deafening din of steel wheels on iron rails and surging wind in their faces. They held onto their hats. The army train was eleven cars long from locomotive to caboose and the officers were headed towards the front of the train where the two empty cargo wagons were. Crossing the clanking hitches, Higuerra stepped onto the rear platform of the next coach and shouldered through the door into the mess wagon, which served as galley and also the brig. Beside the stove and sink where the pots and pans and provisions were kept, sat a barred cage of an iron jail cell heavily bolted to the floor and ceiling. The cell was presently empty. The cook, a Federale private, was busy chopping vegetables and tossing them in several large copper cauldrons but took time to salute the Colonel as the officer strode past.
The next car was the horse wagon. The Colonel and Sergeant crossed the knuckle onto the rear platform of the coach, entering the door into the unmanned car. The officers walked across the straw and dung-strewn floor past the stable stalls where twenty magnificent cavalry stallions were saddled, tacked and tethered. The horses were watered and provisioned. Nearly all the animals were standing, most chewing on the hay from the managers bolted to the side of the wagon. The coach swayed and shook as the train rounded a bend in the line and the men grabbed a stall to keep their balance. The standard-issue quarter horses stood proudly, unfazed by the bumpy train ride, for they were trained for combat. Higuerra patted his own horse on the rump as he walked past. The powerful black steed was the largest of the quarter horses and the Colonel’s pride and joy. As the Federales passed to the other end of the coach, the few other horses who bothered to acknowledge their presence looked at them in disinterest, then idly turned their heads away.
Exiting the horse truck onto the forward platform at the front end, Colonel Higuerra and Sergeant Gomez stepped over the juddering couplings onto the rear platform of the second of the two troop wagons. Both Federales pushed through the door with a military snap to their step.
“Atencion!” the Colonel snapped as he and the Sergeant entered into the sweltering heat of the troop car. The windows were open but the hot desert blasting in did little to cool it. Twenty uniformed Federales of all shapes and sizes stood against the walls or sat on the rows of seats, at ease and talking or playing cards, awaiting orders. The men instantly jumped to their feet and snapped to attention. The garrison was hand-picked with top soldiers in ages from twenties to thirties. Perspiring tough athletic brown faces soaked with sweat from the humid triple digit heat looked back obediently at the comandante. The close, stuffy air of the car smelled of body odor, canvas, boot leather, and khaki. Colonel Higuerra clicked his boot heels together and straightened at attention, smiling at the proud sight of his crack troops and the pride mirrored in the faces of each and every man. His boys loved him, the Colonel knew, and he loved them right back. The mission they were on may be shit but he led a fine battalion.
The comandante heard the muffled steam whistle blast from the locomotive and could already feel the train was slowing. The coach lurched in deceleration. Higuerra barked orders to the men. “Fall in! All soldiers will immediately assume battle stations. Collect your weapons from the armory on the double!” He pointed at the two most able bodied soldiers. “Munoz and Garcia, you will report to the cargo wagons and help load the crates. The rest of you, move!”
Rows of dutiful Federales filed past Higuerra in tight-knit formation through the door heading back to the armory wagon as the Colonel proceeded to the next car with his three soldiers.
The routine was repeated in the forward troop car as the comandante ordered thirty more of his troops to gather their guns from the back of the train and take armed position inside the coaches and on the roof of the railroad. Colonel Higuerra walked forwards against the tide of Federales filing to the back of the train to arm themselves. His face was stern but his eyes twinkled at the men. Presently, the clump of boots on the ceiling above signaled soldiers on the roof taking up position atop the slowing steam train as it chugged into the station platform. Higuerra noted with satisfaction the highly trained Federales under his command made a good account of themselves and performed like a well-oiled machine. The air resounded with the metallic chorus of rifles being loaded, bolts engaged, and gun hammers cocked.
Through the windows, the first scattered structures on the outskirts of the sprawling mining town of Rio Muerta came into view. Colonel Higuerra, Sergeant Gomez and the two soldiers he requisitioned crossed the front platform of the forward troop wagon onto the fancy officer’s coach. The men passed through the luxurious carpeted interior of the car, bypassing the comforts of the plush leather couches and brass-railed bar as they made their way into the rear of two cargo cars, just as the military train was pulling into the station platform.
Wind and dust rushed in through the open cargo bay doors as the Colonel took his place by the opening while his three Federales waited at attention behind him. The soldiers looked out on the buildings of a populated settlement where moments before there had been nothing but badlands. The tableau spread out before them was an impressive but improbable vista, actual civilization rising like a phoenix in the farthest burning reaches of the desert wastes.
The dynamic mining boomtown of Rio Muerta bustled with industry in the baking midday heat. The place churned with aggressive, grubby activity. Miners with hard hats and tools trundled down the dirt streets, clutching picks and shovels or leading burros laden with supply packs. Horses carrying grimy vaqueros in the saddles trotted this way and that. Over thirty wooden buildings and camp town tents comprised the bulk of the town. The air smelled of cooked meat, charcoal fire smoke, oil, dust, and sweat. Workers swarmed like cattle in a slaughterhouse stockade. Every time he came to town, the Colonel was struck by the incongruity of the very existence of a vital place such as this amidst hundreds of empty miles of the barren harsh desert that led up to it. El Diablo was deadlands where nothing grew and nothing lived, not even vermin. Yet somehow in the middle of nowhere, this fancy town with all these people had sprouted up like a mystical oasis; it was out of place, wrong somehow, like a mirage.
But Rio Muerta was no mirage.
The town was real, with its own heart and lungs, and in its veins ran silver.
Up and down the busy streets of the boomtown, dusty wooden buildings were new and freshly painted, the nineteenth century gingerbread architecture every bit as up to date as modern American frontier towns like Tombstone and Dodge City that Rio Muerta indeed resembled. Saloons, hotels, bordellos, casinos, feed and dry good suppliers, gun dealers, mining equipment purveyors and other shops all looked prosperous and expensive.
It was the silver, Higuerra knew.
Silver was being dug out of the ground in prodigious quantities in Rio Muerta and money flowed into town as steadily as the river that was its namesake.
The Colonel held his ears to muffle the ear-splitting shriek of the locking brakes on the locomotive’s driving wheels followed by a screeching, banging clamor as the train, with a concussive collisioning of bumpers, began to slow towards a stop. The engine spewed off boiling steam that wafted around the open cargo doors. Through the billowing mist, in the low rise of canyons at the edge of town, Higuerra spotted the distant mineshaft portals like rat holes in the rock. Herds of itinerant miners and raggedy prospectors filtered in and out of the shafts like ants, pushing rusty steel mine carts loaded with rubble along the rails leading deep into the ground.
Brakes hard on, the railroad ground to a jolting shuddering halt, so positioned that it brought up the cargo cars precisely alongside the ornate arch above the station platform adorned with the huge black block letters:
RIO MUERTA
The railway tracks stopped here—it was the end of the line.
The train had arrived.
The platform was deserted.
Where was the cargo, the Colonel wondered? It should be here by now. The officer
