Doolin got down and yanked hard on his cinch, making his horse look askance. “I think we’ve been buffaloed,” he said. His raincoat squealed when he moved. He mumbled, “Skimpity dinners, heels off my boots; damn scurvy hat makes my hair itch.” He said aloud, “Coulda been there wasn’t no smokers on that train. You ever consider that? They mighta been Latter-Day Saints.”

“Maybe we oughta be quiet,” said Broadwell.

“May I ask why?” said Doolin. “May I ask why we’re sittin’ here? Seems to me the engineer pulled the throttle a couple of minutes ago.”

Soon as he said that we heard the second train and Bob smiled broadly at each of us. “Wheoo!”

“Ain’t that somethin’?” I said.

A kerosene lamp was turned up inside the depot and the train came on with gas jets burning in all of the coaches and some of the window shades were pulled down and even Doolin was grinning. “Well, la dee da,” he said. “La dee da.”

When the train stopped we spurred our horses and Grat banked up to the engine cab alone and knocked the two-man crew into their handles and pull-rods and switches.

Broadwell climbed onto the caboose and opened the door. It was dark inside but he could see bunk beds. “Is anybody in here?”

A man got up on his elbow. “Who is it?”

Broadwell sat on the guard rail and balanced his rifle on his knee. “The next time you’re in this situation and somebody asks you that, you oughta just play dead.”

The rest of us sat on horses alongside the train. We didn’t whoop or shout or fire guns at all, and some of the people who slept in the coaches didn’t know the train had been stopped by us until the newspapers said so the next day.

Two Wells Fargo employees have since sworn they engaged in a shoot-out with us but I recall no such thing. I recall that Bob and Doolin and Newcomb rolled the door back while I pranced my horse this way and that on the siding, pointing my weapon everywhere.

Bob told the money attendant to open the safe door but the man said he didn’t know the combination. Bob had been through all that once before at Wharton and he found it more than a little boring. He pulled his blue bandana down and unfastened the hooks of his raincoat for the cool. The halves of his raincoat swished and dropped to the floor as he sat down on the spindle-backed chair as if just that much drama had exhausted him. Newcomb took over and threatened the messenger with every manner of penalty and discomfort; then Doolin brandished a sledgehammer he’d unearthed.

“Hey now,” said Bob. “That’ll work.”