Sam Bass by Bryan Woolley Page A

ground in front of him. We could hear its ticking, and although we couldn’t read its hands in the darkness, we kept staring at it as if mesmerized. I felt tension building in us. Barnes, sitting beside me, drew a long breath and expelled it in a great rush. Spotswood fooled with the rowel of one of his spurs. Sam picked up his watch and held it close to his face. “It’s eight o’clock,” he said. “The train’s late.”
    I strained my eyes toward the station, half entertaining the foolish notion that the train had pulled in without our seeing or hearing it. But the station and the village around it were quiet. The tension grew even faster now, for we had no idea how long our wait would be. My hands were sweating and beginning to tremble. I grasped one with the other, trying to hold them still. Every few minutes, Sam would announce the time. “Eight-thirty.” “Twenty till nine.” “Fifteen till nine.” I didn’t see the point of it, since we had no way of knowing when the train would arrive, and his announcements were adding to my nervousness.
    Then suddenly it was there. The headlight cut through the misty darkness, and the whistle shrilled. Without a word we jumped to our feet, lifted our masks and sprang into our saddles. We dashed pell-mell across the stretch of prairie separating us from the station, reined in sharply at the platform and swung down with guns already drawn. Two men standing together on the platform stared at us, surprise and terror in their faces. “Oh, my Lord!” one of them said.
    â€œMove and you’re dead!” Sam cried.
    Amidst plumes of smoke and steam the locomotive moved slowly alongside the platform, its bell clanging. Its headlight was bright in my eyes, but I could see its big wheel, and when it stopped turning I screamed, “Now!” In a flash Seab and I were up the engine steps and had our gun muzzles under the chins of the engineer and the fireman. The firebox door was open, and the dancing lights and shadows created by the flames made hellish imps of the men, who raised their hands above their heads. Four terrified, white eyes stared out of their sooty faces, and little streams of sweat coursed down the hard muscles of the fireman’s bare chest. “Don’t move!” I said and poked my gun closer to the engineer’s face. My gun hand was steady now. With my left hand I drew my knife and cut the bell rope. I heard Sam’s voice: “Throw up your hands and give us your money!” Then came a shot, and then another.
    â€œGod!” said the engineer.
    â€œShut up!” I said.
    I heard three more shots, then one, then three more, then Sam’s voice, but I couldn’t understand his words. Seab’s eyes, shiny in the firelight, shifted quickly to me, then back to the fireman.
    â€œPard! Back it up!” Sam shouted. “We’re going to uncouple!” I waved the engineer to the controls with my gun. “You heard him. Do it.”
    The engine chuffed, and the shock of the cars slamming against each other almost knocked me down. Barnes waved the fireman toward the steps. “Go uncouple it behind the express car,” he said. “Don’t do nothing funny. I’m right behind you.” A few seconds later his masked face appeared at the bottom of the steps. “She’s uncoupled,” he said. “Take her up.”
    â€œYou heard him,” I told the engineer. He moved the locomotive forward. When we had moved sixty or seventy feet I said, “Stop. Shut her down.”
    I heard more shouts from the express car, then silence. The engineer and I gazed at each other, both of us listening, trying to figure out what was happening behind us. Then spurred feet were running, and Sam said from the bottom of the steps, “We’ve got it, pard. Bring him down.”
    I herded the engineer into the small cluster of men standing on the platform under