The men stood back, for the boy kicked and spun. As his hands were not tied he took hold of the rope above his head and tried to lift himself to keep from strangling as he kicked out with his legs hoping to swing them around the trunk or to reach a branch and somehow save himself from a horrid death. His shoes were nothing more than strips of tire rubber cut and lashed around his feet and ankles and they scored the rotted bark in unending desperation.

It was an Inquisitional scene of madness, with the guards like statues upon a salted plain and the photographer Tuerto framing up this nightmare of a twisting soul. The women now were overwhelmed with crying and pleading to let the boy go or allow him to quickly die. It was the crone, Sister Alicia, who came forward then up that slope in a dress like that of a nun's habit in slow and faulted steps demanding they let the boy down, or end his suffering.

The climb for the old woman was hard and soon a figure was tramping through the sand behind her. It was the girl Teresa who came and took hold of Sister Alicia's arm and John Lourdes saw in her face the same elusive quiet and intense watchfulness as he had that first day by the fumigation shed.

Sister Alicia and the girl were met by a wall of straight-brimmed and squared-up men with stares like barren mountains. That aged witch meant to fight through them and though her paper flesh and frail bones failed her, that did not stop her fire to attempt an end. John Lourdes, watching the struggle, decided he had seen enough.

He leapt up onto the flatcar and as he did, far up the line, swaths of black registered upon the thermals. But for now he was set upon one course.

He reached into the cab for his rifle. The father went upright. "What are you doing, Mr. Lourdes?"

He hammered home a sh.e.l.l.

"Don't, Mr. Lourdes."

He turned and aimed. The sun burned his eyes, but he used the stillness of the men to strike a mark.

Rawbone promised d.a.m.nation if he pulled the trigger.

John Lourdes heard, John Lourdes saw, and John Lourdes fired.

TWENTY-SIX.

-[HE SUFFERING ENDED.

This was the first time the men around the tree reacted. They stared down toward John Lourdes as if they were a solemn jury. He turned from them. Far off in the cracked and barren hills they still hung there in the sky, planing above something as yet unknown-vultures.

"The country is having at you, Mr. Lourdes."

John Lourdes reached for the rifle scabbard in the truck cab.

"I remember a time back in the Huecos when you couldn't-"

"If you were wrung out, you wouldn't give up a drop of sympathy!"

"The road changes everyone," said the father in a manner that made the son want to put the rifle across his face.

"Even you," he said.

The father's eyes sparked.

"It's too bad it wasn't you they were hanging," said the son.

"You may get your wish." Rawbone motioned for John Lourdes to look around.

Jack B had gotten to the flatcar ahead of Doctor Stallings and the rest who were descending upon him. He demanded John Lourdes come down and confront him.

John Lourdes paid him no regard and stood where he was watching instead the curandera and the girl slowly hike past. Sister Alicia nodded to him a thank-you and then she and the others took to the pa.s.senger car.

Now he turned his attention to Jack B, who was still threatening him. By then Doctor Stallings was a few paces behind and John Lourdes said, "Doctor Stallings, before I go down there and boot this b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you better take a look to the southeast."

When he stared toward those capes of rock and squinted, he understood. With an economy of purpose Doctor Stallings ordered up a map, a signal pistol, flares, and two mounts taken from the boxcar to be saddled and ready in five minutes. He then ordered his men to their stations. Jack B was still staring up at John Lourdes asking, "You've had your say, now are you coming down?"

Doctor Stallings took his officer by the arm and ordered him to prepare the train and he a.s.serted this command in no uncertain terms. As much as Jack B offered himself up as some sort of barbarian, he obeyed without argument or rancor. He obeyed Doctor Stallings not because of the weight and privilege of his position, but because of that other power that comes from the relentless pursuit of impunity.

John Lourdes and Rawbone were ordered from the train. When both had complied Doctor Stallings spoke first to John Lourdes. "Explain what you did."

