By the time Jake caught up with the others that inner humane being,
whose occasional appearances caused him so much disconcertion, had
withdrawn within his usual cynical shell. His face, when Lee inquired
for Sliver, expressed surprise that she should have thought it worth
while to inquire.
"_Him?_ Oh, he's back there a-holding 'em off while we gain a spell."
Though delivered with masterly unconcern, his explanation did not
altogether relieve her anxiety. "But--how will he find us again?"
Jake's shrug was fine in its indifference. "He'll play a lone han',
Missy; plug straight for the border. Being alone that-a-way, he'll
likely beat us to it."
"You really think so?"
"He'll be there to meet us."
Jake's tone carried conviction even to Gordon. Only Bull was not
deceived. After the other two had ridden on he looked at Jake. A lift of
the eyebrow, slight shake of the head, touch of the forefinger to the
knee--he knew all. Thereafter each burst of rifle-fire, long pause,
explained itself. He saw Sliver waiting till the _revueltosos_ came out
in the open. The slow rhythm of later shots showed him firing along the
ridge. A sudden burst of sharpshooting at sundown, following silence,
explained themselves. His glance at Jake, the latter's slow shake of the
head, signaled then that all was over.
While they were traveling down the long slope toward the railroad the
sun had lowered till they could see the telegraph-poles running, a sharp
black fence, across the smoldering sky. Southward a toy station rose
from the dead-flat plain under a velvet plume of smoke. Bull had laid
his course to cross the tracks miles ahead of it. By traveling all
night, they could then gain the mountains that bared iron teeth along
the western sky-line; but they would be no nearer the border than when
they began the fight that morning.
The thought was strong in their minds when Jake leveled his range
glasses at the dark smoke plume. "Enjine an' five cars."
He handed the glasses to Bull, and before the latter's keen sight the
lenses laid the familiar outlines, of a revolutionary train, a-bristle
on top with humanity. Even at the distance, the flash and flare of gay
_rebozos_ told they were mostly women, and that told all. "Nobody there
but women and wounded. Belongs to the gang that's chasing us."
"A hundred miles to El Paso," Jake spoke. "Three days' horseback? Three
hours with that old mogul?"
"Golly!" The idea fastened on Gordon. "Couldn't we?" In place of their
present plodding he saw the telegraph-poles, rocks, hills, flying past
as they sped northward in the engine.
"On'y women and wounded?" Jake repeated it, musingly.
"Dark in half an hour?" Bull added: "They kedn't tell us from their own.
'Course we should lose the horses." With his accustomed caution he read
the reverse of the shield. "If anything went wrong--we'd be left afoot
on the desert."
"No worse than we are," Jake argued. "These beasts have been running
sence daylight; are clean plugged out. Even if they carry us across to
the mountains we're not sure of feed nor water--an' still a hundred
miles from the border."
"But Sliver?" Lee protested. "We can't leave him."
She was looking at Bull. He looked at Jake, who looked away, in his mind
a picture of Sliver dead among the rocks. Then with that readiness and
steadiness that had always filled poor Sliver with envy he lied to a
good end. "The last thing he tol' me, Missy, was not to wait. ''Twould
hinder me an' hinder you-all. I'll make my run alone.'"
"Very well." Her sigh would have fitted an anxious mother who felt that
her boy would be safer under her own eye. "Very well, but I _do_ wish he
were here."
Again Bull glanced at Jake, who once more looked away; but neither
spoke.
While riding slowly forward Bull laid out their plan. "It 'ull be up to
you an' Missy," he told Gordon, "to take care of the engineer while Jake
an' me stan' off the crowd. She kin hold a gun to his head while you
pitch the stuff aboard."
The sun had now set. The dusk thickened as they advanced and through its
warm curtain presently broke the distant gleam of cooking-fires. Some
were down on the tracks; others on the car-roofs built on rude hearths
of earth within stone circles. When Bull called a halt and surveyed the
scene through the glasses it presented the familiar spectacle of a
_revueltosos'_ train-camp: women bending over the fires; some on their
knees at the _metates_, others stirring their clay cooking-pots, all
gossiping at their work. Here and there a man's face showed in the fire
glow; but always an arm in a sling, crutch, or bandage explained his
presence there. Unsuspecting, believing that in those wide spaces the
railway presented the one avenue of attack, they kept no watch; were
stricken dumb when, half an hour thereafter, a stern command to hold up
their hands issued from the darkness beyond the firelight. Only one man
raised a gun, and as Bull's rifle spat he threw up his hands and plunged
headlong from the top of the car to the ground.
