There’s plenty of room in the first-class end. Another thing, it’s Jordan, not Dillinger. Remember that.”
“I’ll try,” Fallon said.
They went into the first empty compartment they came to. Fallon produced two bottles of beer from his canvas grip, and sprawled in the corner by the window.
“This is more like it. What do we do if the conductor comes?”
“What do you think?”
Fallon opened one of the bottles and passed it across. “What did Rivera want?”
“Mainly to let me know who’s boss.”
“He must be the great original bastard of all time.”
Dillinger tried the beer. It was warm and flat, but better than nothing. He put the bottle on the floor, lit a cigarette, and placed his feet on the opposite seat.
“How come Rivera survived the revolution? I thought men like him were marched straight to the nearest wall.”
“I guess some did, some didn’t. Some fish always escape the net.”
Dillinger awakened with a start. The train had begun the cautious descent of a narrow canyon, the coaches lurching together as the engineer applied the brake. Dillinger’s watch said 4 A.M. He got up quietly and went past the sleeping Fallon into the corridor.
He stood by the window and shivered slightly as the cold mountain air was sucked in. The sky was very clear, hard white stars scattering toward the horizon, and a faint luminosity was beginning to touch the great peaks that towered on either side. A moment later the canyon broadened, and he could see the lights of a station.
He heard Fallon behind him saying, “La Lina- only a whistlestop for mail and passengers. Another couple of hours to where we’re going.”
“I didn’t even know we’d passed through Chihuahua.”
“Didn’t seem any point in waking you. We were only there for twenty minutes while they changed the engine.”
La Lina swam toward them out of the darkness as the train coasted in and slowed to a halt. There was a small station house with a couple of shacks behind it and nothing more. The stationmaster came out carrying a lantern, and three mestizos in straw hats and blankets, who had been crouching against the wall, got to their feet and came forward.
Fallon and Dillinger jumped to the ground and walked toward the rear of the train. A couple of boxcars had been linked on behind the flatcar on which the Chevrolet had been roped into place. When the men paused to light cigarettes, they heard a low whinny and the muffled stamp of hooves.
“When did they join us?” Dillinger said.
“Chihuahua. The guard told me they were thoroughbreds going up to Juarez for the races next week.”
When they turned to retrace their steps, the three mestizos were standing patiently beside the train, hands in the air, while the stationmaster and guard searched them thoroughly.
“What’s all that about?” Dillinger said.
“They say that the train’s been robbed three times in the last four months,” Fallon told him. “Bandits get on at way stations, dressed like dirt farmers. Last year in Sonora they shot the engineer of the night express and left it to freewheel down a gradient. Ran off the track after five miles.”
They boarded the train again, and the guard closed the door. He turned and said in English, “I notice, senors, that you have moved into a first-class compartment.”
Dillinger replied, “It’s too crowded in the other coach.”
“It is also cheaper, senor. You are prepared to pay the necessary addition?”
“Now there you put me in a delicate position,” Dillinger told him.
The guard shrugged and replied with perfect politeness, “Then I’m afraid I must ask you to resume your former seats. I have my duty-you understand?”
“I knew it was too good to last,” Fallon said.
They got their cases from the compartment and moved back into the second-class coach, where most of the occupants were sleeping. They sat down in their original seats in the corner by the door that led to the luggage van.
Fallon laid his head on his arms. Dillinger tilted his hat forward and saw a young Indian girl in a red skirt, a large cloth bundle on the floor between them. She stared past him into the wall, blindly, as if in a trance.