JESUS GARCIA
DOWN in Sonora's wide, white lands,
Lost in the endless waste of sands,
Lies, like a blot of gray and brown,
Nacozari, a desert town.
All day long through its narrow street
Children play in the dust and heat,
Naked of limb and dark of face,
Lithe as fawns in their careless grace,
Chattering shrill in a half-caste speech
Far from the Spanish the school rooms teach.
All day long by the doorways small
Cut through the thick adobe wall,
Or in the narrow belts of shade
Here and there by the flat roofs made,
Lounge the indolent, swarthy men,
Moving sluggishly now and then
Better to scan their dicing throws
Under their low-tipped sombreros.
But, for the most, content to lie
Drowsing the listless hours by,
Watching, each, as the thin, blue jet
Curls from his drooping cigarette.
All day long, from the dawn's first flush
When the mass is said in the morning hush
Till fall of eve, when the vesper's peal
Calls the faithful again to kneel,
Nothing rouses the quiet place,
Lulled in the desert's hushed embrace,
Save when out of the distance dim,
Over the far horizon's rim,
Sudden a purring whisper comes,
Rising swift, like the throb of drums,
And the iron track which stretches forth,
Straight as a lance from south to north,
Quivers and sings in the mighty strain
From the grinding wheels of a through-bound train
Then, for a space, as the whistle screams,
Nacozari awakes from dreams.
Women and children, boys and men
Stream to the station platform then,
Eager to gaze from its long plank walk,
With gesturing arms and rapid talk,
At the huge machine like a comet hurled
From the mystical zone of the outer world.
Thus it was on one summer's day,
While the land in its noontide slumber lay
With never a living creature near
Save a lizard, perhaps, by a cactus spear
Basking himself in the fervid heat,
Or, high aloft, like a pirate fleet,
A flock of vultures on lazy wing
Circling wide in a watchful ring,
That into the street of the desert town
A long, slow freight came rolling down,
Laden with goods of Northern yield
For Mexican mine and town and field.
Rumbling in with failing speed
It came to rest like a. tired steed,
With the mogul engine's dusty flank
Close by the massive water-tank,
As if it longed, like a living thing,
To quench its thirst at the cooling spring
Of the thousand-foot artesian well,
Sunk through the desert's crusted shell.
Just as it stopped with a grinding jar
Rattling back from car to car,
Out of the engine-cab swung clear
Jesus Garcia, the engineer,
Sooted and grimed to his finger-tips
But the lilt of a song on his smiling lips,
For he was handsome and young and strong
And love was the theme of his murmured song.
Slowly he passed his engine by
Scanning its length with a practiced eye,
Touching a polished slide-valve here.
Or there, a shaft of the running-gear,
Which done, he turned in a boyish mood
To a group of children who, gaping, stood
At the side of the track, too wonder-bound
To move a limb or to make a sound.
Into their midst Garcia sprung
And a chubby lad to his shoulder swung,
Who, laughing, clutched at his corded neck
Like a sailor tossed on a rocking deck.
Perhaps to the Mexican engineer
The child suggested a vision dear
Of a little boy of his very own
In a white-washed cottage at Torreon,
And the dark-eyed mother who, day by day,
Told beads for her husband, far away,
And watched, as the trains steamed forth and back,
For his mogul engine along the track.
But only a moment, with swinging feet,
The baby perched on his lofty seat,
For suddenly down by the cars in rear
There rang a shriek of unbridled fear.
Garcia turned, in amaze looked back;
A score of men from the railroad track
Were rushing away in a frantic race
As if they had looked on a demon's face,
And then, as he turned, the cause was plain
For half-way back in the standing train
A flame licked out from a box-car's side,
Yellow and spiteful, a handbreadth wide.
His cheek grew pale, but his lips still smiled
As he slipped from his shoulder the startled child,
Nor even forgot in his haste to place
A good-bye kiss on the upturned face;
Then he sprang to the street with a bound and gazed
Intent, at the spot where the fire blazed.
Barely a glance was enough to tell
It was a car which he knew full well—
Shipped in bond by a fast freight line,
Bound for a great Sonora mine—
Filled to the roof and loaded tight
With closed-tiered boxes of dynamite;
Enough, if its deadly strength found vent,
To rock the land like a billowed tent,
Sweeping the town from the desert sand
Clean as the palm of an opened hand.
What did he do, the engineer,
Face to face with this mortal fear?
Turn, as the rest, to the desert wide,
Mad with dread, for a place to hide,
Leaving the town and its helpless folk
Doomed to death at a single stroke?
No! Though only a peon born
Heart like his might a king adorn!
Waving his arms to his frightened crew,
Such as remained, a scattered few,
Garcia uttered a warning shout—
"Undile! Vamos!" ("Run! Get out!")
Leaped to his engine waiting there,
Opened the throttle, released the air,
And started the jets for the sand to run
On the glassy rails where the drivers spun,
Till, biting the steel with a spurt of fire
Sputtering back from each grinding tire,
The monster conquered its straining load
And, gathering speed on the curveless road,
It rolled from the town and left it whole.
Like death torn loose from a stricken soul.
But looking backward with stern-set face,
Throttle gripped in a firm embrace,
Garcia goaded his panting steed
Ever and ever to faster speed.
Knowing still if the blow should fall
It would shatter the village wall from wall.
Now from the sides of the car behind,
Fanned by its flight through the rushing wind,
Burst the flames in a lashing sheet
Peeling the paint with its fervid heat,
Vomiting sparks like a fiery hail
On the cars that rocked in its lurid trail.
Still the mogul, in giant flight,
Swaying drunkenly left and right,
Strained to the race, while the rails it trod
Thundered behind it, rod by rod;
Still in its cab, foredoomed, alone.
Waiting death like a man of stone,
Stood Garcia, his feet braced wide
To the pitch and plunge of the engine's stride,
With never a frown to show he knew
Regret for the task he was there to do.
Hardly a mile had his wild train fled
Into the desert straight ahead,
When a flare of light to his vision came
As if the world were engulfed in flame.
Perhaps it fell on his closing eyes
Like the great, white light of Paradise;
Perhaps, in the roar which smote him there,
Too deep for a mortal ear to bear,
He heard but the Heavenly trumpet-roll
Blown clear to welcome a hero's soul.
At least, if any have won to rest
In the fair, green land of the ever blest
By earning their right therein to dwell,
Jesus Garcia deserved it well,
For in the blast that strewed his train,
Torn in fragments, along the plain.
Only his soul went forth to meet
The final call at his Master's feet.
So it is that to-day, alone,
In a white-washed cottage at Torreon,
A brown-skinned woman with sad, dark eyes
Looks on her child at his play, and sighs,
Knowing well she will hark in vain
For her husband's step at the door again.
Or watch, as the trains steam back and forth,
For his mogul engine out of the North.
So it is that when evening falls,
Draping the dull adobe walls
Fold on fold in its tender mist,
Purple and blue and amethyst,
And Nacozari kneels down to pray
At the vesper call from the chapel gray,
Many an orison of love
Is wafted up to the stars above
For the peace of Jesus Garcia's soul;
He who had saved the village whole
By the utmost gift which a man can give—
Life, that his fellow men might live.