With or Without: Stories by Charles Dickinson

Author:Charles Dickinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

THE TRAIN BLEW its cocky whistle and Black Bart and Eggplant galloped out from behind the boulders with six-­shooters blazing. The train brakes screamed. The children and adults shrieked with excitement. The train came to a halt, hissing and steaming as if personally affronted.

Black Bart pointed his revolvers menacingly at the passengers. They all had their hands up and were smiling. He could not see his son and worried that Cicero had forgotten to put him back on the train. Eggplant snickered and pranced.

“Throw down the mailbag!” Black Bart ordered. The engineer, the same kid, his hands halfheartedly in the air, reached behind his seat for the canvas mailbag and tossed it out onto the ground. Black Bart looked at it and then at the passengers. He saw the sheriff sitting in the rear of the train. His hat was pulled low over his eyes and he was yawning. Black Bart still did not see his son. Cube Jordan was sitting beside the sheriff.

None of the passengers, save the very young, was frightened. They were waiting for their cue. One brawny kid, maybe fourteen years old, looked vaguely familiar to Black Bart, as if he had seen the kid early in the season and over the course of the summer the kid had reached manhood. He was tall and stocky with a pugnacious, exultant face. He was poised on the balls of his feet awaiting the command to get Black Bart.

Black Bart dismounted. The passengers leaned toward him; the line of cars even seemed to tip in his direction. Black Bart holstered one six-­shooter. He wound a leather strap around the hammer, tied it securely so that in the coming melee the revolver would not fall loose. He crouched over the mailbag, his other six-­shooter trained on the passengers, the barrel square on the big kid’s forehead. Black Bart hesitated just a moment to look one more time for Dale. His son was not on the train. He stood up with the mailbag.

“Get this train out of here,” Black Bart commanded.

There was a rustle of protest from the passengers, an angry murmur of disgust that perhaps the format had been changed and Black Bart would be allowed to escape unchallenged. The engineer dutifully activated the loudspeaker and filled the air with the grumping of the priming engine. Black Bart swung up into the saddle. He fired a shot into the air.

This was the sheriff’s cue. He jumped from the rear of the train with his gun drawn and shouted, “We can’t let Black Bart steal the Fort Fun mail!” Black Bart leveled a shot at him but, of course, he missed. The sheriff returned the fire. On the first shot Black Bart threw his six-­shooter over the boulders as if it had been shot out of his hand. On the second shot Black Bart dropped the mailbag and slapped his hand to his shoulder, spun out of the saddle, hit the ground feet first, and dropped at once to his knees.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.