The Shockbite Gang

The sun was bright, hot, and heavy on the parched ground of the San Match Desert. The heat in the air could be felt more prominently than the air itself. One did not breathe oxygen in the San Match Desert - one breathed fire.

There were four parts to the San Match Desert. The first part was covered in crunchy white sand, the second part was a long stretch of dry dirt with big thirsty cracks running through it, the third part was solid rock which formed mountains and canyons, and the fourth part was red clay which baked all day in the sun and smelled like salt.

There was one railroad which ran into the San Match Desert. It began in the civilized East, and plowed out into the most untamed part of all the West.

Ridge Daxby was the owner of the railroad. He was a large man with large sideburns on his large face. His wealth was also large, as were his political connections. His railroad ended in a town called Boonsberry, which was the home of the Boonsberry Bank.

The Boonsberry Bank was a fat brick building shaped like a cube which stood in the center of town, across the street from the church. Inside of said bank was the biggest, most locked up vault in the whole West. The vault could not be opened except for by the human being with the combination, who happened to be a human being named Pool Bircher, who knew the combination to be 36-36-36-25-0.

The Boonsberry Bank had a lot money in it. It held big bars of gold from the Foxtrox Mines, stacks upon stacks of crisp dollar bills, bags of silver, and barrels of gold coins. Ridge Daxby’s train went all the way to Boonsberry just so Daxby could reach that bank.

***

Did you know? A train was on its way to Boonsberry one clear Thursday morning. The passengers on the train, businesspeople, settlers, missionaries, and explorers, were sweating and fanning themselves with small paper fans.

The train had eight coaches. There were three passenger coaches, a dining coach, a kitchen coach, a luggage coach, a livestock coach, and a caboose coach. The locomotive itself was big and black and shaped like a tube with a small square room in the back. On top of the front of the locomotive was a smooth round funnel that looked like a chimney which exhaled smoke. That was the smokestack.

“Can you see the train yet, Kid?” said a deep, full-grown voice through the heat.

Kid stood with his hand above his brow to shield his eyes from the sun. Kid was tall, narrow, and had been living for twenty years. He held a black cutter cowboy hat in his right hand. He wore brown pants, a blue cotton shirt, a faded vest, and a loose red kerchief around his neck. He was well tanned. His nose was sharp. There was a darkness in his eyes, as if he had seen something so terrible that no person could ever comprehend its terribleness and then he’d promptly forgotten all about it. His hair was short and hacked off unevenly and blonde. His name was The Shockbite Kid.

“I can see the train.”

“How far out is it?” asked the voice.

“Five, maybe ten.”

“Five, maybe ten what?”

“That far out.”

“You don’t say,” said the voice.

The voice belonged to a man named Chickadee. Chickadee wore a gray boss of the plains hat, a gray jacket, dark pants, and black boots. Beneath his jacket was a red shirt and around his waist was a black belt and holster.

Chickadee’s parents had been slaves once, due to the supreme evil of the white devils who ruled the land, but by the time Chickadee was born, his parents were free human beings. They had been freed by an unconditional surrender. They were poor and worked on a farm for a little bit of money. Chickadee did not like being poor and so he crawled away from his parents when he was three months old and went West to find his fortune. He got a job called being an outlaw. Chickadee was the best outlaw the West had ever seen. So the legend of Chickadee goes.

“Should we get on the horses?” Chickadee asked.

“I don’t mind,” said Kid.

Chickadee stood up and went to see for himself how far off the train was.

The Shockbite Kid and Chickadee were positioned behind a large boulder which sat beside the tracks. What Chickadee saw when he stuck his head out from behind the boulder was a train barreling toward him at an ungodly speed.

“Damn it,” said Chickadee.

“It is headed right for us,” said Kid with a smile.

“Do not just stand there,” said Chickadee as he ran toward his horse, “do something.”

“Shall I?” asked Kid.

“If you can.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” said Kid, and he charged toward his own horse.

Chickadee took the reins of his horse, a sturdy yellow beast named Montan, and leapt into the saddle.

