Last Train From Cuernavaca

  As the two soldiers approached, Angel arched her back as though to relieve an ache. She had seen the women do it often to show off the breasts with which God had blessed and cursed them. In the process she put a hand on the rubber grip of her pistol, just for reassurance.

  She would not use the revolver unless she had to. A gunshot wasn’t like other sounds. The troops would hear it over the rumble, clatter, and creak of the train. They would come swarming up here.

  Angel bantered with the two while she waited for the curve with a drop-off on one side. As it neared, she pulled one of the men close as though to kiss him. She pretended to lose her balance and shouldered him toward the abyss. He fell with his head and chest hanging over the edge of the roof.

  When his friend bent to help him, Angel pushed him. She put her bare foot on the first man’s backside and shoved as the train went into the curve. The centrifigal force of the turn sent both men flying over the edge of the cliff.

  Antonio jumped the gap to join her while Serafina, Socorro, and nine other women and older girls lined up at the near end of the stock car. Angel slid back the trapdoor in the mail car’s roof and peered in to make sure no one else occupied it. She lowered herself through it and handed Mauser rifles, full cartridge belts, and bandoleers of stripper-clips up to Antonio. He gave them to Serafina and the others, who buckled on the belts, slung the bandoleers over their shoulders, and passed the rifles to the rest of the women to hold.

  Angel’s first plan had been to detach the mail car, too. Antonio pointed out that the weight of two cars moving backward downhill might cause them to overshoot the level ground they were aiming for. There would be nothing to stop them from rolling back down into the valley.

  When Angel had passed as many rifles, pistols, and cartridge belts through the trapdoor as everyone could carry, Antonio grasped her hands and hauled her out. He left her there and returned to the rear of the mail car to wait for her signal to climb down and separate the two cars.

  Angel ran shoeless and light-footed along the roofs until she reached the front of the first-class car. Up ahead loomed the rock shaped like a parrot’s head. It marked the site of the next part of her plan and it was speeding toward her.

  Angel had thrown a lot of homemade bombs, but she had never handled dynamite. She did not know that what she was about to do was foolish to the point of suicidal. If she had known, she would have done it anyway. As her father’s old mayordomo, Plinio, always said, no one lives forever.

  She did know that each of the three slow fuses allowed a different time before ignition—ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds. She had to pitch them accurately and in the proper sequence. Accuracy was not a problem for Angel, and Antonio had tied one, two, or three pieces of string around each stick to indicate the order in which to throw them.

  Angel struck a match. Turning to one side and hunching her shoulders to shield it from the wind, she lit a cigar. She enjoyed the first few puffs, flexing her knees and rocking in rhythm with the train.

  She signaled Antonio to get ready to uncouple the stock car. As the train slowed down on its approach to the longest of the trestle bridges, Angel sucked on the cigar until the tip glowed a deep red. Her first target was the big, mushroom-shaped smokestack. If she missed it, she would have two more chances. Landing the explosive in the stack was the key to the enterprise.

  The first stick with the slowest fuse made a perfect arc. It tumbled end over end in tight revolutions, and flew straight and vertical into the stack like sugarcane down a chute. From there it should be able to blow open the boiler.

  As the train clattered onto the boards of the trestle Angel lobbed the second stick between the wood tender and the first-class passenger car. It should land on the trestle and go off as the freight cars passed over it. The third one she heaved over the engine and onto the tracks ahead.

  She sprinted back along the train’s roofs, pausing to light the fuses on the two grenades and drop them into the mail car. Enough ammunition remained down there to make a first-rate show, and she didn’t want a front row seat.

  She leaped onto the stock car as Antonio uncoupled it. Angel knew the topography of the railbed like the workings of her rifle. The stock car rolled backward down a gentle slope and around a curve. It came to a stop on level ground while three explosions knocked rocks loose to roll down the sides of the canyon. The ground shook, rattling the badly riveted sleepers that held the rails in place. The rails bucked and the stock car vibrated.