"If you mean to kill something, do it on the first shot."

John Lourdes faced an unrelenting stare. "Pointed advice ... that may well point also in your own direction."

"Understood," said John Lourdes.

Attention was then turned to Rawbone. "You hustled Mr. Hecht. And you didn't get the truck the way you claim you did."

"That's the bureaucrat in you talking."

"You're the type that lies even when the truth sounds better."

"Now, that's the professor in you talking?"

"I'm not challenging you over this. The truck is here. And, yes ... there are casualties. And there'll be more."

He pointed at the two horses just yards away and near saddled. "You notice there are two horses." The map was brought to him, as were the signal pistol and flares. He set them on the flatcar.

He stood very close to Rawbone, who leaned against the flatcar. "I was a professor, as you seem to know, at some of the finest colleges in America. Teaching is what I would call an unchallenging pastime. Nothing ultimately critical happens in a cla.s.sroom. The setting lacks grandeur and, more important, finality."

He reached out and took the Savage automatic from Rawbone's belt. He looked the weapon over carefully, handling it with a profes- sional's interest. "There is a book, and you could have walked right out of its pages. It is about murder. There is a devil and a Grand Inquisitor. And there is one idea in the book that repeats itself. An idea that would appeal to you as it does to me . . . 'All things are lawful."'

Doctor Stallings replaced the weapon in Rawbone's belt.

Rawbone then reached out and brushed away bits of sand from the shoulder of the commander's gray suit coat. "The story doesn't exactly spark of Horatio Alger, does it?"

The mounts were brought over. Doctor Stallings handed the signal gun and bandoleer of flares to John Lourdes. "You both will earn your money today," he said, spreading the map on the flatbed floor.

THE FATHER AND son proceeded from the train with the sun hard against their shoulders, watched by the commander and his company of guards. Even the girl Teresa, from window after window, followed the slow climb of their mounts upon an eroded hill face.

From the map it seemed the vultures marked a military garrison, sited to protect a junction where the lines divorced into parallel tracks, both running to Tampico and the oil fields.

"The doctor knows how to frame a warning," said the son.

"You thought his little speech a warning. I hoped it was a compliment, or at least an insult."

"He didn't have the authority for what he did, no matter. He even ordered a picture, no matter."

"Who did El Presidente have build those tracks? Who financed them? America and the Brits. They own the rails like they own the oil fields. That gives him the authority. And the Mexican, he's heir to the f.u.c.kin' sand."

They heard the heavy breathing of a mount and the chinging of bridle metal and came about to see Tuerto chugging a mule forward to try and catch up.

"Where are you going?" asked John Lourdes.

Tuerto pointed to the vultures.

"On whose authority?"

He held up his camera.

"Another f.u.c.kin' genius," said the father.

Through a dry and sweeping wind the mule followed in the horses' tracks. Rawbone spoke out to the world around him, "Three wise men tramping to Bethlehem."

The garrison was a quadrangle of mud buildings connected by a palisade of sharpened stakes where sat an army of hunched and drowsy-faced vultures. A loosely roped gate hung slightly open. They dismounted and John Lourdes fired his shotgun into the air. The creatures flushed skyward and hung momentarily on the dead air and then descended to the rooftops.

The men went forward and Rawbone pushed the gate with his rifle and before them opened a small amphitheatre of death. They covered their noses and mouths with bandanas. They entered the compound. Flies everywhere, and the stench. A dozen soldiers bloating in the sun. The buildings had been ransacked and personal possessions lay strewn about the enclosure.

John Lourdes saw a stairwell that led up to a rooftop watchtower. He took binoculars from around his neck and as he ascended vultures retreated from the vigas, their steps like drunken old men. Under an overhang the father saw a table and on it was a Victrola. He looked at the pile of records beside it. One read Brahms' Lullaby. He set the record on the turntable and cranked up the player. A Spanish version began.

