Sam Bass by Bryan Woolley

showed up about sundown, grinning. “Well, we’re ready to move,” he said. “What’s it to be?” I asked.
    Sam was full of excitement. “The Houston and Texas Central’s Number 4 train. The Nebraska train was Number 4, so this one ought to be lucky, too.”
    He had done some long and careful thinking while he was with Joel’s woman. The Houston and Texas Central passed through Collin County just east of the Denton County line. It was the nearest railroad to Cove Hollow, and we could have the cover of the cross-timbers and creek bottoms almost all the way to its tracks. Sam had learned that the Houston and Texas Central connected with the Katy for St. Louis, and it stood to reason that it might carry a bit of Yankee money. He had decided to strike the train at Allen, a tiny prairie station twenty-four miles north of Dallas. “The southbound is due there about eight o’clock in the evening,” he said, “so we’ll have the darkness working for us. We can hit it and be back in the bottoms before anybody knows what happened. Frank and Seab will rush the locomotive and put the engineer and the fireman under their guns. Me and Tom will tap the express car.”
    â€œWhat about the passenger cars?” Barnes asked.
    â€œForget them. It would take too long to search everybody, and some fool might try to make a fight of it.”
    We fed the horses well and let them rest that night and all the next day and the following night. Shortly after noon on the next day we packed a few supplies and rode down Clear Creek single file. We rode in silence over the rough Cove Hollow terrain, but when we cleared the hollow and passed Jim’s house we left the woods and rode abreast, following the course of the creek. Just northeast of Denton, where Clear Creek and Little Elm Creek flow into the Elm Fork of the Trinity River, we moved into the river bottom and turned southward, riding single file again. A couple of miles south of Hilltown Sam called a halt, and we pitched camp in the bottom. “The rest is open prairie,” he said. “We can make it fast when the time comes.”
    The next day, George Washington’s Birthday, 1878, Sam told Spotswood to ride into Allen and check out the situation. I thought Tom was a poor choice, because his gray horse and his yellow hair and glass eye made him the most conspicuous member of our band, but I said nothing. “Take your time,” Sam told him. “Don’t waste your horse. Find out if there’s anybody there that might give us trouble, and ask what time the train’s due, just to make sure I’m right.”
    Tom gave Sam a mock salute and spurred his gray up the river bank. Fog lay in the Trinity bottom that morning, and we quickly lost sight of him.
    The fog lifted later in the morning, but the day remained gray and misty. We spent a great deal of time straining our eyes toward the east, looking for Spotswood’s return long before he could have ridden to Allen and back. He emerged out of the mist about midafternoon. “Easy as pie,” he said. “Not a lawman in the place, and the train’s still due at eight o’clock.”
    We cooked the last of our food and ate every morsel, since it likely would be our last meal until we returned to Cove Hollow. In late afternoon we headed toward Allen. Not long after dark we arrived at the edge of town and dismounted. Tom pointed to a lighted building and said, “That’s the station.” He swung his arm northward. “And the train will come from there. If it was daylight you could see the tracks. We’ve got a good view here.”
    I looked at my watch. It was fifteen minutes until eight. Sam touched my wrist. “Don’t pull that out again till we’re out of here,” he said. “We don’t want nobody remembering the music.” We sat down under a tree and Sam took out his own watch and laid it on the