The Wolves of El Diablo. Eric Red

changed. They were still wanted men with rewards on their heads with no honest work to be found for them north or south of the Mexican border. So Tucker, Fix, and Bodie went back to robberies. Old habits die hard and they stuck with what they knew: dealing in lead. The gunfighters’ guilty consciences were mitigated a bit by their heroic deeds destroying the werewolves and saving all those lives. Figured it scored them a few points in heaven and balanced out their past crimes. Being good guys had been fun while it lasted.

      But right now, all three were thinking, if we had gotten that silver we had been promised, we wouldn’t have had to rob no damn train.

      The past was behind them. Fix spoke for all of them when he said, “It don’t pay to think too much on things you leave behind.”

      “This score is gonna be the one. I can feel it,” spoke Tucker confidently. “Those miners back there at the saloon said this railway line runs to a mining town called Rio Muerta a hunnert mile east of here and the train is headin’ back Mexico City way loaded with miners carrying silver.” Tucker licked his lips thinking how lucrative the train robbery could be. “Them that told us had no reason to lie.”

      “Not with our gun barrels in their mouths,” Fix remarked, busy rechecking the loads in his pistols.

      “A lot of freshly mined silver is on that train. Ours for the taking.” Bodie whistled heartily. “Them miners told us oughta know. They was heading to Rio Muerta their ownselves.”

      “I just hope they wasn’t misinformed about how much silver is in those mines and how many miners is gonna be on this train,” Tucker muttered. The hours of inaction waiting for the railroad to show up was taking a toll on his nerves and he was beginning to fret and think too much.

      Fix chewed his lip and brooded. “I heard rumor it may not be many. They say a lot of prospectors strike out for Rio Muerta to make their fortune because of all that silver supposed to be there, but only a few return.”

      “They say a lot of crap.” Bodie shrugged off such talk.

      “We’re soon to find out, I reckon,” Tucker remarked.

      “Soon as this train shows up let’s rob it and cut out of this Goddamn territory.” Fix’s eyes had a hooded look.

      Bodie whistled sharply to get the other shootists’ attention: “Smoke.” He passed the binoculars off to Tucker, who shifted in the saddle and put them to his eyes for a look-see.

      In the magnified circle view of the field glasses, a billowing smokestack smudged the bruised sky as the smeared blur of a distant steam train emerged out of the heat waves. A high-stacked locomotive was coming their way.

      It was go time. There was no more talking required so the gunslingers pulled the handkerchiefs over their mouths and got ready. The wood handle plunger to the TNT detonator felt reassuring in the palm of Tucker’s hand and he felt a moist slickness of sweat and grit inside his glove. The squat wooden box was firmly braced between two big rocks on the ridge. The cowboy’s pale blue eyes narrowed above the kerchief covering the lower part of his face. His keen gaze tracked the coiling wire leading out of the detonation box snaking down the precipice in a hair thin line until it became barely perceptible by the distant dusty wood trestles and rusty rails on the train bed far below where the bundle of dynamite sticks were lodged—one good thrust down on the TNT plunger was going to blow those train tracks sky high.

      They could all hear the railroad now, chugging louder and louder, and it had a full head of steam up.

      The clickety-clack of the wheels amplified around the canyon.

      The train came into view.

      Moving backwards.

      The railroad traveled in reverse, caboose-first.

      “What the fuck?” said a surprised Tucker.

      “It’s going ass first,” remarked Bodie.

      “Damn Messicans,” Fix spat. “Can’t even drive a train straight.”

      Just then the brake van thundered into the canyon below, the main body of the train following, a string of eight coaches in clamoring procession, the huge reversing locomotive bringing up the rear wreathed in smoke as its grinding driving wheels backed the rolling stock down the line. The steam engine’s exhaust belched dirty fumes into the sky, smoke and hot cinders spewing from its stack, scattering in the desert air. It was a rugged old iron horse. Dirty paint peeled off the weathered, battered rows of ancient cars. The tympani of the rusty wheels beat a percussive syncopation on the rail bed as the train rattled and swayed its way along the tracks.

      Tucker’s gloved hands clenched and unclenched on the handle of the plunger of the dynamite. He sat tensely erect in the saddle beside the other two on their horses. “It’s time.”

      The outlaws’ eyes narrowed as they exchanged glances, braced for action, gave their horses a pat, adjusted their kerchiefs and cocked the hammers of their guns. In less than a minute, all hell was going to break loose. Space was closing—the dirt- covered pile of Trinitrotoluene sticks in the tracks grew ever nearer to the fast approaching steam train.

      “You boys ready?” Tucker said like he always did before a job. He didn’t need to ask—the three always were ready for action—but it was a tradition.

      “Yeah.”

      “Fuck yeah.”

      “Wait for it. On my go.”

      The leader knew from long experience robbing trains they had to time it right: wait too long and the railroad would be blown off the tracks causing a lot of unnecessary injuries the robbers wanted to avoid—all they wanted was the money. Eyeballing the diminishing space between the caboose and the explosives, Tucker gauged the distance at about a hundred yards. Just about damn perfect. The steam train highballing in reverse through the blasted desert came full into view. It was eleven cars long.

      “Go!” Tucker bellowed.

      They spurred their horses, yelling “YYYEEE—AHHHH!”

      He injected the plunger.

      CHAPTER THREE

      That very morning around the time Pilar armed up and rode out of Santa Sangre, the same steam train had been traveling in the opposite direction and Federale Colonel Jesus Higuerra was taking a smoke break.

      The Mexican officer had been standing on the rear platform of the armory wagon above the coupling knuckles to the brake van enjoying his cigarette. Noxious clouds of soot from the locomotive smokestack billowing back over the train gave him more smoke than he bargained for, but the fresh desert wind felt good in his rugged face. The comandante was fifty-three years old, a career soldier whose straight-backed posture and noble chipped face was that of a professional warrior. His starched khaki uniform fit impeccably on his tall muscular frame, gold tassels adorned his shoulder and brass buttons beaded down the front of his tan coat. Ribbons and medals were pinned on his chest. An officer cap was screwed on his head, his Colt .45 pistol holstered in his belt, and his black boots were shined to a polished sheen. While the Colonel’s uniform was soaked with sweat from the hundred and twenty-degree heat, the open dry desert air was a refreshing respite from the stuffy coaches.

      His alert observant brown eyes took in the hard country hurtling past on all sides of the rolling stock. There wasn’t much to see. The train traveled through the El Diablo territories, the asshole of Mexico. It was a Godless place. Pestilent, flyblown. Nothing lived in this dismal wasteland. A vast panoply of desolate mesas, plunging crevices and brutal ugly canyon unfurled in an endless barren panorama far as the eye could see. A dead colored landscape of bone white and shit brown. Higuerra puffed his cigarette, passing the time watching the exaggerated shadow of the train playing across the arid terrain in the harsh sunlight. Trackside, a dung-colored ribbon of surging muddy river carved through the dry badlands. The river had a name: Rio Muerta, meaning River of Death.

      Higuerra did not need to consult his timepiece to know the train had nearly reached its destination ... his own internal clock told him so from having made this exact