Johnson, LeFlore, and Kinney braced on the seesawing iron platform, hearing the slow click of the wheels and some words in the engine cab and the abrupt extra whine of brakes when Grat muscled the air-brake lever. Then Kinney leaped from the stairs into a sprawl of soot-black ivy that was taking over a coal shed to the left of the train. LeFlore and Johnson hung waiting a second for the train to stop, then scurried inside the coal shed’s open door. That’s when I saw them, when they ran from the club car like children playing let’s pretend. I thought they were frightened passengers and didn’t pay them proper attention.

Kinney maneuvered into the shed and the three of them stood there in silence for several minutes, smelling coal dust. A black cat skipped across some crate tops and dropped to the earth and rubbed against Kinney’s pants leg. They quietly listened to the cinder crunch of Dalton boots on the roadbed and heard Bob shout for Grat to bring the stoker and a coal pick back to the express car. Sweat blotted through their shirts. LeFlore had his pistol cocked and next to his ear and his eye kept sliding toward J. J. Kinney. Finally, Sid Johnson said, “Should we get them now or wait for the suspense to build?”

I looked down the siding and saw Newcomb and Doolin standing in weeds like signboards, and Powers, Broadwell, and Bob pounding the wooden door of the express car, and suddenly the three lawmen in the coal shed cut loose and a bullet hit the ladder kapang and then a dozen shots struck off the boiler, triangulating inside that steel cab so that not one of us should’ve been spared; deflected slugs that were flattened like mushrooms whizzed close to Grat and me and the crewmen but not even a raincoat was nicked and all we heard was clang and peeyow as the hot lead swiped at our faces. Grat and I were quick with our guns and returned two shots for each we received, letting all fly at the coal bin since the firebox had blinded us to night-seeing and we couldn’t pick out the three bushwackers to draw a bead on them. The engineer and the fireman bellied down to the floor; ricochets sparked off the drive wheel eccentrics, and a wild shot skidded a coal shovel off the tender and it landed bawong in the grass. (If I sound excited, I am; I was.) I rammed six cartridges into my smoking chamber and waited for a pistol flash intended to rip my face off, and I fired everything I had straight at it. I must’ve done that several times. A man traveling from St. Louis later claimed that over two hundred shots were exchanged before the firing lessened. He must’ve been an accountant.