“Go, Montan,” he said. “Get moving.”

Montan, a beast of average intelligence, took off. Kid followed on a steed of his own, a sleek white-with-red-spots-colored mare named Mimi.

“Go that way,” pointed Kid.

Mimi nodded obediently and took off at a pounding speed after Chickadee and Montan.

The two outlaws rode next to the tracks while the train chugged past them. The train was moving faster than Chickadee or Kid had ever seen it move. Dark heavy smoke was pouring from the smokestack and drawing a thick line through the clear blue sky.

“Why do you think it’s going so fast?” Chickadee shouted at Kid as the train rattled loudly beside them.

“Perhaps it is frightened,” shouted back Kid.

“Do you think so?”

“I must.”

The Shockbite Kid leapt from Mimi’s back onto the side of the third coach. He clung to the car, his fingers wrapped tightly around the edge of an opened window. Chickadee grabbed ahold next to him and the two pulled themselves into the coach.

The interior of the coach smelled of wood and sweat and breath. At the front of the coach there were two men in dusty black suits and bowler hats. The men had open cloth sacks and revolvers in their hands.

“Well, well, well,” said the taller of the two suited men, a mustachioed, stone-faced fellow, “if it isn’t The Shockbite Gang, come to rob the train.”

“And so what if we are?” asked Chickadee while he brushed himself off. “It isn’t a crime, is it?”

“Hmmph,” said the man, twirling his mustachio. The man was named Tom Wichita, the leader of a gang called The Barking Brothers.

Chickadee spat on the floor.

“What’s the matter, birdie-boy?” said Tom.

“Shut up,” said Chickadee. “You know your face makes me sick.”

“It’s no fault of mine that you can’t stand the sight of me,” said Tom, casually tucking his thumb behind his belt buckle. “I do my best to be pleasant to everybody on God’s damned earth.”

Kid grumbled. He hated Tom Wichita and the Barking Brothers. They were a vile gang who did not follow any rules.

“Why are you here?” said Chickadee.

“To rob the train, of course,” said Tom, lighting a cigarette and glaring at the passengers with evil glee.

The passengers in the coach were shivering with fear except for one, who was a cocky fellow named Gerald.

“Now see here,” said Gerald. “There’s no need to rob from us. There are plenty of respectable jobs to be had. You do not have to be outlaws. You can work in the mines! You can work for the—”

Tom shot Gerald in the arm and the man let out a kettle-boiling scream.

“Does anybody else have something they want to say?” Tom asked with a loud voice. “If they do, say so now.”

Not a single passenger moved a muscle or uttered a note of sound.

“This train doesn’t run through your territory,” said Chickadee, his hand on his holstered pistol. “You and your barking freaks don’t belong here. Now, there are two ways we can handle this. The first way is you and all the rest of the Brothers get off the train. The second way is the Kid and I shoot you to death. Which do you prefer?”

Tom Wichita opened his mouth to retort but was cut off by a sweaty, disheveled woman in the third row.

“This is ridiculous,” said the woman, thumping her hand on the back of the seat in front of her.

“Please be quiet, thank you,” said Tom Wichita.

“No! I shall not be quiet!” said the woman. She stood up. She was thin and wearing a navy-blue gown.

“You will sit down now if you know what’s good for you,” Tom told her, lifting his gun.

“What are all of us doing?” the woman asked, posing the question toward her fellow passengers. “Are we all really going to just sit here waiting to be shot and robbed by these bandits? Why should we? It’s useless to behave in such a cowardly manner.”

“Miss,” said Tom, “I am not opposed to shooting a woman. Do not think your feminine frame will shield you.”

“How dare you threaten her,” said Kid. “That duty belongs to Chickadee and I, the rightful robbers of this train.”

Tom Wichita blushed.

“You are a swine, Kid, and you shall die a swine.”

Kid did not like to be called a swine and so he shot his gun at Tom.

His pistol made a loud exploding pop and a bullet was flung out of it so quickly that nobody saw where it went. The Barking Brother next to Tom Wichita, a fellow named Hap, looked around.