Music drifted out over that dusty pueblo and into the desert beyond. John Lourdes had been studying the country and the trackline and pulled the binoculars from his eyes and looked down into the enclosure. Tuerto walked amongst the dead taking photographs. And the father-he had found a chair and was sitting in the shade by the Victrola, the bandana shielding his nose and mouth, the rifle across his lap and that haunting child's melody-he could well have been the Lord of some Breugheled d.a.m.nata.

This, thought the son, is what I was born from. Can this be the man who in his youth touched my mother's heart on a trolley in the Texas rain? Can this be the man who even for bare moments breathed love? John Lourdes wondered, if G.o.d truly put a soul in each living being, could it be the soul was capable of flaming out so completely it no longer existed, so all that was left was a living husk as horrible as the enclosure where they stood?

Yet, he was not as waylaid as he felt he should have been looking down upon this wretched scene. Did it mean that in some way his own soul was burning down to become a useless cinder that would knock around inside his chest wherever he walked upon the earth? Or was this some rite of pa.s.sage the part of him that was the father came to prepare him for? The father's words worked like cruel and busy claws inside him: "This country is having at you, Mr. Lourdes ... the road changes everyone."

Then from behind the bandana came that crackly voice. "I see you there, Mr. Lourdes ... looking down on me."

"You better get up here," said the son.

John Lourdes sat on the roof wall writing in his notebook, and when the father joined him the vultures again flared and fell away. The son pointed his pencil at the binoculars set on the adobe ledge. "Tell me what you see."

The father took the binoculars and panned over that whinstone prairie. The land trembled with heat but there was nothing save where the track turned out to become separate rail lines that looked to be near burned into the earth.

"I see unadulterated nothing."

John Lourdes finished writing. He yelled for Tuerto. He tore the page from his notebook and stood. "One of the tracks has been sabotaged."

The father's head arched back and the son turned him about. He stood behind him with an arm leaned over his shoulder. He was as close now as the father had been to the son that night in the Hueco Mountains, only now it was the son's shouldered weapon that insinuated itself.

"With the binoculars ... about fifty yards up from the turnout. To the left. Laying off in the sand away from the tracks. You'll see it."

And so he did. It looked to be embossed in the sand. A long bulky strip of metal. Smooth as could be.

"What the h.e.l.l is it?"

"It's a fishplate ... It's what they use to bolt the rails together. You can see it's been removed from one of the tracks. So has another one at the other end of the rail and you can see ... the spikes are missing. That rail is just sitting on the ties waiting for a train."

TWENTY-SEVEN.

-JERTO AGREED TO carry John Lourdes's note back to the train. Doctor Stallings reviewed it with his officers and proceeded accordingly. The plan was to bring the trains on to the garrison, then wait for John Lourdes to signal. Son and father were to scout the secondary trackline to Tampico, spotting up the rails for further sabotage. Doctor Stallings walked the turnout and the engineer showed him where the fishplates and spikes had been removed. Doctor Stallings looked to his watch, to the south. He sat quietly on the locomotive steps waiting for John Lourdes to signal. In packs of two and three the guards asked Tuerto about the garrison that now stood in shadow on the hilltop. He would describe the scene and then point to the aperture of his camera and tell them it had all been captured there and prints could be had for a commission. Even the women, appalled by what they heard, clung to every whisper for the dead belonged to the government and that aroused unspoken hopes.

From a craggy plateau John Lourdes and Rawbone scouted the hills before them. A hundred miles beyond, the Gulf washed up on the beaches of Tampico.

"You can smell the salt air from here," said the father. Then bringing his horse about, called out, "Mr. Lourdes." He pointed. To the west of the train, tracers of dust were piling up across the benchland.

John Lourdes got out his binoculars. "It's not dragoons. And they're coming on like religion."

"They're going to hit the train."

The bandoleer of flares was slung over John Lourdes's neck. He shoved the binoculars back in his saddlebags. He got out the signal gun. The father rode up alongside him.