Squatted, at supper, with his women by a fire under the lee of the
mogul, the Mexican engineer proved easy game. A poke in the side from
Gordon's gun emphasized his command to cut the engine off the train.
Trembling, the fellow obeyed and stood mute, shaking with fear, with
Lee's gun pressed into the nape of his neck, while Gordon pitched their
stuff into the cab. When, moreover, after firing a few warning shots
along the length of the train, Jake and Bull climbed aboard he opened
wide the throttle and sent the mogul spinning northward.
The instant they started Gordon grabbed the fireman's shovel. "Here's
where I fulfil one of my kid ambitions."
Looking back from the seat where she had climbed beside Bull to watch
the tracks ahead, Lee saw his face focused in brilliant red light as he
shoveled and raked the clinker off the bars. Jake, with his usual
caution, sat with the engineer; from whom he prodded valuable
information with the muzzle of his gun.
His strident repetitions thereof carried above the roar and rattle of
the speeding engine across the cab. "He says the half of Valles's army
is scattered like pin feathers afore a north wind!... With what's left
he's making a las' stan' north of Chihuahua!... He still bosses all the
country from here to Juarez!... This outfit was out raiding haciendas to
supply the new base!" The next item of news he delivered with a cheer.
"Hooray! the line's open clean to the border! He don't know of any
trains being run to-night! Thinks we'll have a clear track!"
Just then lights and the ruddy glow of fires flashed out as the engine
came spinning out of a cut through low hills. It was merely a section
gang, and as they sped past they obtained a glimpse of curious brown
faces.
They suggested Bull's question, "Ask him if there's any revueltosos on
the way."
"At La Mancha!" Jake yelled back. "About thirty miles this side of the
border!... Half of the brigada Gonzales is holding the town for Valles!"
The _brigada_ Gonzales! The command that had furnished the murderers of
Mary Mills. A spasm of hate writhed over Bull's dark face. His big hands
clenched. He turned and looked out of the cab window till he regained
control of his voice.
"Does he allow we kin run through there?"
Jake nodded. "If we douse the headlight and race by afore they have time
to block us."
Looking back, just then, at Gordon, now stripped to his undershirt and
growing sootier every minute, Lee heard the answer. She did not,
however, give it much thought. The hills and rocks that took on queer
shapes in the dim light of a rising moon, giant _sahuaros_ that went
slipping past like huge ghosts, the occasional fires and lights,
glimpses of strange brown faces, the rush and roar of the engine
speeding through mysterious night, held her senses. Yet it stuck in her
mind, came popping out when, as the engine rounded a sharp curve, the
headlight beam struck full on a sheaf of glittering wires.
"Oh!" she called out in sudden alarm. "We ought to have cut the wires!"
It was a vital error. Gordon's whistle expressed their joint dismay; but
Jake, with his intense practicability, recovered first. "Well, what's to
do--stop an' cut them?"
Bull shook his head. "Too late! We've been running over an hour. Nothing
left but to take a chanst."
Jake nodded. But presently he spoke again. "Chanst? If they pull up a
rail an' ditch us at La Mancha, I'd hardly call it a chanst with half of
the brigada Gonzales shooting us up from all around. We'd be pickled for
keeps."
During their "rustler days" it had always been Jake's craft that pulled
them out of tight places. Habit held Bull silent till, after he had
spoken to the engineer, Jake went on: "He says the track runs two per
cent. down into La Mancha. We kin shut off steam an' pussy-foot it the
last few miles. So here's the dope. We drop you-all"--his glance took in
the others--"a mile this side of the station, give you two hours to go
around, then shoot ahead. If we get through, you-all strike a light an'
we'll stop and pick you up. If we don't--we don't. But you'll be less 'n
thirty miles from the border an' have all night to make your getaway."
"But--"