Chapter 18 #2
They walked the length of that street. Past the cantina, past the dry goods store, past two soldiers watering at the trough who never looked up.
Will and Isum turned after them, unhurried, two men who had thought better of the fare.
Behind them the northbound rolled into Santa Rosalía with the bell ringing, and stopped, and took on its passengers, and blew, and pulled out north without them.
Nobody in the party so much as turned around to watch it go.
A half mile past the last house Del stopped and lifted Carlos down and stood a moment breathing.
"We gotta go to Plan B," Isum said. "We gotta ride north to Chihuahua City where there are hundreds boarding the train."
"See," Will said, "I knew you'd come up with Plan B."
They got the horses and made camp that night in a fold of ground off the road and made only a small fire of dry mesquite. After the boy was asleep in his blanket Elena sat close to her husband and asked it straight, in a low voice.
"If they stop us? On the train, or the road. What happens?"
"I don't know," Del said. It was the truth and he said so. "I've got a letter and a shave and a new name. Past that I don't know."
The small fire ticked. Across it Will spoke without being asked, his hat down, his voice easy.
"A warrant's paper," he said. "Fuentes has got a wire and a description, and we've got a family and a letter and Vega's own hand in my coat saying the charge was made up false. We will get you home, Del. All three of you and Lupita. I didn't ride this far south to come back short."
Nobody answered him. Nobody needed to. Elena lay down beside her son, and the fire burned out, and in the morning they turned north for Chihuahua City.
"They're watching for a lone rider coming up out of the south," Will said, "not a family buying first class tickets north. We'll hide you in the open, in a crowd, in good clothes. I'm thinking it's the last place they'll look."
"Two days' ride," Isum said.
"Two days," Will said. "Ride easy. Raise no dust."
They rode the two days dry and quiet, off the main road where the ground allowed, and it was Isum who saved them on the second morning.
He was riding drag and watching their back trail the way he watched everything, without seeming to, and he came up alongside Will at a jog and said, "Dust. Southeast, four miles, coming on the road. Eight or ten riders, moving like men paid to move."
They led the party down into an arroyo hidden from the road and dismounted.
They held the horses' heads, and Del stood with his hand over the bay's nose and Carlos sat against the cutbank with his mother's hand in his, pressed twice, and the boy studied a beetle in the sand and said nothing at all. Lupita huddled next to them.
"What's going to happen to me?" she whispered.
Elena turned to her quickly. "There's plenty of room," she whispered back. "You'll be part of our family until you decide you want to leave. Don't worry even a little bit. It's a better life up there once you get used to it."
The patrol came up the road and passed above them.
Ten Rurales at a road gait, gray jackets, carbines, the sound of them swelling and hanging and fading, hoofbeats and one man's voice saying something and another laughing, and then just the wind again.
They stayed in the arroyo a full half hour after the sound died. Then they rode on.
Chihuahua City came up out of the plain that afternoon, the aqueduct and the cathedral towers and the noise of it closed over them like water, which was what they wanted. In a city that size nobody saw anything.
The horses went first, all of them, sold to a dealer by the market who asked no questions and paid accordingly. Del stood at the rail a minute with his hand on the bay's neck, the second horse he'd said goodbye to in a week.
"That's the last horse I sell in Mexico," he said.
"Amen to that," said Isum.
The suit came next. Will had given Del a hundred dollars and suggested he change his appearance totally.
Del was shaved close, barbered and put into a store-bought suit of gray wool, and a collar, and a fine, black felt hat that said "businessman," and gave not one hint of a cowhand.
When he came out onto the street Elena looked him up and down.
"Se?or Hidalgo," she said.
"Se?ora," Del said, and gave her his arm.
Will bought the tickets, first class to Paso del Norte for the family and Lupita, second class for himself and Isum in the car behind.
The evening northbound stood in the station with steam up, and the platform was a river of people, drummers, priests, miners and women with wicker hampers, and the family went down it unremarked, four people among two or three hundred.
Carlos got to see the engine at last, stood before it with his head all the way back while it breathed above him, and the engineer looked down and touched his cap to the boy, and then they boarded.
The train pulled out at dusk. Chihuahua City slid away and the dark came down over the desert and the car swayed and clicked, and for a while, for a whole hour, it was over.
Carlos knelt at the window watching the last light.
Elena's head came down against Del's shoulder and stayed there, and her eyes closed, and Del sat still so as not to wake her, watching the desert run backward past the glass.
He let himself think, for that one hour, about the ranch, and the spring work waiting, and his own bed he shared with his sweet wife.
Then the brakes came on.
It was not a scheduled stop. The car slowed hard and the couplings ran in with a bang down the length of the train, and it ground to a standstill at a water tank in the middle of blue dark and nothing. Del looked out the window.
Lanterns on the platform. Horses standing behind the tank. Gray jackets coming up the steps of the first car.
Elena was awake. She didn't ask. She took Carlos gently back from the window into the seat between them, and pressed his hand twice, and folded her hands in her lap. The train did not move.