"Before you warn them. You know what I'm going to say. Tampico ... the oil fields. You don't need them back there. If they make it, well ... and the women are not your province. Tampico ... the oil fields." John Lourdes loaded a flare.

"You can fill notebooks till you fall over dead but what you need to write ... Justice Knox shouldn't have entrusted you with this. You're not the right man for it." His eyes were black and hard, the neck cords strained. "You wanted to get there, we can get there. It ends when you say it ends, right. There it is out there. The practical application of strategy means you stay indifferent and take advantage when advantage can be taken. Isn't that why you ended up here, why I ended up here? Answer me, G.o.dd.a.m.n it."

ONE FLARE SIGNALED all was clear, two flares there was trouble and hold back. To that John Lourdes added a third option in his note. Three flares meant trouble, but come on quick. When Doctor Stallings, standing atop the tender, raised three fingers, Jack B ordered the trains out and weapons readied.

From the plateau John Lourdes could see banners of gray smoke against the haze and he knew the trains were on the move.

"You ... me ... and the truck!" shouted the father. "Alright ... I hope the BOI taught you how to board a moving train under fire."

The trains went through a gap in the hills. Small islands of dust with riders at the fore descended scrub ridges and rose up magically out of distant swales. Rurales with bandoleers crisscrossing their chests like ancient baldrics and filthy hats and straw sombreros, and they carried carbines and flintlocks and five-shot Colts and machetes and bows and arrows and their saddlebags and stirrups winged outward and the fronds of their hats bent back as they drove to flank the trains.

There were bursts of rifle smoke along the length of the cars and riders crumpled out of their saddles and horses crushed down upon their hooves and flipped over brokenly. Against a barren sky John Lourdes scanned that tableland with binoculars to see how and where fate might intervene for them to get back on the train.

As the lead train cleared a long shelf of battened stone, a ma.s.s of trampling shadows surged from hiding. The men in the coal car out front of the locomotive leaned up from their parapets and poured fire down into the cl.u.s.tered features of men close enough to touch.

A rurale with a leather breastplate and hair to his shoulders whipped his horse up alongside the rails and was cut down as he flung a stick of dynamite. It disappeared within the black hull and caromed off the cas.e.m.e.nt with fuse hissing. Men scrambled to reach it but were too late.

The explosion rocked the coal car. Men were thrown over the rim. The black wheels lifted, then slammed down, missing the rails. The wheels sawed ties and scored earth and the plough-shaped pilot rammed the coal car housing and all that tonnage lifted and scythed across the engine tearing the stack and the menagerie of steel and steam was engulfed in smoke. A part of the frame housing tore across the connecting rods and they broke loose from the locomotive spearing the boiler and a gauge wheel in the cab blew into the chest of the engineer and drove his ribs right out through his back.

The locomotive surged and the coal car listed into a decline beside the tracks, only to be vaulted up again where it broadsided the engine. For a few moments this architecture of ruined metal and mangled steel plowed on at full speed and then the housing plates separated at the seams and there was a violent hiss and a rush of flame and the remains of train cars exploded into a volcano of dust and debris.

John Lourdes swept from the plateau and down a ravine with Rawbone in hard pursuit. Their horses struggled up a steep incline from where they could see through the settling smoke that the first train was a hissing ma.s.s strewn over the tracks.

The second train was a mile back and coming on fast. It was under heavy fire from a cavalry of poor wretches hunkered down in their saddles and firing over the outstretched heads of their mounts.

John Lourdes wiped the sweat and dust from his field gla.s.ses and surveyed the landscape again. If the train could get past the wreckage, he saw where the tracks traversed a rising battlement of hills and the train would have to slow drastically. He yelled to Rawbone and pointed to where they were to ride. The father shouted back, as his mount shouldered wildly, that the train would never get through. But the son had already spurred his horse toward where the walls of the canyon burned with daylight.