  “Ka-boom,” Angel murmured. She stood awestruck by a fireworks display like none she had ever witnessed.

  Flames shot thirty feet above the outcrop between the train on the trestle and the runaway car. The blasts launched body parts, chunks of metal, splintered logs, and hot water from the boiler. Several drops of blood, blown by the wind, landed on Angel’s arm. She wiped them onto her skirt.

  She refused to give in to the weakness of remorse. The men who had belonged to those detached arms and legs and heads would have done the same to her. And they would have done it after they had waited patiently in line to rape her.

  Antonio jimmied the lock on the stock car door with a crowbar. The women dumped out the dirt and grass and pieces of wood they had stuffed into their satchels and tied up into their shawls to make them look full of personal possessions. They replaced the bogus goods with the small arms and pouches of ammunition. They all buckled on as many cartridge belts and bandoliers as they could carry.

  Angel led the exodus off the roof. She and Antonio, José, the prisoners, and their families shouldered the federal army’s rifles and ran for cover among the trees and boulders. From there they would walk the three miles to the village where they had left their belongings and animals.

  46

  In Hot Water

  Rico bore little resemblance to the cavalry officer he once had been. He was dirty and bearded. His clothes were torn and filthy. He wore his cartridge belt slung bandolier-style across his chest like any rebel or bandit. The brilliant light of the full moon didn’t improve Rico’s appearance, but it made Grullo’s silver-gray coat glow until he looked supernatural.

  The direct route to Ayala took Rico dangerously close to Tres Marías, but he was in no mood to waste time with a detour. With the moon this bright he could travel the winding sometimes-cobblestone road at night. Once he was south of Cuernavaca he would be in Zapata’s home district. Running into Rubio’s troops there would be even less likely than meeting a night patrol here. The federales conscripted so many indios as cannon fodder that they gave Rico at least one advantage. The indios firmly believed that witches, ghosts, shape-takers, and demons held dominion over the night, even one as brightly lit as this one.

  At first Rico thought the distant explosions were thunder, but the moon still shimmered in a clear sky. Rico had heard many explosions in his year of patrolling the rails, but this was bigger than any of them. He assumed the blasts came from the train tracks. Nothing else in these mountains merited blowing up.

  He headed for a vantage point where he could see the tracks. Soon he could follow the glow in the sky. By the time he found an overlook, soldiers from the barracks were searching for survivors in the wreckage of the last freight car that had advanced only halfway out onto the trestle. Judging from the blanket-shrouded bodies laid out in a line in the moonlight, they weren’t recovering many. Rico figured most of the casualties were conscripts. The dead among them all would be dumped into a hastily dug trench. The Army did not consider rank-and-file corpses worth the bother of identifying.

  The indios probably had been transported from the northern states. Their faraway loved ones might never know what had become of them. Rico took off his hat and prayed for their souls.

  From this height he could see the extent of the damage. The trestle ended in splinters about a third of the way across the canyon. What remained was on fire. The engine and wood tender had run off into the abyss and lay on their sides among the boulders in the river eight hundr
ed feet down. The passenger and freight cars were stove in, burning, and hanging cantilevered out into thin air. The wind carried the smell of charred wood, blood, and cordite.

  Rico wondered if Hanibal, the engineer, had been in the engine’s cab tonight. If so, he almost certainly lay at the bottom of the canyon with his beloved elefante, the locomotive.

  The rebels’ homemade explosives could not have caused this much destruction. They must have used dynamite. He wondered who had done it. The usual suspects would include Lieutenant Angel’s men, but Mother Merced said they were on their way to Ayala. With Grace.

  Rico wanted to help the wounded, but if he went down there the soldiers would open fire. All of them would want to collect the five-hundred-peso reward that Rubio had offered. Hell, any wounded survivors able to pick up a gun would try to shoot him.

  His reasoning eased the conscience that knew the truth. He was relieved to have an excuse to continue on toward Ayala.

