Vultures in the Sky Page 18

  A sharp intake of breath from King punctured the silence that greeted his words.

  “For God’s sake, man, what do you mean? Uncoupled?” the voice was hoarse and fear filled it, unrepressed.

  “Just that, Mr. King, it was uncoupled while we were waiting for the new engine.”

  “That couldn’t have been done by mistake,” Searcey’s quietly controlled voice cut across King’s. He was standing with one hand buried in the pocket of his trousers, the other slowly stroking his chin. Near the cuff of the upraised sleeve the corduroy was darkened by what looked in the uncertain light like a stain.

  Rennert’s eyes met the dark panes of the glasses. He was thankful for the steadiness of the voice that had come from below them.

  “No, Mr. Searcey,” he said, “that is exactly it. It could not have been done by mistake.”

  “Who did it, then?” excitement pitched Radcott’s voice high. “One of the train crew? None of us would want to be left stranded out here—and we’re all here.”

  Searcey’s eyes had gone swiftly about the little group. Now they met Rennert’s again. “Where’s Jeanes?” he demanded sharply.

  “Jeanes is on the train which has left us behind.”

  He saw Searcey’s thin mouth tighten as King started and let the expiring match fall to the floor.

  “That,” Rennert said, “is the situation. The battery that supplies the lights in this car has run down—or more likely been deliberately short-circuited. It all resolves itself into a matter of waiting for a time in the darkness. In that connection it might be well to take stock of our means of illumination. Does anyone have a flashlight?”

  No answer came out of the darkness.

  Rennert turned to the conductor, who, he judged, still stood in the door. “Your lantern?” he asked. “Where is it?”

  “In the train,” came the disembodied voice. “I left it there when I came back here to find you.”

  Rennert’s fingers ran over the smooth surface of the little packet which he held. It became increasingly apparent what Jeanes’ procedure had been—to make sure that the conductor was in the Pullman so that the discovery that the car was missing might be delayed as long as possible. Except for the porter there was no one else likely to make that discovery at once. The porter. Where was he?

  “It seems,” Rennert turned to the others, “that we are reduced to matches.” He smiled grimly. “Communism, I believe, becomes imperative under these circumstances. How many matches have we among us?”

  “I haven’t any, I know,” Radcott said. “I’ve already looked through my pockets.”

  King’s voice faltered. “I’m afraid I only have one left. There are some more back in the smoker, I suppose.”

  “No, there aren’t,” Spahr spoke up. “I noticed that there weren’t any there and asked the porter to get some, but he didn’t do it. I don’t have a one.” He let the butt of his cigarette fall to the floor and ground it under foot.

  “Say, don’t do that!” Searcey said sharply. “We could all have gotten lights from that.”

  “Oh,” weakly from Spahr, “I never thought of that.”

  Searcey muttered something under his breath, then suggested: “Suppose we strike one more match and all get lights from it. We can keep them going, as long,” he amended, “as our supply of tobacco lasts.”

  This matter of the matches worried Rennert. It was so fittingly a part of the strange inevitability which had held them in its grip all day, demolishing one by one the barriers that their civilization had sought to erect against the relentless realities of nature. He thought of Searcey’s words, “as long as our supply of tobacco lasts,” as he said in what he hoped was a lighthearted voice: “A good idea! Everyone get ready and I’ll strike another match.”

  He could hear them moving about, feeling in pockets.

  “All set?” he asked.

  “Yes,” someone murmured.

  Rennert struck the match and applied to its flame the cigarette which he had put into his mouth. As soon as it was alight he turned to Spahr, holding the match in cupped hands.

  Spahr held a cigarette to it and inhaled deeply. As Rennert went on to the next one he noticed the young man staring curiously down at the palm of his right hand.

  Rennert held the match over the bowl of Searcey’s pipe.

  As he did so Miss Talcott’s laugh fell upon his ears. She had gotten up from the edge of her berth and her fingers were playing with the cord of the dressing gown.

