Chapter 4
They rode into New Braunfels to the train depot with James before first light and dismounted. They stripped their gear from the horses and Isum turned to his son.
"You've got the home place, like I told ya. Mind your mother."
"I always do. Just like you do, Pa." James laughed.
Isum stared at him for a moment and chuckled. "Alright. See you when we get back."
James took both horses and led them toward home without looking back, which was exactly what Isum knew he'd do. He was a good young man, and Isum appreciated him more each year. Will and Isum shouldered their saddlebags and rifle cases and went to the window and bought their tickets west.
The train came in from the east at half past six, a Baldwin locomotive trailing a long exhalation of steam as it eased into the station.
The platform filled quickly. A cattle buyer in a canvas duster.
A family of German settlers, the father carrying everything, the mother carrying the youngest child.
Two nuns on a bench with identical small bags at their feet.
Will and Isum boarded and found seats near the middle of the car, rifles in the overhead rack, saddlebags on the floor.
The German family settled across the aisle. The youngest child, a girl of about three, fixed her eyes on Isum with the frank curiosity of someone who had not yet learned not to stare. Isum looked back at her and crossed his eyes. She giggled and buried her face in her mother's shoulder.
The whistle blew and the train moved.
New Braunfels to San Antonio was thirty-two miles of Hill Country they had both ridden many times.
In San Antonio they changed trains at the depot on Commerce Street and picked up the westbound.
The city fell away behind them, the stockyards, the tanneries along the river, the road south toward the missions, and then they were into open country, cedar breaks and live oak thinning as the land dried out and the limestone gave way to harder rock.
They rode in silence for a while. The car swayed on the rail joints and the country moved past the windows in long slow panels. After a time Isum pulled jerky from his coat and chewed it and watched the land go by.
"You know anything about this Vega?" he asked.
"Not a single thing. Virginia mentioned she thought that the man Elena was promised to was named Vega, but beyond that I know nothing about him, and he may not even be involved. She's been in Texas here for eighteen years. Hard to figure out what the holdup is."
"I got a feelin' it's Vega," Isum said. He went back to looking out the window and didn't say anything more.
The first stop of any size was Sabinal, a small station with a wood-sided depot and a tall water tank on a timber frame about seventy miles west of San Antonio.
The fireman and his trimmer both swung down from the cab and cranked the water spout over the tender while passengers stretched on the platform.
There was no coaling tower, so the fireman and trimmer had to shovel coal from a gondola car parked next to the water tower, so the stop took longer.
Then Uvalde, another thirty miles west. A bigger town, a proper depot, a stock pen beside the tracks that smelled of the cattle that had recently passed through.
They crossed the Nueces River on a timber trestle, and Will looked down at the water moving clear and slow over the rocks thirty feet below.
Del Rio was a busy border town with men moving goods in both directions and a customs officer watching the platform. Will and Isum got off and walked the platform and bought coffee from a vendor in the station and drank it standing in the shade of the depot overhang.
They finished the coffee and boarded. The train pulled west along the river, the Rio Grande running a quarter mile to the south, a grayish ribbon through country that was getting drier and more broken with every mile.
The conductor came through and opened the top sashes and a hot wind moved through the car that was better than nothing.
They ate from what they'd brought, cold biscuits, fried chicken Virginia had fixed, egg salad sandwiches from Alberta, apples, and they drank from their canteens. The dining car was two cars back but neither of them felt like moving.
"Del may be in jail," Isum said. "That's the only reason he wouldn't notify you...unless he was too sick or dead."
"Could be in rough shape."
"He'll hold, it's Del," Isum said.
Langtry was a water stop in the middle of nowhere, a scatter of buildings on a bluff above the Rio Grande with a saloon that faced the tracks and a sign above the door that read JUDGE ROY BEAN, LAW WEST OF THE PECOS. Will looked at it as the train slowed.
"That the judge?" Isum said.
"So they say."
"What kind of law you reckon he runs?"
"The kind that works out here, I guess," Will said. "Never had occasion to visit the town."
The fireman and trimmer loaded water and coal, and the train pulled out as Langtry fell behind them.
The country here was canyon country, the Rio Grande cutting deep below to the south, and the train moved through cuts and around curves with a care that slowed it considerably.
The cars swayed on the bends and the passengers held whatever was nearest.
The station agent at Sanderson was a lean young man who came out to watch the locomotive with the eye of someone who finds locomotives more interesting than most people. Isum and Will got off and walked the platform.
"How far to El Paso from here?" Isum asked the agent.
