Bob stabbed his spurs and his horse clambered over the tracks and trotted along the siding to the semaphore with Powers skirting beside him with a forked branch he’d stripped and whittled on our ride over.

The station attendant glanced at the pendulum clock behind him, then walked from his desk, opened the door, and stood on the loading platform, scanning, three wide boards between his boots. Two mail sacks sat on the trolley. Bob and Powers had their gloved hands clamped over their horses’ noses not fifty yards away but the attendant’s eyes didn’t get used to the dark before he heard the smokestack of the train and started to close the depot door behind him. Then he stopped and saw the five of us in the trees across from the loading platform and he gave us one of the most comical faces of shock I’ve ever seen before he slammed the door and bolted it.

I saw him sidestep around his desk and then he was out of sight. Pierce twittered like a bobolink and Powers shoved up the green blade of the semaphore with his branch and held it there until the train got to the tall white whistle signpost and the steam whistle cord was pulled. Then he let the blade drop and the depot’s air pressure semaphore swung up and the danger blade glowed ruby in front of the lantern. But the engineer had already seen the green and the locomotive started braking.

My brother put my binoculars down and the solemn man beside him said, “You got yourself a good woman.”

“You bet.”

The five of us still in the dark of the trees coaxed our horses down the incline. Mine had tugged the leaves off an elm tree but it didn’t think much of the taste.

Doolin said, “Bryant’s dead now. Let’s have no wanton murder.”

My brother urged his horse and it knocked up onto the wooden stairs and across the loading platform to the door. The kerosene lantern inside the depot had been snuffed. My brother got off his horse and stood next to the door, his pistol next to his cheek. “Hey? Hey, I’d like you to live through this.” He heard a desk drawer slide open and closed. He heard the desk chair squeal.