Cape Hell (15 page)

“There is nothing here that two men cannot now remove; although I wish I'd thought of sparing the heart before we set fire to it. My people say that to eat the heart of a bear is to inherit some of its strength and courage. Why do you laugh?” he asked then.

I stopped. The sound was strange in my own ears. I hadn't heard it since before I'd crossed the border.

“I wish I'd known that before I ate my first chicken liver.”

He snorted and tugged on his gloves. No matter how uncivilized a white man, no Indian will ever share his humor.

We wrapped our bandannas around our faces and cleared away what we could of the debris, breaking often when our gloves started to smolder. At last we took hold of the great leering skull and twisted it this way and that, again and again. The half-incinerated tendons fought us with all the determination of the beast in life, and when finally the skull tore loose with a pop, the sudden release nearly threw us to the ground. We hurled it down the slope. It turned end over end, slow as a ballet, its jaws opening in one last silent roar. When it landed at the base of the foothills, it threw up a geyser of dust and ash. We crossed ourselves in unison.

“What about the ties?” Panting, I stared at the still-glowing timbers supporting the rails.

“The
Ghost
laughs at such things, as we well know.”

It didn't; but after a few teeth-clenching moments of wild rocking, the train settled onto the level. Joseph eased the throttle forward and we thundered deeper into the green empty space on the map of the Conquistadors.

 

III

Cape Hell

 

TWENTY

We hadn't gone
a mile when the sun went out, like a sharp draft blowing out a candle. The sky turned black and the dam broke, simple as that.

We crept through ten miles of rainfall so heavy we might have been rolling along the bottom of the ocean. At noon, the time when under normal circumstances the Mexican sun scoured everything as bright as brass, our headlamp was good for no more than five yards, with the water lancing down through its shaft like silver spikes. The rain was as thick as molasses and nearly as black; Joseph had me light a lantern in order to see the gauges. The air in the cab was so heavy we were breathing each other's exhaust. We took turns leaning out the sides looking for the oncoming lamp of another train or more obstacles on the track, and pulled our heads back in, blinded by water and soaked halfway to the waist; but it was worth it to escape the fug inside.

“The gods have taken a dislike to us,” Joseph said, squeezing a puddle onto the floor from his bandanna. “The monsoons are not due for another month.”

“The
gods
?” I stressed the plural. Scratch the newly converted and you found a heathen every time.

“Jesus, He is not so
vengativo
; what is the word in English?”

“Vengeful.”

“They are weak, the old ones, and so they huddle together in the rain, where the priests cannot ferret them out.”

I couldn't argue with his science; but I could inject some of my own. “The same rain is falling on Childress, don't forget.”

“We shall see. The seasons are not so
sensato
up here as below.”

I saw what he meant an hour later, when we emerged from the deluge as suddenly as if we'd slid through a curtain. Ahead, the sun flashed off the rails and made cracks in the earth on either side of the cinderbed; behind us was a black wall of water. Oven air filled the cab, as stultifying as when we'd been hemmed in by rain.

He leaned forward on the throttle and motioned toward the firebox. I'd just fed it; flames leapt out when I opened the door, heating the space beyond bearing. I looked at him, panting like a parched dog.

“There is a two-mile grade ahead,” he said. “Without enough steam we will have to back down to the level and start again.”

I poked as many chunks into the box as would fit, the flames licking at my gloves and drawing steam from where I'd stained the left with blood. We swung around a bend—going fast enough, I swore, to lift the landward wheels clear of the track—and began the steady climb; the pistons pumped their elbows, planted their feet, and leaned into the grade. A third of the way up we slowed, slowed some more; the wheels made a noise new to me, a wet sliding sound like a catfish makes when it misgauges a leap, lands on the deck of a boat, and slides across the boards. Just then we stopped moving at all, although I could still hear the wheels turning; in place, with a shrill complaining whine and the drive rods churning—grunting, like an old man grappling with a steep flight of stairs. The cords stood out in Joseph's neck; he had the throttle all the way forward and was still pushing. He wouldn't have shown more strain if he'd loaded the train onto his back and started carrying it himself.

