The engineer shouted something convincing and after a minute of dead silence the broad side door rumbled open on its rollers and the messenger backed to his desk. Broadwell trotted his horse up with his rifle back on his shoulder; Bob threw a leg up and climbed in the car and saw canvas sacks and a stove and a wall-long mail sorter and a lunch bucket open on the desk. He lifted the iron plates on the stove and saw it was empty, then threw the latch on the south door. Powers walked in and saw the messenger and punched him in the throat. The man fell to his right knee and almost swallowed his tongue but I guess he came out of it okay.

In the passenger cars the men were throwing up windows and leaning out to see what was going on. Two had pistols in their hands but I could see they were reluctant to risk anything so I didn’t pay them no mind and they heavily sat again on their pillowed coach seats. But five or six of the bolder travelers were standing on a platform between coach and Pullman, talking to each other. A man in a bowler hat leaned out on the opened exit door and yelled to me, “What’s the name of your gang?”

My horse was prancing and nodding its head and lifting off of its front legs. I could hear Pierce yelling at passengers on his side to get back up the stairs.

The man in the bowler asked, “Is it the Dalton gang?”

A man with a drooping red mustache said, “Oh! How could it be, Manion? That boy’s not fifteen years old!”

“Well, the Daltons aren’t old as you might think.”

“Older than fifteen.”

“I’m nineteen,” I said.

“See there?”

“Don’t talk to them,” said Newcomb.

Doolin was on his horse when the messenger staggered forward dragging a heavy meal sack between his legs. It was filled to half with silver dollars and it scraped the varnish off the floor. Pierce was at the platform of a rear passenger car yanking a mouthy boy off the stair by his coat collar. Two men leapt from the platform onto the cinders and grabbed for Pierce’s raincoat sleeve or his horse’s bridle. Pierce looked a little shamefaced at Broadwell and Bob as the men tussled over him, and Broadwell yelled, “You get back inside there this instant! Do I have to take a strap to you?”

Then a fat man in a checkered vest pulled a small caliber pistol out of a shoulder holster and stalked toward the masked desperadoes at the express car, and Doolin groaned. “Fools like that just make me tired.” He pulled his pistol out of his holster and hauled his horse around. “Watch me make the hair stand up on his neck.”

Bob said, “You stick where you’re ordered.”