Bryant was north on the roadbed, squatting near the interlocking machine at the double-track junction, smoking a brown cigarette. Bob leaned against the mailbag post, his pocket watch open in his hand. I walked over next to him while Newcomb crossed the tracks and sat down in the soot-blackened grass, his back against a pile of taken-up ties.

My brother stared off down the tracks where the Santa Fe would come from. “I can remember the first time I rode a train. Farmers stopped their plows and wives came out of their houses, drying their hands on their aprons. Children stood in fields of yellow grass and waved until their arms got tired.”

I said, “Won’t that be something when the news gets back to California? Won’t those railroad detectives be peeved? Grat will laugh so hard he’ll cry.”

I heard the rails hum and I saw Bryant throw down his cigarette up ahead, and then I saw the train, all smokestack and smoke and cowcatcher, the white steam flying out from its brakes. The engine boiler made its chattering noise while the wheels screamed on the rails, and the stoker was hanging onto the cab rail by one hand, the other hand swinging a lantern low and then holding it up to see Bryant. Newcomb ran out of the grass tugging his bandana up over his nose. Bob and I lifted our bandanas up and walked onto the vibrating cinder bed and stood facing the train like gunfighters. Bob raised his pistol high over his head and fired, wincing when gunpowder stung him.

Bryant yelled, “Brakes!” as the train clanked past him and he let go a shot at the firebox that rang off metal and banged into something else. Newcomb was plugging his ears at the screech of steel; then he ran alongside the locomotive and hopped up onto the footrest as it slowed. He struggled up the two-step ladder and shoved his pistol straight at the engineer’s head, striking him hard enough behind the ear to start a trickle of blood and knock him onto his right leg. Then Bob was in the cab with his red mask up and his broad hat pulled low. He slammed the stoker against the boiler and slapped him with the flat of his pistol. The stoker groaned and sat down on the floor with his cheek in his hand. Bob glared at the engineer and took him by the striped coat and swung him off the stopped locomotive. He hit the cinders stiff as a chair. I kicked the engineer off his hands and knees and pushed a boot heel down on his throat and clicked the hammer back on my pistol. I was too scared of myself to talk. The pistol quaked in my hand.