"Two hundred miles, give or take. Alpine next, then Marfa. Beyond that, she'll slow in the Davis Mountains but pick up on the other side."
"How long?"
"Through the night. You'll see El Paso in the middle of the night if she runs clean."
The whistle blew and both men stepped back aboard.
El Paso came up in the middle of the night, a rare light scattered along the base of the Franklin Mountains. The Rio Grande was dark and invisible but Will knew it was there. A quarter mile of brown water between Texas and whatever came next.
The locomotive rolled into the depot and shuddered to a stop. Steam vented in a long slow rush. Will shook Isum's shoulder and Isum opened his eyes immediately, wide awake the way a soldier sleeps.
They pulled their gear from the overhead rack and stepped off onto the platform. The air smelled of desert and coal smoke and the river. A pair of customs men in blue coats watched the arrivals with a lack of real interest.
"Paso del Norte," Isum said, looking south.
"Bridge is two blocks down. We cross on foot, find the livery, and look at horses. Mexican Central station is six blocks south of the bridge. Train leaves at eight."
"What time is it?"
Will checked his watch. "Quarter to two."
"Enough time to sleep."
"Yep. Some sleep is always better than none."
They found a hotel near the depot, two-story adobe, a night clerk who wanted a dollar each and didn't ask questions. The room had two iron beds and a window that looked out at the dark mass of the mountains. Will was asleep in five minutes.
At six they were downstairs eating scrambled eggs, ham and buttered corn tortillas at a narrow place the clerk had recommended, the cook working over a coal stove with great concentration. The coffee was strong, just the way Will liked it.
"I gotta mail this letter to Jacob," Will said when they'd finished.
Isum put down his cup. "We can drop it off on the way to the bridge."
The Rio Grande in early morning was low and brown and moving without much urgency. Two boys fished from the Texas bank with cane poles, not catching anything but not appearing to mind. Will and Isum crossed on foot and stepped off the far end into Paso del Norte.
The customs officer inside the adobe customs house looked at Will and Isum and asked in English, "Purpose of visit?"
"Turistas," Will said politely. "Here to see some of your beautiful country."
"Names?"
"Asa Smith and he's Isaac Jones."
The officer wrote something in his book and waved them through.
"So Isaac Jones for this trip," Isum said.
"Yeah, but still the same wise and very dangerous sidekick I've always had," Will said with a smile.
The livery was two blocks from the customs house, a long adobe stable with a corral alongside. The liveryman, who introduced himself as Ruben Castillo, was forking hay when they arrived. He was a compact man of about fifty.
"We need a couple of horses, sound horses," Will said in Spanish.
"Where are you traveling, Se?or?" Castillo asked.
"Taking the train to Jiménez, then five or six days riding," Will said. "Just visiting the country."
Castillo brought out three horses. Isum walked each one, checked mouths and feet, ran his hands down their legs.
He rejected the first, a bay with a hitch in the right foreleg that would show up after twenty miles.
The second and third he approved. A sturdy dun mare and a tall gray gelding with a calm eye and clean hooves.
"You take the dun. She's steadier," Isum said.
Will looked at the dun. She stood square and watched him without nerves. "You're giving me the better horse."
Isum laughed, "That's because you need it," at which Will laughed.
They paid Castillo for the week and led the horses to the Mexican Central depot six blocks south.
The depot was new timber, the sign freshly painted, the stationmaster a young man who seemed genuinely pleased by the novelty of Americans loading horses into his stock car.
He showed them the ramp and the tie rings and included two nose bags of grain with the fare, which Will had not expected.
"New railroad," Isum said, watching the stationmaster hustle off.
"Still trying to impress people," Will said.
They settled the horses and went forward to the passenger car.
The train filled slowly. Mexican businessmen, a few Anglo miners heading for the silver country south of Chihuahua City, a priest with a carved wooden cross on a cord around his neck who took the seat across from Isum and nodded to him with grave courtesy.
The cross was of hardwood, looked like it might be Texas ebony.
Whoever carved it didn't do it with a pocketknife. The wood was too hard for that.
At eight o'clock, the whistle blew and the Mexican Central pulled south out of Paso del Norte into the Chihuahuan desert.
Isum watched the desert open up around them, the pale flats and the distant mountains and the sky going from pink to white as the sun came up. He was quiet for a long time.
"Del's gon' be surprised to see us."
"If he's in trouble, which I suspect, he'll be relieved to see us." Will chuckled and said, "But he'll pretend he's not."
"Yeah," Isum said with a laugh. "That's Del in a nutshell."
The train rolled south and the desert went on in every direction and neither of them said much more as the miles came and went beneath the wheels.