Louis grinned. “I thought I’d wait until they came knocking on our door and then give them a rather loud greeting,” he said in a light tone of voice that was belied by the dark fury in his eyes.
Smoke nodded. “Good idea. I think I’ll take Cal and Pearlie and slip out the far side of the car when the train stops. When the bandits get off their horses to make their way through the cars, it’ll give us a chance to scatter their mounts.”
Pearlie nodded, grinning. “And then they’ll be trapped out here in the middle of nowhere with nothing to ride off on. Good idea, Smoke.”
When the train finally ground to a complete stop, Louis turned a big easy chair around until it was facing the door, and then took a seat, the express gun across his knees and his pistols on a small table next to the chair. He pulled a long black cigar out of his coat pocket and lit it, sending clouds of fragrant blue smoke into the air. He pulled his hat down tight on his head and leaned back, crossing his legs and smoking as if he were waiting for a friend to visit.
“Good hunting, gentlemen,” he called as he eared back the twin hammers on the shotgun.
“You be careful, you hear?” Smoke said, tipping his head at his friend.
“It is not I that should be careful, pal,” Louis replied, his voice turning hard. “It is those miscreants that are interrupting our trip who should be saying their prayers at this time.”
As Smoke and the boys slipped out of the car and moved slowly down the line of cars toward the front of the train, Cal asked in a low voice, “Smoke, what’s a miscreant?”
Smoke chuckled. “It’s someone without a shred of decency in their character, Cal.”
“Oh,” Cal said, glancing at Pearlie walking next to him. “You mean like someone who’d take the last spoonful of sugar in the bowl and not leave any for his friends?”
“Now Cal, boy,” Pearlie said in a soothing voice, “that there bowl wasn’t near half-full to begin with.”
As they neared the car just behind the engine that contained wood to be burned in the boiler, Smoke heard a harsh voice say, “Watch the hosses, Johnny. We’ll get the passengers’ money and be right back.”
Smoke gave the robbers time to climb aboard the train before he put the Henry in his left hand, sauntered out from between two cars, and walked slowly toward the outlaws’ horses, which were being tended by a large, fat man with a full beard and a ragged, sweat-stained hat set low on his head.
The outlaw’s eyes widened and his hand moved toward his belt as he said, “Who the hell . . . ?”
Smoke drew his Colt in one lightning fast motion and shot the man in the face, blowing him backward off his horse to land facedown in the dirt next to the track, his gun still in its leather.
The other horses jumped and crow-hopped at the sound of the pistol shot until Cal and Pearlie untied them from where they had been hitched to the rail on the railroad car and shooed them away by waving their arms and shouting.
Soon, only the dead outlaw was left next to the tracks, blood still oozing into a puddle under his head.
Smoke moved up to the engine and found the engineer lying on his side, holding his left arm, a bullet hole in his left shoulder.
Smoke knelt next to him. “Are you gonna be all right?”
The engineer nodded. “Yeah, but somebody needs to put some wood in the boiler or we’re gonna lose all our steam.”
Smoke glanced over his shoulder. “Cal, would you help this man and do what he says while Pearlie and I go after the robbers?”
“Aw shucks, Smoke,” Cal groused as he climbed up into the cab of the engine. “Pearlie gets to have all the fun.”
“We just don’t want you getting yourself shot again an’ bleedin’ all over Mr. Hill’s fine car,” Pearlie teased, “you bein’ such a magnet for lead an’ all.”
“Now Pearlie,” Cal argued, his face turning red. “I ain’t been shot in over three weeks now.”
Smoke laughed. “That might be because we haven’t been in any gunfights for three weeks, Cal.”
Cal bent and helped the engineer to his feet as Pearlie and Smoke jumped down out of the engine and headed back along the tracks toward the passenger cars.
They eased up into the first one, and Smoke was surprised when a female passenger threw up her hands and screamed, “Oh, no, they’ve come back to rape and kill us!”
Smoke smiled and motioned for her to put her hands down. “No, ma’am. We’re here after the robbers,” he explained as he and Pearlie moved down the aisle between the seats.
She took one look at Smoke’s handsome face and broad shoulders and her voice seemed a mite disappointed when she said, “Then you aren’t going to rob the men and rape the women?”
“Not this time,” Smoke called back over his shoulder with a grin.
Smoke and Pearlie moved through three more cars before catching up to the robbers in the car just before Hill’s private one that Louis was in.
Smoke motioned for Pearlie to kneel down in front of the door, and then stood over him as he jerked the door open.
The crowd of robbers in the aisle collecting passengers’ money and jewels glanced back over their shoulders in time to see Smoke and Pearlie open fire, Smoke working the lever of the Henry so fast his shots seemed to be one long explosion.
Six outlaws went down before the others could return fire, and then it was wild and poorly aimed as they shouted and screamed and backed through the far door of the car, which was so filled with gun-smoke they could barely be seen.