“Where did the bullet go, Tom?” he asked.

Tom looked at his companion and said, “Right there,” poking Hap’s shoulder.

“Yowch!”

“There is plenty more where that came from,” said Kid. “You had all better think long and carefully before you refer to me as a swine again.”

“You bastard,” said Tom Wichita, careful to not refer to Kid as a swine again.

Tom fired his gun five times in a row. The two members of The Shockbite Gang fell down.

“Are you all right?” Chickadee asked Kid.

“Keen,” said Kid, a sunny glow in his dark blue eyes. He sniffed audibly, scratched his chin, and rolled behind a seat for cover. Chickadee rolled in the opposite direction and found himself tangled up with a passenger’s feet.

“I beg your pardon,” he said.

“The pardon is completely mine,” assured the passenger.

At the other end of the coach, Tom Wichita and Hap took cover as well. Tom Wichita was struggling with his revolver, his shaky hands roughly shoving fresh bullets into the chambers. Hap was nursing his wounded shoulder.

“I think he just winged me,” Hap announced.

“If it is all the same to you,” said Tom, “I don’t give a damn. Where the hell are the other Brothers?”

Hap counted on his bloody fingers, “Beck is in the locomotive bullying the engineer and Poco and Remmy are in the luggage coach rooting through the suitcases.”

“You don’t think they’re finished with that yet?”

“It’s busy work, rooting through the suitcases.”

“Pah,” said Tom as he finished loading his gun. “Are you ready?” he asked Hap.

Hap grinned and tipped his bowler hat, which was too small for his wide head. “As ready as I ever shall be,” he said, drawing his pistol.

The two stood and fired their guns over the heads of the panicked passengers, aiming at the chairs which Chickadee and Kid had ducked behind. After emptying their guns, they paused.

“Did we hit them?” Tom asked the coach in general.

“No,” said the skinny woman in the blue dress, “they left while the two of you were reloading.”

“Eesh!” said Tom. “Do you have any idea where they went?”

“I do, but it’s not a good idea.”

“Never mind, then.”

***

The Shockbite Kid and Chickadee stood on the roof of the train. Up there, the hot wind slapped their faces. They both kept a hand on their hats to prevent them from flying away.

“What’s your plan?” Kid shouted over the sound of the wind and the train.

“We have got to get those Barking Brothers off this train.”

“I am not sure if that qualifies as a plan.”

Chickadee surveyed the roofs of the coaches.

“Right now, we have the drop on them,” he said. “We should go back to the caboose and move up through the coaches. That way we can kill them as we go and we shall not get surrounded.”

“I agree,” said Kid.

The two rushed to the back of the train along the roofs of the coaches. When they arrived at the caboose, they dropped down and kicked through the door. Inside the caboose there was a stove, a bench, and a small table with four men around it playing cards.

“What is the meaning of this?” the oldest of the card-players said.

“This is a routine checkup,” said Chickadee. “It’s merely nothing to worry about.”

“Well, if that’s all,” said the card-player, and he returned to his game.

Kid and Chickadee moved through the caboose into the livestock coach, which contained three horses, two cows, a pig, and a small spider who was technically a stowaway. When the two walked in, the spider gasped and quickly hid behind a piece of straw.

Chickadee and Kid moved through the coach carefully, checking every corner to ensure no Barking Brothers lurked in them.

When they moved on to the luggage coach the spider heaved a sigh of relief. She had been worried that if they found her, they would throw her off the train for not having a ticket. It is not easy to be a spider.

The luggage coach was full of suitcases and trunks, with a large iron safe in the corner. There were two men by the safe. One man was trying to open the safe, his ear pressed against it and his hand on the combination lock. The other stood next to the safe and watched the first man work. On the floor, briefcases were sitting opened and their contents thrown about. Dresses and coats and breeches were scattered all over the floor and walls.

“Hello,” said Chickadee to the two by the safe.