“Grease on the rails,” he said through clamped teeth.

I smelled it then, through the wood-smoke and hot oil and steam rolling off scorched metal: a rank stench, as if something had crawled up into the cab and died days before.

The Indian smelled it too. He had both fists on the throttle then, but freed one to touch the four points of his throat, shoulders, and abdomen.

I knew then what he knew: why the grizzly was dead, and what had happened to the rest of its entrails.

They hadn't gotten there on their own. Whoever had gutted the beast had carried them all that way and spread them on the rails where the grade began, to stop the
Ghost
literally in its tracks. My stomach did a slow turn. I forced back bitter bile; and I was ten feet from the source of the reek. I saw in a flash the wretches charged with the task, faces bound and breathing through their mouths.

There came an evil outhouse fetor of boiling offal as the slime reacted to the heat of friction. The wheels spun, but we were stock still.

The trees along this stretch were of much more recent growth than what we'd passed; sometime within the past couple of decades, a fire had cleared several acres, leaving only black earth behind; striplings had sprouted, growing into adolescent trunks spaced far enough apart for a man to squeeze between them on horseback. From the greased grade to the open terrain, the area might have been designed by the patron saint of bushwhackers.

I thrust out a hand and closed it on the engineer's where it gripped the throttle. “Put it in reverse.”

He acted without question, hauling the handle back toward his body. The wheels screamed with the sound of metal shearing, the
Ghost
shuddered, violently enough to make me lunge for a handhold; it seemed as if the boiler was about to blow. Then the shaking stopped, steam sighed, and the trees began moving forward. We were backing down the tracks, still slipping a little but moving, if far too slow for comfort.

Then the pounding started again, slugs the size of lumps of coal punching holes in the cab's wooden frame, spanging off steel and iron and kicking up sparks. The bear's carcass had delayed us long enough for the men who'd dropped it there to ride to the spot, measure the range, and set up a nest. This was no catch-as-catch-can operation like the last attack; I ducked just as a shrieking ball of lead passed through the space where my head had been. Thank God I'm not tall.

We were picking up speed. Trains don't go as fast backwards as forward, but gravity was helping out. Joseph left the brake alone. We were doing thirty at least when we hit the level, and when we made it back around the bend he let the throttle out all the way. By then we'd picked up fire from another angle, not as regular as from the Gatling, but from more than a few rifles placed in strategic position. I could picture the snipers arranged in two rows, kneeling in front, standing in the rear, firing in volleys. We crouched below the opening in the cab, I clutching the Whitney across my thighs. It was no good as long as I couldn't risk showing myself long enough to locate a target and take aim from a moving platform, but the solid stock felt good in my hands.

I heard something then, louder than the chugging of the engine: a long shrill splitting noise and a rush of leaves and branches, like a tree lashed by howling wind.

A tree.

Without consulting the engineer I reached up and hauled on the brake handle. Again came the high-pitched cry of locked wheels against the rails, and the sickening lurch of the engine fighting inertia; I'd set my feet so I couldn't be thrown off them in my crouching position, but Joseph had had no warning, and fell back against me; I wobbled, but kept my footing. He fell hard on his buttocks, but his grasp of the throttle prevented him from sprawling all the way onto his back.

A train doesn't stop on the instant, especially with slickum on the wheels. We struck hard enough to shatter branches and send them spinning end over end past the cab, carrying with them the sharp sweet scent of green wood. Another party had stationed itself behind us, and had to have had their axes swinging while we were still slipping on the grade.

I didn't wait for what was coming next. I stuck the muzzle of the rifle through the cab opening on the side of the mountains and squeezed the trigger. Once again I had no hope of hitting anyone or anything; I was gambling for time.

A gamble I lost. When I turned my head to see how Joseph was getting along, the Indian's hand came out of a recess inside the tender on his side of the cab. An ugly pistol pointed at me. The muzzle was as big around as a drainpipe.

I let the rifle fall butt-first to the floor—I'd never clear the barrel through the opening in time—and scooped out the Deane-Adams; but I knew that was just as futile. Long before I could level it, a sheet of white flame blinded me and I fell as hard as the tree and a lot faster.

