“I’ll join you,” Cody said.
Slipping back into the bunk, Falcon pulled on his trousers and boots. Then, picking up his gun belt, he stepped out into the aisle as he strapped it on. By now, several others were looking out from the bunks: women, children, and men of all ages. Many of them were talking back and forth, wondering why the train had made such an abrupt stop in the middle of the night.
Cody stepped out into the aisle with Falcon and, like Falcon, had put on his gun belt. Ingraham stepped out as well, though, unlike Falcon and Cody, he was unarmed. When Falcon and Cody started toward the front of the car, Ingraham went with them.
“Where are you going?” Cody asked.
“With you two.”
“You stay here. We don’t know what’s out there.”
“I know,” Ingraham said, his eyes flashing with excitement. “That’s why I’m going with you.”
When the three men stepped out of the train they could see the steam drifting away from the engine, so white against the dark night that it was almost luminescent. The only light to be seen was that cast through the windows of the coaches. A few of the windows were open and heads were poked through, looking toward the front.
“You folks best keep your heads inside, we don’t know what this is all about yet,” Falcon said as the three men passed by the coaches on their walk to the front of the train.
When they got close enough to the front to see what was going on, they saw at least eight men, four mounted and four dismounted. One of the dismounted men was on top of the tender, pointing his gun toward the cab of the engine. The other three were standing on the ground just outside the express car.
“You may as well open the door,” one of the men yelled. “Because we have dynamite, and if you don’t open it we’ll blow this car all to hell.”
“Gentlemen!” Ingraham shouted. “You have chosen the wrong train to rob. The two men with me or none other than Falcon MacCallister and Buffalo Bill Cody!”
“Ingraham, what are you doing?” Cody asked.
“I am helping these gentlemen understand that they have made a big mistake,” Ingraham said.
The three men on the ground turned toward Falcon, Cody, and Ingraham and began firing, lighting the night up with the bright flares of their muzzle flashes. Falcon and Cody returned fire and all three went down.
“Damn, did you see that?” one of the mounted men said. “Let’s get out of here!”
“Bring me my horse!” the man on the coal-tender shouted, but the four riders who had been holding the horses of the four who had dismounted rode away without responding to his call.
“You no-count bastards!” the man on the tender shouted. He pointed his gun at the retreating robbers, but didn’t fire. Instead, realizing that Falcon and Cody were quickly closing on him, he threw his pistol down, then put his hands up.
“I give up, I give up!” he shouted. “Don’t shoot! I ain’t makin’ no fight of it!”
“Climb down,” Falcon ordered, and, meekly, the man did as ordered.
By now the train conductor, who had been monitoring events from a safe place, came hurrying up.
“Mr. MacCallister, Mr. Cody, the Northern Pacific owes the two of you a big thank you for saving the train,” the conductor said.
“MacCallister? Cody?” the outlaw said. “You mean this here fella wasn’t lyin’? You really are Falcon MacCallister and Buffalo Bill Cody?”
“They are indeed,” Ingraham said. “You need not feel shame over being bested in your failed endeavor, for you have been taken by the most famous and skilled shootists in the world.”
“Who are you?”
“I sir, am merely a simple purveyor of tales, a scribe who records the heroic deeds of such men as these. I am sure you have heard of me. I am Prentiss Ingraham.”
“Prentiss Ingraham?” The would-be train robber shook his head. “No, can’t say as I have heard of you.”
Ingraham was visibly crestfallen.
Because the would-be robbers had stopped the train by building a fire on the track, for the next several moments the crew and men passengers of the train worked feverishly to clear the path. They had to hurry, because another train would be coming behind them within the next hour.
“That’s no problem,” Ingraham said. “Won’t the train engineer have his light on? He’ll just stop when he sees us.”
“It won’t matter whether he has his headlamp on or not,” Falcon replied.
“What do you mean it won’t matter? Of course it will matter. If his headlamp is on, he will see us.”
“Even if the engineer did see us, it would be too late,” Falcon explained. “The purpose of the headlamp is so people can see the train and get out of the way. Once the train’s headlamp picks up something, it is already too late. The train is so fast and so heavy that it is impossible for it to stop within the limits of the headlamp.”
“So what you are saying is that if a train approaches us, it will plow right into the back of us?” Ingraham asked.
“That’s what I’m saying,” Falcon replied.
“Let’s get busy then,” Ingraham said, and he began working with renewed effort to clear the track.
Angus Ebersole, Clay Hawkins, Ike Peters, and Jim Dewey rode hard for the first mile, then stopped atop a hill