The one who was not trying to open the safe, named Poco, replied, “What do you want?”

“You should not be touching that safe.”

“Why not?” said the one touching the safe, named Remmy.

“Because it belongs to us.”

“Does not,” said Remmy.

“Does so,” said Chickadee.

“According to outlaw law, we got here first.”

“But the fundamental basis of any outlaw law is that what belongs to you is whatever thing you can take and get away with.”

“And it so happens that I fundamentally believe that I will be the one opening this safe and taking whatever’s inside it for myself. Does this not mean that this safe belongs to me?”

“This is what it all comes down to,” said Chickadee. “It all comes down to who among us is better at taking things. What makes that safe mine in this instance is that I can take it better than you can.”

Chickadee rushed at Remmy and punched him directly in his jaw. There was a satisfying noise, like the crack of a whip, as fist met face. Remmy fell over and spat out blood. Pain churned up and down the side of his head. He closed his eyes to stop the ringing and said, “Poco, do something!”

Poco, in his haste to do something, did the first thing he could think of. He attempted a flying kick towards Chickadee, but only succeeded in kicking his boots off, which were a size too big for him.

“Poco,” said Remmy, “do something else.”

Chickadee punched Poco in the eye. Poco took it poorly. He fell down on his rump and sat in a daze. His left eye went crossed and his right eye began to spin.

Remmy stood, charged forward, and tackled Chickadee, taking him to the ground. Fortunately, the fluff of clothes softened Chickadee’s fall. Kid seized this moment and grabbed Remmy by the shoulder, spun him around, and hit him in the nose. Remmy sneezed blood and punched Kid in the temple. Poco stood and Chickadee stood. Chickadee grabbed Poco and threw him the length of the coach. Remmy kicked Kid in the chest. Kid wheezed. Chickadee punched Remmy in the bottom of the chin. Remmy fell on top of the safe and bruised his tailbone. Chickadee pulled open the door of the luggage coach.

“Woah,” said Kid, rubbing his own chest in a soothing, circular way and trying to calm down.

Chickadee took Remmy by the collar and tossed him out the opened door. Poco watched as Remmy tumbled and rolled out of sight. Poco gulped.

“Kid,” said Chickadee.

“Who, me?” said Kid.

“You’ve got to get that safe open. Mary Sue won’t be pleased if we come back empty-handed.”

“I shall do my best,” said Kid, “but I’m no Johnny.”

“So you aren’t.”

Chickadee walked the length of the luggage coach to where Poco sat, his hind end squeezed inside an opened suitcase.

“I surrender,” Poco said, his hands and bare feet in the air.

“Good,” said Chickadee. “It’s much more fun to throw someone off a train when they do not put up a fight.”

“You will not accept my wish to surrender?”

“On the contrary,” said Chickadee with a smile. “I do accept your wish to surrender, but only on the condition that I get to toss you off this train.”

“Quite reasonable, if you ask me,” said Kid, grinning as he opened the door of the safe.

“How did you manage to open it so quickly?” asked Chickadee.

“I guessed,” said Kid.

“Lucky guess. I imagine you’ll rub it in Johnny’s face?”

“I shall tell him I guessed,” declared Kid.

“If it’s all the same to you,” interrupted Poco, “I would rather not be thrown off the train. It does not appeal to me as an idea. It seems like I could be seriously hurt.”

“Oh, you will definitely be seriously hurt,” said Chickadee. “I am counting on it.”

“No,” said Poco, “stop counting on it! I demand to be not thrown off this train.”

Chickadee punched Poco in the eye, grabbed him by the back of his shirt, and heaved him out the opened door.

Poco tumbled out, shouting, “My boots!”

Poco hit the ground stomach first and bounced. He did a somersault in the air and began to roll head over heels across the hard, dirty desert. His ankle caught for a moment on a cactus and it sent him into a mad spin. His head slammed hard on a patch of gravel and his bowler hat fell off. He rolled again and for a glorious moment he was on his feet, running as fast as he could, but the momentum was still too great and so he tumbled and rolled some more. He slid and skidded to a stop at last and felt relieved that the worst was over. That was when his boots came tumbling out of the sky and kicked him in the head.