*   *   *

I keep a
pistol in the cab. Not even Joseph knows about it.

Hector Cansado, the dead engineer, hadn't invented the hidden weapon, but he'd misjudged his fireman. He'd thought to keep it secret by concealing it on the side of the tender opposite the Indian's post, but either Joseph had discovered it earlier or stumbled across it after he took Cansado's place at the throttle.

The glimpse I'd had of it before I blacked out had suggested early manufacture, nearly ancient; percussion arms were a scarce commodity in a nation racked with revolution every few years and in the control of nervous governors with seasoned troops and no laws against search and seizure. This one reflected none of the grace of its era. Built simply of thick steel and all of one piece, the frame curved to fit a man's hand, it was equally effective as a firearm or a bludgeon. As I lay in a watery half-world lanced with splinters of white-hot pain, I didn't know whether I'd been shot or struck over the head.

When I came far enough around to choke back a sudden sharp flash of bitter vomit, I felt the earth moving beneath me. This was nothing new since Montana Territory, but the rhythm was different, less regular; when whatever I was traveling in lurched, sending a burning bolt of agony straight to the top of my skull, I recognized the feel of a wooden wheel plunging into a rut in hard soil. I smelled green wood then, fresh-sawn, heard the hollow plop of shod hooves, and knew I was in a wagon.

And I knew without opening my eyes that I was being watched.

I raised my lids a crack, fighting the urge to flutter them; God alone knew what awaited me when whoever had me realized I was awake. What I saw through a haze of pain and green-tinged sunlight made me think I was still out and dreaming. The face staring into mine was only remotely human. In the shadow of a broad raddled straw brim with green dappling it through the holes, it looked as if someone had gripped it between the jaws of an enormous pair of pliers and squeezed.

I lowered my lids. The eyes in that pinched face, as black and dull as crabapple seeds and nearly as small, seemed to be studying me closely for any sign of awareness. But my sense of smell was more acute than usual. The owner of the face gave off an odor of cedar smoke and something less pleasant: It made me think of the moldy rags swaddling the bones of the Pinkerton in the dank dugout where he'd died. It seemed to have less to do with the clothes the creature wore—shapeless coverings only—than with an inner corruption. It was too strong to have come from just one source. The thing—I supposed it was human—had companions as redolent.

We were moving up, I could tell. My lungs strained to filter oxygen from the thinning air and my head throbbed, partly from the blow, but as much from the pressure of breathing at that altitude. My tongue was wrapped in a cotton stocking. Involuntarily I licked my lips. They were as cracked as dried clay.

A hand made of sinew wrapped around bone slid behind my head and raised it. I gasped in surprise, and before I could close my mouth something splashed into it, tasting of moss and iron and limestone. I nearly choked, but I swallowed. It tasted better than Judge Blackthorne's aged Scotch whisky.

The hand withdrew and my head hit the wagonbed. Light burst again, nausea flashed, and I blacked out a second time. When I felt again the rocking motion of the bed, I suspected I hadn't been out long, but there was no telling how far we were traveling from sea level. A great weight seemed to be pressing against my chest. The air was getting rarer. Only two types of creature lived so high above the earth: One was Joseph's pumas.

The posters offering reward for joining with Childress had gotten to the Indian finally. He'd come to the realization that as the man who knew how to operate the train he was more valuable than his passenger; but why I was still alive and worth the effort of transporting over that steep terrain eluded me.

When at length I grew weary of pretending to be insensate, I opened my eyes and propped myself up on my elbows. My companion in the wagon was no longer staring at me; he was crumpled in the corner opposite me, one arm dangling over the tailgate and his ragged straw hat tipped over his face. I was grateful for that. Something about those squeezed-together features made me think of a photograph of a shrunken head I'd seen in one of the Judge's travel books. The man wore a bandoleer with heavy-caliber brass cartridges in the loops, but no weapon that I could see, possibly because he was guarding a prisoner who might be tempted to try to disarm him.