  Rico had a long way to ride, but at dawn he could not pass up the hot spring bubbling up in a natural pool among the rocks. He didn’t know if he would have another chance to make himself a bit more presentable for his reunion with Grace.

  He turned Grullo loose to graze on the grass, lush and hip-high from the summer’s rains. He leaned his rifle against the trunk of a nearby cedar and laid his gun belt and Colts on the rock rim of the spring. He undressed and climbed into the hot water.

  He rinsed out his shirt, socks, and underwear and spread them to dry on the rocks. He laid his head against the rim, closed his eyes, and let the sun warm his face. It glowed behind the translucent lids of his eyes and filled his head with light. The warmth of the water took him back to Grace’s rooms and the times they had shared the big bathtub there.

  The clatter and slam of a rifle bolt jerked him out of his revery. He grabbed his Colts, but saw more than one muzzle glinting among the boulders above him. All of them pointed in his direction.

  “Do not be stupid, friend.” A woman sat astride a big mule. The butt of her Remington rested on her thigh. The rifle barrels withdrew and a few minutes later twenty-three more women rode up behind her.

  Rico didn’t have to be introduced to know who she was. People in this district called her La Gata, The Cat. When fighters in the rebel forces were killed, their women usually set up house keeping with other men. Some widows, however, chose to become combatants themselves. La Gata and her followers had decided to avenge their men.

  Their definition of revenge included stealing from the rich whenever they had the chance. For the most part they dressed in the same khaki pants and shirts as the men, but each one accessorized in her own way. A few of them carried parasols. Others wore skimmers, boaters, and merry widow hats adorned with plumes and enough flowers for an arboretum.

  They had on an assortment of army boots and patent-leather shoes, silk scarves, and at least one feather boa. All of that was topped with bandoliers and cartridge belts. The variety of their weapons went from La Gata’s rolling block rifle with a pistol grip stock to a flintlock pistol that must have belonged to someone’s great-great-grandfather.

  Still sitting in the water, Rico reached for his trousers. A bullet from La Gata’s Remington richocheted off the pool’s rim.

  “We like you better as God created you.” She stood in the stirrups to assess his equipment.

  The women debated whether to shoot him or make a slave of him, but all of them agreed that they would take his money.

  “I have no money,” he said.

  “You have a fine horse, cabrón.”

  “You can’t take him.”

  La Gata laughed so hard her breasts jounced on either side of her bandoliers like children at piñata party. “And who will stop me?”

  “I will.” The voice was accompanied by a breech bolt slamming home.

  The young man sat on a ledge with his legs dangling, his sombrero pushed back on his head. His Winchester rested on his thigh as though he knew he could shoot La Gata without the effort of lifting it.

  “He belongs to us, Angel,” shouted La Gata.

  “General Zapata would not approve of wasting a healthy young fellow hauling wood and servicing a flock of whores.”

  More men appeared and stood on the outcrops around Angel.

  La Gata hadn’t survived this long by giving in easily. “Maybe Zapata prefers to have us beauties fight alongside him than a gang of smelly pendejos like you.”

  “We will take him.”

  “And may he bring you bad luck.” La Gata also knew when she was bested. “We’ve no use for his little thing anyway. It’s the size of a rooster’s.”

  Rico opened his mouth to dispute that, thought better of it, and closed it again.

  La Gata spat in Rico’s direction, then reined her horse around and rode away with her women following.

  Rico’s shirt was only damp now. He used it to dry off before he pulled on his leather trousers.

  “I would say his thing is bigger than a rooster’s,” Angel observed to his men. “It’s at least as big as a goose’s.”

  Rico put on his shirt and vest and picked up his weapons. Nothing Angel said could bother him. He was a happy man.

  He had found Lieutenant Angel, or to be exact, Lieutenant Angel had found him. Grace must be camped with the women of the band somewhere close by.

  Rico held on to Grullo’s reins and waited for the rebels to converge on him in a shower of gravel. Angel hooked a khaki-clad leg over the saddle’s pommel and pointed the Winchester in his general direction.