  “This reminds me of old times,” she said, looking from one of them to another, “like the days back in the Revolution when you had to expect this every time you took a train trip. I always used to carry a flashlight then.”

  The flame touched Rennert’s skin and he let it fall. Over the glowing bowl of Searcey’s pipe he saw Radcott’s puckered mouth as he thrust forward a white tube.

  “Since I haven’t any matches to contribute to the cause,” Miss Talcott said out of the darkness, “I think I’ll retire, if you gentlemen will excuse me.”

  “Retire?” The exclamation came from King. “Do you mean to say that you can sleep in a situation like this?”

  Her laugh was a pleasant note of genuine amusement. “Why, of course. Standing up in the aisle and striking matches won’t accomplish anything, will it? If we’re going to be raided we might as well get some rest to prepare ourselves for it.”

  “Raided?” King’s voice was a blur. “What do you mean?”

  “Of course,” there was a slight note of seriousness in the woman’s voice now, “I don’t think there’s any danger of it but there’s no use in hiding from ourselves the fact that it’s possible.”

  “You mean bandits?” Radcott asked. He pronounced the word with something approaching awe.

  “No,” Miss Talcott was on the edge of her berth again, “I don’t think there’s any danger of bandits in this part of the country any more. I was referring to the Cristeros.”

  “The Cristeros? What are they?”

  “Bands of religious dissenters—fanatics, some People call them—which have sprung up since the Mexican government started enforcing the laws regulating the Church. Most of the stories one hears about their depredations are, I’m sure, exaggerated, although back in 1927 they did pillage several trains out in the western part of the country, near Guadalajara especially. The idea was to harass the government. They used to be rather active around San Luis Potosí, too, but I don’t know whether they are any longer or not. If a group of them should attack this car,” her voice took on a peremptory, steel-like quality, “don’t be so foolish as to make any resistance. When they discover that we are Americans I doubt whether they will do more than perhaps take a few of our belongings. We’re probably safer than the rest of the train.” She paused and said thoughtfully: “That may even be why we were left here.”

  In the silence that followed someone’s breath came and went quickly.

  There was a quick movement and another match flared. King was holding it, cupped between his hands. He was staring toward the rear of the car, where the Mexican soldier was still planted. From the stolidity of his expression none could have divined his thoughts.

  “But what about him? Won’t they fire when they see him on this car?”

  Miss Talcott was sitting with one hand on each curtain. She had removed her spectacles and her eyes looked dark, sunken into her face.

  “I wouldn’t give much for his chance,” she said quietly, “in case an attack does occur.” She got into the berth and drew the curtains together. “And incidentally, Mr. King, you used your last match then,” she said with what sounded like a laugh as one white hand stood out for an instant against the dark folds.

  King’s fingers, holding the match, trembled.

  “Why don’t we go back in the smoker?” Radcott suggested nervously. “We’ll feel more—well, more together there. And we won’t bother Miss Talcott then.”

  “Good,” Searcey said briefly. He started toward t
he rear, Radcott following.

  “Hold that match just a second longer, will you?” Spahr said to King as he stepped forward. “My cigarette’s gone out.”

  He held the cigarette in his mouth and with the fingers of his right hand steadied its end to meet the wavering match.

  King stared down fixedly. “What’s that you’ve got on your hand?” he demanded.

  “Don’t know,” Spahr straightened up, “looks like red paint.”

  King’s hand jerked spasmodically as the flame touched his fingers. He let the match fall. “I think I’ll go back in the smoker too,” he said hoarsely.

  He groped his way down the aisle, Spahr and Rennert following silently.

  The smoker was close, heavy with stagnant tobacco-impregnated air now that the fan had stopped. Searcey and Radcott were sitting upon the leather cushions.

  King began to pace up and down, the end of his cigar glowing and fading, glowing and fading.

  Water splashed into the basin at the side of the room.

