At the head of the second-class coaches there was always a detachment of soldiers, twelve to eighteen men, rifles loaded, an officer in charge. This detachment was a necessary precaution against attacks from bandits; but in spite of the presence of soldiers, such attacks still occurred. The ensuing battles between soldiers and bandits often lasted several hours and involved a number of dead.
There were no such things as grade crossings with automatic signals, nor even signalmen. The train rushed at a mad speed through jungle, bush, and tilled valley, across upland prairies, and over the Sierra Madre Oriente, whose highest peaks are covered with perpetual snow. Bridges spanned wide gorges, forty, fifty, and two hundred yards deep and several miles long; the bridges were of wood trestle, and the train tore across them at terrific speed.
Nowhere was the railroad track fenced off, and cattle, horses, burros, mules, sheep, pigs, goats, and wild animals of all kinds roamed along it and sometimes grazed or dozed between the rails. The locomotive gave off a blood-curdling hoot to clear the track, and sometimes the animals would clear off, and of course at other times wouldn’t budge until the train stopped and one of the soldiers got out and threw stones at them. Sometimes the beasts ran head-on into the locomotive, or were caught without warning around a curve; so that the railroad embankment all along the way was marked with animal skeletons on either side.
Now and then we came upon wounded beasts, their legs crushed or bodies torn open, lying waiting for death, thirsting, crazed, under the tropical sun. No passer-by would kill them and put them out of their misery, because their owner might be lurking within sight and be capable of dragging the do-gooder into court and getting him fined for unauthorized slaughter of his beasts to the tune of fifty or a hundred pesos, or more. If you were pretty sure that you were unobserved you might put your pistol in the animal’s ear and put him out of his suffering; then you’d better take to your heels, pronto. It’s costly, taking pity on animals.
All along the railroad the zopilotes, the vultures, squatted and waited for victims — dead burros, dogs, cats, pigs. On upland plains or coastal flats long stretches of the railroad served also for caravans of burros and mules, for the adjacent road was often swallowed by bush or rainy-season floods.
The railroad was mainly of one track. Large water towers, wooden tanks on trestles, had been erected about every twenty miles so that the engines could refill. At many small stations the train seldom came to a full stop. A mail bag would be slung out and another one shot in. Some ice blocks, which were packed around with wood shavings to retard melting and then sewn into burlap, were simply tossed out for the consignee to pick up.
Tickets could be bought at the various stations or on the train, costing 25 percent more on the train; an extra charge which didn’t apply, however, if a station had no ticket office. Many stations weren’t expected to sell tickets after five in the evening, in order that the ticket clerk be spared having money in his isolated office after dark, a thing which could cost him his life. After dark the tickets cost the normal price aboard the train. En route, the tickets were collected by a conductor who then tucked a small tab inscribed with the code of destination into the passenger’s hat band, thus keeping account of his many passengers.
The soldiers usually sat about with their first-grade primers, trying to learn to read. They were all Indians and very few of them could read or write, but they were consumed with an ambition to learn. One would help the other, and when one had learned to write eso he would be full of eagerness to pass his accomplishment onto his fellows.
About eight o’clock our train stopped for breakfast at a station which looked almost like a lively township. Mr. Pratt and I got off the train and entered a typical station buffet — Chinese café, of course. In fact, it was hard to find an eating place anywhere that wasn’t Chinese.
After breakfast we walked up and down the platform where dozens of hawkers swarmed, offering things you’d never have expected to find for sale on a railroad platform: parrots, tiger cubs, skins of grown tigers, live iguanas, flowers, song birds in handmade wicker cages, oranges, tomatoes, bananas, mangoes, pineapples, sticks of sugar cane fresh from the field, candied fruits, tortillas, roast chicken, smoked fish, boiled giant crabs; bottles of coffee, lemonade, beer, wine, pulque. Ragged, barefoot Indian girls ran along the train to offer themselves as servant girls or cooks in households.
For the twenty-odd minutes of the train’s stop, the station was like a fairground. Except for our train and the evening train, it dozed in a dead calm, but now it was enough to make your head spin. A freight train might come through and cause a slight stir among the railroad employees; but, without passengers getting on and off, the station was torpid and sleepy. Most of its of its daily life was centered on those lively twenty minutes or so when the morning train stood there; and any vendor who failed to do business during that time had failed for the whole day.
At noon we arrived at a bigger station where we stopped for about forty minutes for the midday meal. In the station buffet thirty places were already laid on several big tables and half the plates were already filled with soup, for a quick glance was enough to tell the proprietor how many diners to prepare for. Then came the long, long exhausting afternoon through jungle, prairie like grassland, and bush. The train from the opposite direction that crossed with us at noon had brought the morning papers from the nearest city and these were sold on the train.
At nine in the evening we got out at Mr. Pratt’s little home station. We stopped at the cantina, which was also the local post office. Mr. Pratt greeted the cantina owner, a Señor Gomez, and introduced me.
Regular cooked meals weren’t to be had in a place like this, but you didn’t have to go hungry; you could in fact get a wonderful meal together. We bought a can of Vancouver salmon, a few cans of Spanish sardines in fine olive oil, a few cans of Vienna sausages (made in Chicago), a package of Kraft cheese, and some crackers. There were no bread or rolls. Bread doesn’t keep well in that climate; it turns hard, gets moldy, or is attacked by small red ants.
With our canned snack we had bottles of Señor Gomez’s beer, and then went to work on his stock of tequila. After a while we were dead to the world, if not ripe for burial; so we went into the cantina’s poolroom, ourselves in our blankets, and lay down on the floor to sleep. Señor Gomez had a softer bed. He went to his wife.
Thinking of a woman or of women in general — I can’t remember which — I fell asleep; and by one woman in particular, I was awakened the next morning. The woman in question was Mrs. Pratt. She had driven the Ford in from the ranch to do some shopping at the cantina and there she found her husband, though she hadn’t expected him, least of all on the floor of the poolroom, and in a well-soaked condition.
Since the beginning of time, the innocent have had to suffer. I was innocent, so I had to suffer. Mr. Pratt was the model husband, but I — whom he’d picked up in the gutter — was the bum who had tempted and beguiled him and led him astray.
For he, the good Mr. Pratt, would never have done such a thing on his own. Oh, no! As we were leaving, Mr. Pratt gave Señor Gomez a wink. Men always understand a wink, particularly if the two men who share the wink are married men trying to live in peace with their wives.
“Well,” declared Gomez, “you had so-and-so many cans of sardines, and the sausages, and cheese," — again the wink — “and you had two small bottles of beer, and Mr. Gales had four and three tequilas. That does it. I’ve chalked up the drinks on your bill.”