Using the shank he still carried, Art ripped the sleeves off his shirt at the armpits to use them to wrap the wounds. He cut off each cuff, folded them and put them directly on the wounds, then tied the sleeves together and around his waist to hold the makeshift pads in place.
He was weak, light headed, but could still think. He needed to go, to make a move to somewhere safe and somewhere he could contact Hunter and tell her what was coming.
He rolled over on his stomach again and peered at the house. A Suburban drove down the street, then parked by it, and four men exited, talking to Marco while a fifth one doctored his wounds. Marco seemed animated, pointing into the desert in Art’s general direction as he obviously told the men of his captive’s escape.
One of them stepped away from the group and called on his phone. It could only be for more people, more men to hunt him down, Art thought.
Easing his head up beside a greasewood bush, he looked in other directions. The Franklin Mountains were on his left, and from the look of where Mount Christo Rey rose into the sky, he was just over the line in New Mexico, and west of the Anapra area.
He caught movement in the distance and spotted a freight train going east on the tracks that ran at the base of Christo Rey. It traveled very slow, and was still a ways from making the turn around the Mount and into El Paso. If he could catch it, he could lose the men hunting him.
Art looked at the house again just as two more SUVs parked beside it. As the men poured out of the vehicles, Art stayed low and bent at the waist as he made his way down the wash, keeping out of sight, hoping to make it to the train.
The wound bothered him, and with every step of his left leg,
the wound throbbed. He stopped and reset the pads and retightened the wrap, then continued east.
Once, when he chanced crossing over a low rise, Art looked back and saw men walking in the desert. He increased his pace. When he looked at the train, he saw it had increased its speed.
The train was speeding up, and Art moved to a trot, struggling through the uneven ground and sandy areas. His side and lower back ached terribly and he limped because of it. He looked behind again and saw one of the men spot him.
The man pointed his pistol in the air and fired three times. The others looked as he pointed to Art. All of them began to run.
Art could hear the train’s engines chugging, driving for more speed, and he almost quit running, but he thought of Sixto and of Hunter, and he continued, gasping now as he ran.
The wounds in his side bled steadily and red snail tracks of blood trickled down to his beltline. As he crossed another rise, he saw that the tracks made an S, and that the train would soon be there. The S would slow it down, at least a little.
A dry wash off to his right extended through the desert, appearing to go all the way to the rails. He stumbled off the rise and turned to the wash, anxious to put more distance between himself and the men.
As he turned toward the train, a dizziness swept over him and Art fell to the ground, hitting so hard on his face that a rock split his bottom lip, stunning him like a boxer’s blow. Struggling to his feet, he felt his scalp crawl when he saw how close the men now were. Less than a hundred yards and coming at a run.
Wiping his mouth to clean away the blood, Art gritted his teeth and focused on the train and getting to it before the killers caught him. His lungs burned and his mouth felt dry from breathing open-mouthed, but he continued forward.
He felt the bullet whip by his head and then immediately heard the shot. He went faster, adding moves to the left and right to throw off their aim. When the wash deepened, Art was below their eyesight and felt temporarily safer, but he did not slow down because the train was not slowing down through the S. It would be close on whether he made it. If he didn’t, he was dead, that he knew.
Desperation and fear fueled him and he found a hidden reservoir of energy. The train engines had passed, and a third of the cars were already beyond him. Art bit his bleeding lip and went from a trot to a sprint.
As he raced closer, he saw the wash went under the tracks, going through a small trestle made of creosote logs. It was high enough that he wouldn’t be able to reach the train, so Art worked his way out of the wash and crossed through the greasewood and yuccas to angle up toward an intersection with the tracks.
He used his hands and feet to climb up the far side of a draw that cut across his path, and he kept his eyes on the train as it continued to ease past him, taking more and more freight cars out of his reach.
Another bullet kicked up dirt twenty feet in front of him and Art cut to the side, but didn’t slow down. Two more shots sounded, but Art didn’t see where the bullets went. He looked and saw the men only fifty yards behind and in pistol range.
The last portion of the climb to the rails was long and gradual, which Art saw was a good thing since there were only six cars remaining on the train, including the caboose.
Giving it everything he had left, Art scrambled up to the tracks and missed the first boxcar, falling hard on the rough volcanic rock bed of the rails.
Bullets hit near him, spraying his face with fragments. Jumping to his feet as another boxcar passed, Art ran beside the tracks so that the next car pulled by him at a slow pace because of his efforts.
Bullets struck the boxcar, and one clipped Art’s shoe heel making him stagger. He straightened and reached the open sliding door.
He glanced back and the men were only twenty yards behind and coming fast.
Art placed his hands on the floor of the boxcar as he ran and jumped to put his upper half inside the car with his legs still outside.
It was slick wood, with no handholds, but Art squirmed and rocked until he got his thighs in, then he rolled his feet inside the car.
Another shot splintered wood near his hand and Art jumped to his feet, grabbing the sliding door to push it closed as the face of one of the men showed at the opening.