  “What are you doing?” King asked in a strained voice.

  Spahr stood with his back to them, bending over the lavatory. He turned off the faucet and, as he dashed his hands through the water, said: “Getting this stuff off my hands, it feels sticky.”

  Radcott held a doubled arm up to the end of his cigarette. “I must have gotten some of it on me too,” he peered down at his sleeve, “at least it looks like it.”

  Spahr had turned and was drying his hands. He held the towel up and stared down at it for a long moment. He crumpled it suddenly and tossed it down.

  “I think,” he said in a small voice, “that I’ll get some fresh air.” He started to the door.

  Rennert stepped aside to let him pass. “I wouldn’t leave the car if I were you,” he said.

  “I won’t,” Spahr pushed through the curtains as if blindly, “I’ll go back on the observation platform.”

  The silence began to grow oppressive.

  “Anybody know any new stories?” Radcott asked lightly.

  Rennert stepped into the passage and moved toward the barely discernible bulk in the doorway.

  The conductor was standing and staring out into the darkness over the rails ahead. In the glow of Rennert’s cigarette his face was a chiseled block of granite.

  “A cigarette?” Rennert asked.

  “Yes,” the voice was eager. He took one from the package which Rennert proffered.

  “Do you have any matches?”

  “No. I do not smoke—ordinarily, but this waiting—” the man left the sentence suspended.

  Rennert held out his cigarette and watched him hold his to its end, draw upon it gratefully.

  He asked quietly: “Do you know what has become of the porter?”

  “The porter?” the voice was flat. “No, I do not know.”

  “Did you see him in the train when you came into this car?” “No, I think that he was in here, in the Pullman.” Rennert felt the man’s eyes fixed on his face. “He is not here? Now?”

  “I am afraid not. He was making up the berths when the train pulled out and left us in the darkness. He may have had time to get off and catch the train but I doubt it.”

  Behind them, in the smoker, voices were a murmur.

  Rennert asked very carefully: “Do you know why he wished to see me?”

  Ash fell unheeded from the conductor’s cigarette. The lips that held the cigarette said slowly: “He had something which he wished to tell you—before he got off at San Luis Potosí.”

  “Do you know what it was?”

  The Mexican’s voice was so low as to be almost inaudible. “It was about last night, señor Rennert. You asked him if he saw anyone talking with the man who died this morning. It was about this that he wanted to talk to you.”

  “He saw someone with this man Torner then?”

  “I do not know, señor, but I think that he did. It was late at night and he was carrying a ladder to one of the passengers who had rung. He said that he saw this Torner then, sitting in the last seat at the back of the car.”

  “He didn’t say who was with him?”

  “No, he did not say. He had fear, I think, and was going to tell you just before he got off at San Luis.” The pause became prolonged. “He did not tell you?”

  “No,” Rennert’s voice sounded curiously faraway. “He did not tell me.”

  Their cigarettes were motionless, two fireflies suspended in the darkness. Coolness crept upward from the sands, touching and fastening itself to their feet and legs like strangely dry fog. The sky was close over their heads, pressing down upon them its heavy impenetrable pall.

  The shot that cracked behind them was a knife slicing the stillness.

  20

  Blood in the Night (11:14 P.M.)

  Singularly, Rennert’s thoughts, as he rounded the corner of the passage and went through the Pullman, were on matches. They had become for him things of immense importance, safeguards, weak and diminutive though they were, against utter helplessness. And he knew, as he heard heavy feet pounding ahead of him, that one of that group had lied. For held in the cupped hands of one of them (he couldn’t for the moment distinguish which one) was a lighted match.

  Upon the observation platform he found a weird tableau set against the night.

  King stood in the doorway, holding up a lighted match. Searcey and Radcott were on either side of him. All were staring at the two figures outside.

  Spahr was leaning against the railing, his face white. The soldier stood erect, his eyes averted as he slid the heavy revolver into the holster at his side.

