Wallace clambered into one of the open boxcars and hauled Tuco up after him. A dozen soldiers sat around the walls, staring with open curiosity. The car stank of sheep and manure and the mildewed hay that covered the floor. They found a space and sat down with their backs against the wall. A whistle tooted and the train lurched into motion with a crash of couplings and a squealing of flanges.
Tuco leaned his head back against the wall and fell into a fitful doze. From far off he could faintly hear the voice of Wallace answering the questions of the soldiers.
“I’m staying around for the hanging,” he heard the big corporal saying. “It’ll be a sight to remember—this bastard doing a rope dance in the air and no partner around to shoot him down like he always had before.”
Hours later Tuco awoke and peered around. Everyone else in the car was sound asleep. Wallace breathed in rasping mores beside him, his head tipped back and blubbery mouth sagging open.
Tuco sat up cautiously. Beyond the inert mountain of beef and muscle he could see the butt of the corporal’s pistol peeping enticingly from it’s holster. Tuco’s eyes glittered behind dark puffs of battered flesh. Holding his breath and moving with infinite caution he reached his free hand towards the gun.
He was barely inches from his goal when the rasping snore ended in a choked gurgle. He snatched his hand back an instant before Wallace’s pig eyes flew open.
“What the hell are you—what do you want?”
“What do you think I want?” Tuco whined. “A place to go. How many hours you think a man can bounce around in this damn car before his bladder bursts, eh? How would I look, hanging from the gallows with my pants soaking wet?”
“Not in here,” Wallace yelped, scrambling up. “Out the door. This car stinks bad enough as it is.”
He jerked Tuco to the open door of the boxcar. They stood side by side facing out from the opening, Wallace bracing his free hand against the side. Tuco reached to his trousers, then stopped, glaring at the other.
“Well, can’t a man even take care of his private business without you watching? You think I’m a little baby, eh? I got to have papa hold me on the potty and see that I do it right?”
Wallace cursed him but he turned so that his back was partially to Tuco. Tuco took a step backward, braced himself and sprang. His shoulder slammed into Wallace’s back. The big man yelled wildly and flew through the open door, dragging Tuco with him.
They struck the embankment with Wallace underneath, cushioning Tuco’s fall and taking the full impact of his weight. Then they were rolling helplessly, gouged and clawed by the sharp gravel of the ballast.
The train was vanishing around a distant curve when they stopped at last.
Tuco sat up. He was covered with scratches and bruises and his ribs were a mass of agony but necessity gave him strength. Wallace was unconscious, a darkening lump rising from the side of his head. He looked to be out for some time but Tuco was taking no chances, He found a big chunk of jagged rock and brought it down hard on the corporal’s skull. Then he rose to his knees and began ransacking the big man’s pockets.
He had gone through every imaginable hiding place three times before he could make himself accept the terrible truth. He rocked back on his heels, sobbing with mingled rage and frustration.
“Oh, that bastard!” he sobbed. “That miserable, black-hearted bastard. He wouldn’t even trust Wallace to carry the handcuff key. He most have sent it on ahead to the sheriff—along with the word that I was being brought „
He stared around wildly and his gaze fell on a sharp outcropping of granite some yards away. He scrambled up, hooked both hands into Walace’s belt and dragged the heavy figure to the rock. He found a chunk of rock, stretched the handcuff chain over the sharp ridge of granite and hammered with all his strength. The rock shattered after a few blows without leaving a visible mark or dent on the tough steel links.
He found another rock and renewed his efforts, panting.
“So you don’t want to leave me, eh? You are beginning to like me a little, eh, and you want me with you everywhere you go? Well, I don’t like you and I’m not going to stay. You hear me, you big piece of bull-blossom, you?”
The second rock shattered. Maybe a bullet would cut the chain—if the impact didn’t tear his hand off. But Wallace’s holster was empty. The pistol had been jarred loose by their fall.
Tuco peered wildly along the embankment. He saw no glint of metal, no sign of the gun.
Dragging the heavy body, sobbing and panting, he inched his way along the course of their rolling tumble, searching in vain for the weapon. It could be anywhere among the rock fragments that formed the embankment —or it could be lost in the thick mesquite below. It might even have been buried by a landslide started by their own rolling bodies.
The full impact of his self-made predicament was beginning to hit him. In every direction he could only see the arid landscape without a tree or a sign of human habitation.
He fell on the unconscious man, shaking and slapping him.
“Wallace, wake up—wake up. You’ve slept long enough. Wake up and help me. I can’t drag you for miles, you big tub of rotten guts. Wake up and walk with me.” A new and more terrifying thought struck. “Wallace, you aren’t dying, are you? You wouldn’t die and leave me here like this. You can’t die when I need you.”
He collapsed across the limp figure, whimpering, tears rolling down his cheeks.
A dark speck appeared suddenly overhead, then another and another. Silently, patiently, the vultures were taking up their vigil in the brassy sky. Somehow they knew, as they always did, that it would soon be time for the feast.
CHAPTER 15
THE new locomotive was officially the BLW Number Nine, but after her trial run the engineer had enthusiastically rechristened her Mighty Maude. She merited the name.
Mighty Maude was not only the newest locomotive on rails but by far the largest, heaviest, fastest and most powerful. She also possessed the loudest whistle. When she flung her wailing hoot across the sere wasteland the engineer’s boast was that coyotes and jack rabbits ten miles away fled in blind panic. The fireman, whose task was to hurl heavy chunks of hardwood from the tender into the gaping maw of her firebox, had a different and somewhat biased reaction.
“That damn hooter uses up too much steam. Every time you toot that contraption the steam gauge drops ten points. I got to heave twice as much cordwood to bring her back up again.”
The engineer dismissed such carping criticism with comments directed at his fireman’s work habits and ancestry.
He would, however, gradingly admit that Mighty Maude did have one fault, albeit a minor one. This was in the design of her cab. When the man who drove her was properly seated at his controls the forward cab window was just a trifle too high. The engineer could are a great distance along the track ahead but nothing closer than five hundred feet in front of the great boiler.
On the straightaway this was no great handicap. But on a sharp or blind curve Maude might plough into anything. The obstacle would be a wagon in the act of crossing the track or—even worse for the train—a herd of wandering cattle whose heavy bodies had been responsible for many a disastrous wreck.
The engineer’s solution to this dilemma was to jerk his whistle cord vigorously and repeatedly at the approach to every curve. This inevitably led to a highly colourful and profane shouting match with the fireman. Since these exchanges had to be carried on over the pounding of the drivers and the thunder of the exausts, both men usually finished their runs too hoarse to communicate above a whisper.