When the stationmaster approached him, the man ducked his head and put a lucifer to the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He looked up, tipping smoke from his nostrils, and gave the stationmaster a lopsided grin. “Howdy,” he said in a friendly tone of voice.
“Hello,” the stationmaster answered. “If you’re here to buy a ticket on this train, you need to see the man in the ticket booth inside the building.”
“Thanks,” the stranger answered. “I might just do that.” He turned toward the building, hesitated, and then he looked back over his shoulder at the stationmaster.
“Uh, by the way, was that man I just saw getting on the train named Smoke Jensen?”
The stationmaster nodded absentmindedly, already thinking about the dozens of things he had to see to before the train could leave the station.
The stranger cut his eyes back at the train before he went into the station to buy a ticket His eyes were filled with hate.
When he got to the ticket booth, he pulled a wad of cash from his vest pocket and placed it on the counter.
“Can I help you sir?” the ticket man asked.
“Yeah. Can you tell me how far Smoke Jensen and his friends are going?”
The ticket salesman looked down at an open book in front of him and pursed his lips for a moment. “I believe they’re ticketed all the way through to Big Rock, Colorado,” he said, glancing back up at the man standing in front of his window.
“Then give me a ticket to the same place,” the man said, pushing his money under the gated window.
“Yes, sir.”
“And I need to know if I have time to send a wire before the train leaves.”
The ticket man pulled a watch from his vest pocket and shook his head as he looked at it. “No, sir, I don’t believe you do.”
“Damn,” he muttered.
“But I’d be happy to send one for you after the train leaves if you wish.”
When the man nodded, looking relieved, the ticket man pushed a piece of paper and a pencil under the window gate. “Just write out who you want me to send it to and what you want to say and I’ll get it on over to the telegraph office just as soon as the train leaves the station.”
“Uh,” the man stammered, his face burning scarlet. “I can’t write too good.”
The ticket man pulled the paper back and smiled. “Then just tell me what you want to say in your message and I’ll write it for you.”
“It’s to Angus MacDougal in Pueblo, Colorado.” The man thought for a moment and then he said, “Just say our friend is headed for home . . . should be there in ten days.”
“Will there be anything else, sir?” the ticket man asked as he folded up the paper.
The man grinned through thin lips. “No, I think that ought’a ‘bout do it.”
After Smoke closed the door and turned around, he saw Louis pouring himself a glass of brandy into a bell-shaped crystal goblet from Hill’s private bar in the corner. Louis swirled the amber liquid for a moment, and then he sniffed delicately of the aroma. His face relaxed and he smiled, as if he had died and gone to heaven.
Cal had taken his boots off and was lying back on the overstuffed sofa, poking the cushions with his hands, feeling how soft they were.
Pearlie was over in the opposite corner and he had his hands on the bell rope, about to pull it.
Smoke cleared his throat loudly. “Pearlie, what are you doing?”
Pearlie glanced over at him, his face blushing slightly and looking embarrassed. “Uh . . . I’m just ringing this here bell to see if the man who answers it can get us some food ‘fore I faint from hunger.”
Smoke shook his head, pointing to the corner of the car where a coffeepot was steaming on a fat-bellied stove. “Why don’t you have a cup of coffee to fill your gut until the train leaves the station? Then we can see about getting some grub.”
“Coffee?” Pearlie asked, as if he’d been offered something horrible to eat.
Louis looked up from where he stood at the bar. “And Pearlie, there’s a bowl of sugar and a pitcher of cream here on the bar to sweeten it up with.”
Pearlie grinned halfheartedly and moved toward the potbellied stove. “Well, now,” he said amiably. “I guess now that you mention it that coffee will do for a start.”
“Coffee does sound good,” Cal said, getting up from his perch on the couch. “But Louis, you’d better dole that sugar out to Pearlie a little at a time if’n you want any left for the rest of us to use,” he added as he followed Pearlie toward the stove.
“You sayin’ I’m a sugar hog, boy?” Pearlie asked, poking Cal in the shoulder with his fist.
“No, not exactly,” Cal answered, rubbing his shoulder and frowning. “It’s just that sometimes you like to put a little coffee in your sugar.”
Two hours later, the men had finished their meal and were sitting around a table in Hill’s private car getting a poker lesson from Louis. Luckily for Cal and Pearlie, they were playing for pennies instead of dollars, because Louis and Smoke were each winning just about every hand.
Just as Louis was leaning over to rake in another pot, the train suddenly slowed, its steel wheels screeching as the engineer applied the brakes with full force.
“What the . . . ” Louis began to say when the chips and cards all started to slide across the table from the sudden slowing of the train. Cal moved his head to the side toward the nearby window and called out, “Looky there!” and pointed off to the side of the train.
A group of men could be seen suddenly appearing from a copse of trees near the track, all riding bent down low over their saddle horns, guns in their hands and bandanna masks over their faces.
“Well, I’ll be hanged,” Smoke said, his lips curling into a slight grin of anticipation. “It looks like the train is going to be robbed.”
Louis unconsciously reached up and patted the wallet in his coat breast pocket, thick with the money Cornelius Van Horne had paid them for helping with the surveying for his Canadian Pacific Railroad the past six months. “I’ll be damned if any two-bit train robbers are going to take any of my money!” he exclaimed.
Smoke pulled a Colt pistol from his holster and flicked open the cylinder, checking to see that it was fully loaded. “No one’s gonna take any money from any of us, Louis,” he promised, the grin slowly fading from his face.
“I’ll get our rifles from our gear in the next car,” Pearlie said, referring to the sleeping car next door where they’d stored their valises and saddlebags.
“Bring some extra ammunition too,” Smoke said, glancing out of the window. “It looks like there’re fifteen or twenty riders out there we’re gonna have to contend with.”
He ducked down out of sight, motioning the others to do the same, as the train slowed and the group of riders drew abreast of the car they were in.
A gunshot rang out and the window next to Smoke’s head shattered, sending slivers of glass cascading down onto his back and causing a tiny, solitary drop of blood to appear on his neck. He reached up and wiped it with his finger. “First blood to them,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.
The train continued its rapid deceleration. Probably because the robbers had dynamited or obstructed the tracks in some manner, Smoke thought as Pearlie came scuttling back into the car with his arms full of long guns. Smoke took the Henry repeating rifle from Pearlie, and watched as Louis took the ten-gauge sawed-off express gun and an extra box of shells from him.
“You’re gonna have to get awfully close for that to do much damage,” Smoke said.
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.”