Higuerra couldn’t believe the brazenness of the graft in full view of his men. The Colonel had never taken a bride of any kind in his whole career as a soldier, and came down hard on anyone under his command who did. Many of the Mexican policia and Federales were corrupt, everyone knew, and bribes and payoffs were business as usual in Mexico. It was a moral cancer, the comandante felt. He wanted no part of it.
The Colonel shook his head.
Remus held out the silver brick in his glove, waiting, a questioning and even baffled look in his black eyes. Higuerra just held his gaze and didn’t blink, making no move to accept the silver bar that must have been worth fifty thousand pesos or two years of his salary. Feeling the eyes of his men on his back the Colonel just stood his ground, knowing his soldiers were watching to see what he would do. He intended to set an example for his troops and demonstrate he was incorruptible, as any good Federale should be.
Now Romulus took a step closer, nudging his head to indicate the proffered bribe. “Take it. This is how things are done. Consider it a gift.”
“I consider it an attempt to bribe a military officer,” Higuerra brusquely shot back. “I’ll pretend that I didn’t see that, but if you further attempt to bribe me, by the regulations of the Mexican policia federal, I will arrest you at once. Is that understood?”
Surprised by his remarks, the twins appeared taken aback, incredulous looks on their faces. The Colonel guessed they had never had someone refuse a bribe before or rebuke them, as he just did. The Salazars exchanged hooded glances with each other.
Colonel Higuerra stood ramrod straight, unblinking and unflappable—he had had his fill of this shit detail. It was bad enough this whole dirty miserable assignment carrying the payoff from gangsters to the leader of his country—this alone made him sick—but the Salazars thinking they could bribe him was the last straw. A man of honor could only shoulder so much.
“Take the silver,” Romulus had an edge to his voice this time that contained a quiet threat. The gentlemanly façade was now dropped. He and Remus were visibly threatened that a man, any man, could not be bought. It was not the way things in their world worked. The Colonel’s refusal was taken as a challenge.
Casting a quick, deliberate glance over his shoulder, Higuerra saw his three men all watching him attentively with sober respect. They had seen and heard the entire exchange while they had loaded the last two crates. On the train journey back, they would spread the word through the ranks that their commanding officer could not be bribed and this would inspire the men in their own conduct to be better soldiers. For the first time in a long time, Higuerra felt pride in his uniform. His head rotated back to face the Salazar brothers dead on, eyes implacable. “We have received the cargo and my train will depart at once to get back to Mexico City on schedule by order of El Presidente. Good day, gentlemen.” The Colonel saluted the twins sharply then gave a hand signal to the engineer in the drive cab of the locomotive it was time to get the train moving.
Seeing that they had lost and the officer who would not be bribed was turning his back on them and leaving town, a look of pure naked malevolence flashed in Romulus and Remus Salazar’s eyes. In that brief malignant gaze, Colonel Higuerra caught a quick chilling glimpse of the true depth of just how evil and unimaginably dangerous the twins truly were. He had thwarted their will, provoked their ire and there would be consequences. Higuerra would hear about this from his superiors, if not El Presidente himself. This was not over, no, not by a long shot.
The comandante put a metal whistle on a chain around his neck to his mouth and blew it loudly. The high-pitched report split the air. At the signal, up and down the length of the train his garrison took their positions for departure, running across the roofs of the coaches and climbing onto the transom platforms of the cars with their rifles in their grip in crack military formation.
The Colonel waved his arm to the engineer in the driving cab of the locomotive and the man waved back in acknowledgement—pull out. The burly grimy overalled trainman named Lorca leaned out of the footplate doorway toward the sound of rushing water.
The locomotive was pulled up alongside a fifty-foot high wooden water tower on a scaffolding. The second member of the driving crew, a fireman in sooty overalls, stood on the ladder feeding a long metal pipe from the circular water vat into the lip of the boiler on the nose of the locomotive. Water flooded down the pipe into the steam engine refueling it for the long trip back to Mexico City. The burning coal in the locomotive firebox boiled the water that generated the huge amount of steam used to drive the giant wheels of the hundred-ton train. The fireman named Medrano acknowledged the engineer with a wave saying the train was fueled. Disengaging the pipe from the nose of the train, he cranked it on a chain back up into the tower then swung off the scaffolding onto the footplate doorway of the engine.
In the driving cab of the locomotive, the trainmen got to work. The engineer said a few words to his fireman and the second man shoveled a heap of black coal from the tender into the fiercely burning firebox of the boiler, stoking the blazing flames to a roaring intensity. The engineer checked the pressure on the gauge, opened the steam release valve, crossed the floorplates to his bucket seat, sat behind the controls then pulled the steam throttle.
A piercing blast of the train whistle split the air, followed by loud hisses of steam, clanks of unlocking brakes, and mechanical graunching as the engine was throttled. The steel-on-steel of wheels on rails slowly ground and the train lurched into motion. The locomotive driving wheels slipped once, twice, three times, then they began to bite, and the train started to reverse back up the tracks, slowly at first, then picking up speed.
The Colonel stood by the open cargo bay door, stoically observing the two big figures receding on the platform. The Salazars watched him go with hell in their eyes. The reversing locomotive was accelerating out of town towards the wasteland of El Diablo. As the train pulled out, clouds of steam from the engine engulfed the platform and began to obscure the Salazars from view, the shrinking figures of the twins dissipating into misty evanescence, the buildings and streets of the mining town dissolving behind curtains of foggy steam until Rio Muerta was a mere ghostly outline in the white haze and then nothing at all. By the time the steam had cleared and the train began to highball they were a mile out of town and there was nothing but open desert in every direction. Rio Muerta had vanished like the mirage it so often appeared to be.
The hours that passed didn’t do so quickly enough for the comandante—by five o’clock the following day as the sun was sinking on the mesas they were well underway, but he could still smell the Rio Muerta stench on his skin.
Colonel Jesus Higuerra knew he would not be making this trip again for any number of reasons, but regardless of the consequences, that suited him just fine.
It would be the last time he would ever have to set eyes on Rio Muerta.
And exactly at that moment he heard the deafening explosion up ahead and saw the huge blast blow the tracks sky high as loud voices yelled to stop the train.
CHAPTER FOUR
The TNT went off the instant the plunger was injected, erasing the tracks from view. The sound of the earth-shaking explosion was a low register sledgehammer thud. The valley shook from the seismic concussion.
Spurs were dug into the flanks of the three gunfighters’ stallions with the horses already at full gallop down the canyon seconds before the explosion. Tucker, Fix, and Bodie knew from experience their horses must be on the move before the dynamite blew or the blast would startle and shy them from being ridden.
Down below the riders, the blast swept two parallel sections of rail and trestle sky high, twisted and corkscrewed, in a mushroom of flying dirt, disintegrating debris and smoke
