous the twins truly were. He had thwarted their will, provoked their ire and there would be consequences. Higuerra would hear about this from his superiors, if not El Presidente himself. This was not over, no, not by a long shot.

The comandante put a metal whistle on a chain around his neck to his mouth and blew it loudly. The high-pitched report split the air. At the signal, up and down the length of the train his garrison took their positions for departure, running across the roofs of the coaches and climbing onto the transom platforms of the cars with their rifles in their grip in crack military formation.

The Colonel waved his arm to the engineer in the driving cab of the locomotive and the man waved back in acknowledgement—pull out. The burly grimy overalled trainman named Lorca leaned out of the footplate doorway toward the sound of rushing water.

The locomotive was pulled up alongside a fifty-foot high wooden water tower on a scaffolding. The second member of the driving crew, a fireman in sooty overalls, stood on the ladder feeding a long metal pipe from the circular water vat into the lip of the boiler on the nose of the locomotive. Water flooded down the pipe into the steam engine refueling it for the long trip back to Mexico City. The burning coal in the locomotive firebox boiled the water that generated the huge amount of steam used to drive the giant wheels of the hundred-ton train. The fireman named Medrano acknowledged the engineer with a wave saying the train was fueled. Disengaging the pipe from the nose of the train, he cranked it on a chain back up into the tower then swung off the scaffolding onto the footplate doorway of the engine.

In the driving cab of the locomotive, the trainmen got to work. The engineer said a few words to his fireman and the second man shoveled a heap of black coal from the tender into the fiercely burning firebox of the boiler, stoking the blazing flames to a roaring intensity. The engineer checked the pressure on the gauge, opened the steam release valve, crossed the floorplates to his bucket seat, sat behind the controls then pulled the steam throttle.

A piercing blast of the train whistle split the air, followed by loud hisses of steam, clanks of unlocking brakes, and mechanical graunching as the engine was throttled. The steel-on-steel of wheels on rails slowly ground and the train lurched into motion. The locomotive driving wheels slipped once, twice, three times, then they began to bite, and the train started to reverse back up the tracks, slowly at first, then picking up speed.

The Colonel stood by the open cargo bay door, stoically observing the two big figures receding on the platform. The Salazars watched him go with hell in their eyes. The reversing locomotive was accelerating out of town towards the wasteland of El Diablo. As the train pulled out, clouds of steam from the engine engulfed the platform and began to obscure the Salazars from view, the shrinking figures of the twins dissipating into misty evanescence, the buildings and streets of the mining town dissolving behind curtains of foggy steam until Rio Muerta was a mere ghostly outline in the white haze and then nothing at all. By the time the steam had cleared and the train began to highball they were a mile out of town and there was nothing but open desert in every direction. Rio Muerta had vanished like the mirage it so often appeared to be.

The hours that passed didn’t do so quickly enough for the comandante—by five o’clock the following day as the sun was sinking on the mesas they were well underway, but he could still smell the Rio Muerta stench on his skin.

Colonel Jesus Higuerra knew he would not be making this trip again for any number of reasons, but regardless of the consequences, that suited him just fine.

It would be the last time he would ever have to set eyes on Rio Muerta.

And exactly at that moment he heard the deafening explosion up ahead and saw the huge blast blow the tracks sky high as loud voices yelled to stop the train.