I let lead fly as I locked target and jumped to the platform. My shot made its way to the chest of a large man wearing an open shirt and holding one of the women. He fell back and she dropped to the floor. I saw someone duck out the back coach door.
Virgil was on the platform from the other side, and his first shot caught the side of a robber’s head, splattering blood onto the daughters’ white dresses.
A fat man got off a shot. The bullet hit the doorjamb, splintering pieces of wood onto the platform.
My second shot caught the fat man in the throat. I did not see Virgil’s second shot, but a tall robber fell backward and dropped in the aisle.
Swiftly, in a matter of fleeting moments, there were four dead gunmen and we were in the open doorway of the coach. Both of the young women were safe and on the floor in front of the first passenger seat.
“One hand made it out the back, Virgil,” I said.
Virgil and I stood side by side with our Colts trained to the back of the coach, looking for other robbers. The car was thick with smoke and there was not another bandit left standing. Many of the passengers were covering their ears, eyes, or mouths and, for the most part, were silenced by the instant carnage.
We reloaded. Then I gathered the weapons off the men we’d shot. Virgil looked to the passengers.
“I’m Marshal Virgil Cole; this is my deputy, Everett Hitch. Everybody stay seated and remain quiet. We’ll do our best to rid this train of these thieves.”
Virgil looked down at one of the young women and offered his hand. She looked up and grasped his hand. Virgil helped her to her feet. He took his handkerchief from his pocket and gently wiped blood from her face. She was pretty. Her face was similar to that of an angel you might see in an old biblical painting. She had rosy cheeks and large eyes. I helped up the other woman, who was also pretty, but more womanly, more slender and tall.
“You two the governor’s daughters?” Virgil said.
The girl with the rosy cheeks and big eyes clutched Virgil’s arm. She was shaking hard and could not say anything. The taller woman spoke.
“We are. I’m Emma; this is my little sister, Abigail.”
Abigail burst into tears. Emma was also shaking but breathing easier than her sister.
“Our... our mother and father are back there somewhere,” Emma said and pointed.
“How many guards are with your family?” Virgil asked.
“I don’t know for sure,” Emma said. “Two that I know of. Pinkerton men, maybe there were others elsewhere on the train, I don’t know.”
“The two Pinkertons are in your car?” Virgil said.
“They were,” Emma said. “One was stationed at the front of the coach and the other at the rear.”
She looked at me and back to Virgil. Water filled her eyes.
“I’m not for certain,” Emma said, “but I’m pretty sure they are both dead.”
10
Virgil was without a doubt listening to Emma, but his attention had turned toward the rear of the coach. He moved from Abigail’s clutch and positioned himself square-shouldered, looking at something I had not seen. He took a few steps and stopped. Then he raised his Colt with his arm extended out straight in front of him.
“Dean,” Virgil said. “Get up. Real easy. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
I leaned to the side for a clear look around Virgil, and sitting in the second-to-last row was a lanky gun hand named Dean. Virgil knocked out his tooth years ago on top of the rocky rim above Appaloosa when Dean was riding lookout for Bragg.
“I got my pistola in the side of this here lady’s corsetta,” Dean said. “You take one step closer and I’ll ruin it.”
“Why?” Virgil asked.
“What do you mean, why?” Dean said.
“I’ll kill you if you do,” Virgil said. “So why?”
Dean’s eyes moved from side to side.
“Let me tell you how this will go down, Dean,” Virgil said. “You drop your pistola in the aisle there, stand up with your hands where I can see them. Do like I say.”
Dean didn’t move.
Virgil pulled back the hammer on his Colt. A few of the passengers gasped.
“Okay!” Dean said. “Okay!”
Dean held his pistola out into the aisle and dropped it. He stood up with his hands in the air, stepped into the aisle, and faced Virgil.
“Take a few steps back,” Virgil said.
“What?”
“Right now,” Virgil said.
Virgil was using Dean to block the door. Dean took a few steps and his back was to the door.
“Good,” Virgil said. “What are you and the others doing down here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that.”
“Um... just travelin’ the train.”
“Don’t test me, Dean.”
Dean swallowed hard.
“Vince the boss?” Virgil pressed.
Dean looked at Virgil and frowned a bit.
“Is he?”
“He... he is,” Dean said.
“This his idea?”
“It is.”
“What’s the plan?”
“Um, we was to ride down to Paris, Texas, and get on this train and...”
“And what?”
Dean was sweating. He swayed his head from side to side.
“Rob it.”
“Why this train?”
“Vince said because of the land run happening in the Indian Territory that there would be a lot of people on the train going that direction with money.”
Virgil moved a little closer to Dean and stopped.
“What else?” Virgil said.
“Um... well, we did that. We got on back in Paris. We was gonna gather folks’ belongings, then get off and meet our horses right back there, but you and Hitch done changed all that.”
“Lot of horses,” Virgil said. “Your fellow thieves from Bragg’s gang?”
“For the most part.”
“How many are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Twenty-one?” Virgil said. “Why so many?”
“Don’t know,” Dean said. “Big train.”
“Including the rider,” I said. “We killed nine.”
“That’d leave eleven,” Virgil said.
“It would,” I said.
Dean looked at Virgil and closed one eye.
“Counting me,” Dean said. “That’d be twelve.”
“We ain’t counting you,” Virgil said.
11
Dean was thinking hard about why he wasn’t being counted when Virgil interrupted his thought process.
“Turn around, face that door,” Virgil said. “Pull the shade, put your hands above the door.”
Dean did as he was instructed.
Virgil walked down the aisle and picked up the Orbea Hermanos pistola Dean had dropped.
“Don’t think about nothing but keeping your nose to that door, Dean,” Virgil said.
“I won’t.”
Virgil looked to the passengers.
“Anybody here good with a gun and not afraid to use it?”
A sodbuster sitting with a frail woman lifted off his seat slightly and removed a floppy-brimmed hat from his head.
“I don’t got no gun, but I ain’t afraid to use one, ’specially on them,” the sodbuster said, pointing at Dean.
“What’s your name?” Virgil said.