All the same, he had crossed the same stretch of track only a few days before, and there had been no storms since to undermine it.
But something had. Paul Tilak saw what it was. "Sims!" he shouoed.
Suddenly and most uncharacteristically, he burst out laughing. "Their trap caught a harder-skinned elephant than they bargained for" Once Preen Chand's attention was diverted from the train ahead, he too saw the subhumans rushing to the attack.
Some carried wooden spears, their points fire-hardened.
Others bore clubs, still others held stones chipped sharp that they could throw a long way. He spied the glint of a few axeheads and steel knives, perhaps stolen, perhaps gotten in trade.
Tilak was right: the sims would not gorge on hairy elephant, as they hoped. But they were not fussy about what they ate, brakeman would do well enough. And with everyone thrown in a heap by the Iron Elephant's sudden and unexpeted stop, only a couple of men were able to shoot at the charging hunoers. After that it was a melee, and the sims were stronger, fiercer, sometimes even better armed than their foes.
Preen Chand threw up the red flag to warn his crew, then yelled "Choro!"
as loud as he could. The train stopped "Get Hannibal out of his harness!" he told Paul Tilak. Preen Chand was already unbuckling the thick leather straps that linked Caesar to Hannibal. He stood up on his elephant's back, cal ed to the train crew, "Grab your rifles and climb onto the two beasts. It is a rescue now!"
The brakemen scrambled down from their waggons and rushed forward.
Hairy elephants were better haulers than carriers; Caesar and Hannibal could bear only five men apiece. As he had at the Springfield station, Preen Chand made Caesar lift a foreleg to serve as a step. "You, you, you and you," he said, pointing at the first four men to reach him.
They swarmed onto the elephant.
Just behind them, Tilak was making a similar chant. Hannibal trumpeted at taking on unfamiliar passengers, but subsided when Tilak thwacked its broad head with the elephant goad.
"Fol ow us as closely as you can," Preen Chand told the disappointed latecomers from the back of the train. Then he dug in his toe behind Caesar's ear. "Mall-mal !" he shouoed: forward!
Even with the burden it was carrying, the hairy elephant shot ahead, as if relieved to be free of the burden of the train. Its gait shifted from its usual walk to a pounding rack, with hind and foreleg on the same side of its body advancing together.
Most of the brakemen had ridden elephants before, but not under circumstances like these. They clutched at Caesar's harness to keep from being pitched off. In spite of everything, one did fall. He rol ed away, clutching his ankle. The hairy elephant's left hind foot missed his head by inches.
They were a bit more than half a mile from the Iron Elephant, three or four minuoes at the elephants' best pace, which they were certainly making. When they had covered about half the distance, Preen Chand told one brakeman, "You shoot."
"No chance to hit at this range," the fellow protested.
"Yes, but we will remind the sims we are coming, and you will be able to reload by the time we get there."
"Never tried reloading on top of an elephant before," the brakeman said darkly, but he raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired. Caesar trumpeted in surprise. So did Hannibal, a moment later.
Some of the subhumans had already started to break and run, two carried a man's corpse between them, while another fled with a body slung over its shoulder. But others were still fighting, and one stubbornly kept trying to shove a spear into the metal side of the trapped steam engine.
Preen Chand had to stop himself from giggling: Paul Tilak had certainly been right about that.
Against men, even men carrying firearms, the sims might have kept up the battler at least for a little while. But the hairy elephants were the most fearsome beasts on the plains. The sight of two bearing down like an angry avalanche was too much for the subhumans. They took to their heels, hooting in dismay.
The last to run off was the one that had tried to slay the Iron Elephant. Baring its teeth in a furious grimace, it hurled a sharp stone at Caesar before seeking to get away. The rock fell far short, but by then the sim was within easy rifle range. Preen Chand's bul et sent it sprawling forward on its face.
He felt more like a general than like an elephant driver. With gestures and shouted commands, he sent Hannibal and the men he thought of as his foot soldiers after the retreating sims. He walked Caesar up to the head of the rival train.
The brakeman to the contrary, reloading on elephant back was possible, but then, Preen Chand had more practice at it than the other man did. He fired at a sim. To his disgust, he missed; Many sims were down now, either dead or under cover in hollows the tal grass concealed.
The railroad men moved up cautiously. A couple went ahead to reclaim a body the sims had dropped in their flight. Preen Chand was dismayed to see no sign of the corpse the pair of sims had been carrying; the subhumans who survived this raid, curse them, would not go altogether hungry.
The elephant driver wondered if the body was Trevithick's. He had yet to spot the steam-engine man, and he was close to the upended Iron Elephant. After digging their pit under the rails, the sims had covered it with branches and then covered them over with dirt and gravel so they looked like the rest of the roadbed. Preen Chand shivered. He might well have led Caesar straight into the trap.
He got down from the hairy elephant, walked over to the hole in the ground. The rails had buckled as they tried and failed to support the Iron Elephant. It was tilted at a steep angle, almost nose down in the pit. A real elephant, which did not carry its weight on the rails, would have taken a worse fall.
A dead sim lay half in, half out of the pit. Preen Chand looked down into it. "Hel o, Preen, very good to see you indeed," Richard Trevithick said. He held a pistol clubfashion in his bandaged left hand; his right arm hung limply. "I'm afraid you'll have to help me out of here. I think I broke it. Oh, and congratulations, you seem to have won the race."
"I had not even thought of that," Preen Chand said, blinking. He turned to his crew. "Get me a length of rope. Tie one end to Caesar's harness and toss the other down to me." He slid into the pit.
In India, he thought, hazily remembering his grandfather's stories, there would have been sharpened stakes sticking up from the bottom.
Luckily, the sims had not thought of that. , He got to his feet, brushed off himself and Trevithick. "You shot the sim up there?"
The engine handler nodded. "Yes, and then spent the rest of the fight hiding under the Iron Elephant, while another of the creatures tried to kil it." He laughed ruefully. "Not very glorious, I'm afraid. But then, neither was falling out of the cab when the engine went down. If I hadn't been Ieaning back for another shovelful of coal, I never would have got this." He tried to move his arm, winced, and thought better of it.
"But you would have been out in the open, then, and the second sim might have speared you instead of your machine," Preen Chand poinoed out.
"Something to that, I suppose."
A rope snaked into the hole. Preen Chand tied it around Trevithick's body under his arms. "Is it hooked up to Caesar?" he cal ed.
"Sure is," a brakeman answered.
"Good. Mall-mal !"
The rope went taut. Preen Chand helped Trevithick to scramble up the sloping side of the pit while the elephant pulled him out. The engine handler yelped once, then set his teeth and bore the jouncing in grim silence. Preen Chand yelled "Choro!" as soon as Trevithick was out, then crawled slowly after him.
"You didn’t need to get us clean the first time," Trevit hick remarked.
"You are quite right. My apologies. I will dirty you again, if you like," Preen Chand said, deadpan.