  “I recognize you,” Angel said. “You’re one of Fatso’s bastards.”

  “Fatso would rather hang me than you.”

  “That’s right,” Angel said. “I hear Fatso is offering a reward.”

  Rico wasn’t worried much. He doubted that Angel would ride to Rubio’s headquarters and demand the five hundred pesos.

  “I’m looking for an Englishwoman,” he said. “Her name is Grace Knight. People say she rides with you.”

  “We know nothing of an Englishwoman.” Angel turned to his partners in crime. “Shall we hang him or let him go free to search for his gringa?”

  They gathered for a conference. The jury did not deliberate long.

  Angel turned back to Rico. “They vote to hang you.”

  47

  Circling the Wagons

  Grace worried too much about José to sleep much. She heard the bell on the front door jangle just after dawn. Whoever wanted in was insistent.

  Tradesmen went to the back door and the hour was too early for train arrivals. Grace herself wouldn’t leave for the station for two hours to go to Mexico City to see President Huerta. She dressed quickly and hurried downstairs.

  Leobardo looked worried. “They say they are policemen and they have a warrant to search for contraband.”

  He stood aside so Grace could peer through the barred window in the door. The five men standing outside did have on the blue jackets and khaki trousers of Cuernavaca’s police force, but something about them looked amiss. The city’s policemen took great pride in their appearance. Their uniforms were always starched, pressed, and tailored. Their white gloves were pristine.

  These men’s trousers had horizontal creases above the knees where they had hung drying over a line. The men’s smiles fit them as badly as the jackets. Grace suspected they had snagged the clothes from a laundress. The police didn’t hang their service pistols out to dry, which made them less accessible. These men were trying to hide their machetes behind their backs.

  One of them held up a smudged paper with a red wax seal in the lower left-hand corner.

  “¿Qué pasa?” Socrates joined Grace and Leobardo.

  “They say they have an order to search the Colonial.”

  “Banditos.” Socrates sized them up with a glance. “Asesinos. Sinvergüenzas. Assassins. Shameless ones.”

  What irked Grace most was that the thieves thought her stupid enough to fall for their ruse.


  When the doors didn’t swing open, the leader of the gang shouted threats. Grace knew a woman’s voice would carry little authority for the likes of them. She turned to ask Socrates to tell them to go away, but he had disappeared. Muttering a few expletives of her own, she started off to look for him. Halfway across the courtyard she saw him trotting toward her with her shotgun in his hand.

  “You can’t shoot them.” Grace did not want corpses piled up at the door and a mob of real policemen clogging the lobby. She imagined reams of official forms to fill out. “You might hit an innocent passerby.”

  “Don’t worry, Mamacita.”

  When the men heard Socrates pump the shotgun they started backing away. He poked the muzzle between the window’s bars, aimed slightly over their heads, and fired. The blast would have riffled their hair if it hadn’t been plastered down with handfuls of grease. They skulked off shouting promises to return with the army.

  “I doubt that,” Grace muttered. What was left of the federal army in Cuernavaca rarely left their barracks.

  “Shall I open the doors, Mamacita?” Leobardo put a hand on the rope that lifted the big beam from across the massive gates.

  Leobardo’s first official act each morning was to open the doors wide. Masses of crimson bougainvillea framed the doorway and the splashing fountain and luxuriant greenery in the cool courtyard beyond the entryway. The open doors were more than a ploy to lure in travelers. Grace considered them her contribution to the beauty of Cuernavaca.

  She had a subtler reason for wanting them open. She never lost hope that Rico would find his way back to her, in spite of all Rubio’s threats. She feared if he did return and found the doors closed, he would assume she had left the city, and would turn away.

  Grace looked through the barred window. The area was clear except for the men sweeping the plaza with their big push brooms. She nodded to Leobardo to raise the beam and open the doors. Lyda, Annie, and Jake McGuire were the first to walk through them.