  “I don’t know what he shot at,” Spahr was saying through tight lips. “We were just standing here when all of a sudden he pulled out his gun—”

  “¿Que Paso?” Rennert addressed the soldier. The black eyes flitted to his face as the hands made a quick upward gesture. “I am sorry, señor, but I thought that I saw something moving out there,” he glanced sideways into the darkness. “I fired.”

  Very young the soldier looked now, as he stood in his ill-fitting uniform, staring with eyes bright with alarm into the desert night, whose palpable blackness had provided a dark breeding ground for the phantoms of the imagination of his ancestors long before rails had been laid across these dusty stretches.

  Rennert turned to the others. “It was nothing. He merely fired at an imaginary object out there.”

  Spahr said haltingly: “I don’t think it was an imaginary object.”

  “You don’t?” King stared at him. “What was it?”

  “I think it was those buzzards still out there.”

  “Buzzards?” King said sharply. “What buzzards?”

  “Three of them were perched on a telegraph post out there while I was sitting on the ground. I tried to scare ’em away but I suppose they came back.”

  Searcey watched King flick the end of the match over the railing. “By the way,” he said, “I thought you said you didn’t have any more matches?”

  King’s face was indiscernible. “I was mistaken,” he said shortly. “I did have one left.”

  “No more?”

  “No more.”

  Searcey stepped forward beside Spahr. The bulk of his tall body loomed against the sky, blotting out the stars. “I don’t suppose,” he said over his shoulder, “that there’s any danger of that soldier running away and leaving us, is there?”

  “I think,” Rennert said, “that he’s probably as glad as we are to keep to the shelter—such as it is—of this car.”

  Silence fell upon them. They were all, Rennert knew, staring out into the impenetrable obscurity which hemmed them in. A faint breeze from the desert floor slid under the railing and was gentle on their faces.

  “Going back into the smoker?” Radcott asked.

  “Let’s do,” Spahr said quickly.

  King murmured assent.

  “I think,” Searcey said, “that I’ll stay out here with Rennert for a moment.” There was purposive firm
ness in his voice.

  As the footsteps of the others died away in the passage Searcey turned to face Rennert. He knocked the bowl of his pipe against the railing and slowly filled it with tobacco from his pouch. “Let me get a light from that cigarette before you throw it away,” he asked.

  Rennert handed him the cigarette, which had burned down almost to his fingers. Searcey took it and pressed the end against the tobacco in the bowl. For a few seconds the only sound to disturb the silence was the regurgitation of the pipe.

  When it was going satisfactorily he tossed the butt of Rennert’s cigarette over his shoulder and said: “That’s better” through teeth that must have been clamped tightly upon the stem.

  Rennert leaned against the side of the car, opposite the soldier.

  There was a faint clicking sound as Searcey moved his pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other. “What about telling me,” he said quietly, “exactly how things stand?”

  “Very stationary, I should say, on the desert.”

  “I don’t mean that—about this car being left behind. I mean about Jeanes. Did he have anything to do with this?”

  “I feel sure that he did.”

  “Uncoupled this car?”

  “Yes, or had it done.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Yes,” Rennert answered after a moment, “I have several ideas.”

  “Care to tell them?”

  “I see no reason why I shouldn’t. Jeanes was anxious to escape our company and saw no other way to do it.”

  Searcey smoked for a moment in silence. “You don’t think, then, that his real object was to leave the car stranded out here so that it could be robbed?”

  “Frankly, I don’t, although it’s possible. If that had been his purpose I think that an attack would have been made before now.”

  “Maybe he’ll get off at San Luis Potosí and come back—with others.”

  “That’s possible, of course.”

  “But you don’t think so,” Searcey’s voice was a probe.

  “No, I don’t. I have the feeling that we’ve seen the last of Mr. Jeanes, unless the Mexican soldiers who are on the train miss us and prevent his getting off.”