***

“I would have let him go barefoot,” said Chickadee.

“That’s sadistic, Chickadee.”

“I must be a sadist then.”

“Must you be?”

“I suppose not. Come now. Let’s gather the money.”

Kid found a fancy pink dress on the floor. He tied its sleeves together and knotted the bottom so that there were no openings save the one at the top where the neck usually stuck through. Together, the two men stuffed the money from the safe down the gown’s top. The gown had lace on the front and soft, fluffy sleeves. It smelled of ripe flowers. It was as soft and smooth as skin. The money filled out the dress nicely, giving it a nice plump bottom.

Chickadee threw the stuffed dress over his shoulder and asked if Kid was ready to go. Kid nodded. They moved toward the door but before they reached it, the door was kicked wide open. Tom Wichita and Hap walked in.

“Where have the two of you been?” Tom asked.

“I have been to Colorado,” Kid answered, “but not recently.”

Tom ignored Kid and asked a second question.

“Where are Poco and Remmy?”

“They have been thrown off the train,” replied Chickadee.

“What the hell!” said Tom indignantly. To Kid he said, “Is this true?”

“Irreparably.”

“No need to worry,” said Chickadee. “They both have their boots.”

“Well,” said Tom, putting a hand on his heart, “the relief is all mine, I assure you.”

“Blast,” said Kid to Chickadee. “It was not my intention to relieve him.”

“What have you got in the dress?” Tom asked, wiggling his gun at Chickadee.

“Nothing of consequence,” said Chickadee.

“If that is so,” said Tom, cocking his gun, “then give it to me.”

Chickadee licked his teeth. “I do not want to,” he said.

“Humans do thing they don’t want to do all the time. You get used to it.”

“Maybe later I will get used to it. Not today, though.”

Tom casually slid the first two fingers of his left hand down the bridge of his nose. Hap saw the gesture and recognized the coded message within it. He drew his gun and started to shoot. His gun made loud crashing noises, sending a singing spray of bullets toward Chickadee and the Shockbite Kid.

When the first crack of gunshot rang through the air Chickadee went cold. His vision narrowed and he forced himself to move quicker than he actually could. His leg muscles tensed, bunched, and launched him toward the nearest solid thing he could find, which happened to be a heavy trunk. There, he drew his gun for retaliation.

The Shockbite Kid was not calculated. He could not remember how to be. When the first bullet exited Hap’s gun, Kid’s vision blurred red and went big. Kid stood his ground, reached for his gun in a frenzy, drew it, and shot right back.

Kid’s bullet hit Hap’s shoulder in the exact same spot as before. Hap dropped his gun, exclaiming, “Youch!” Chickadee peeked out from behind his trunk and shot Hap in the thigh. “Youch again!” Hap fell into one of the empty trunks and the lid snapped shut on top of him. Tom Wichita ducked and hid behind Hap’s trunk.

“Kid, get down,” Chickadee said.

“Maybe later,” said Kid, his eyes clearing up. They had not gotten too red that time. “For now, I feel a distinct urge to shoot a man named Tom Wichita.”

“All right,” Tom shouted from behind the trunk. “You win! Let me and my gang get off the train and we’ll not do you any harm.”

“I appreciate the offer,” said Chickadee with a grin, “but I do not think I can accept it.”

Tom gritted his teeth fearfully. As quickly as he could, he ran out from behind his trunk to the door of the coach and leapt out, a fantastic dive that ended with a neat thump.

“Damn,” said Chickadee, standing up and putting a hand on Kid’s shoulder. “You have got to respect him for jumping.” Chickadee shoved the trunk which Hap occupied out of the door after Tom. Hap let out a high-pitched yell as he fell which came out muffled through the trunk.

“It’s a shame he got away.”

“An actual shame,” agreed Kid.

“The train is moving too fast.”

“It certainly is, but I do not know why.”

“That makes two of us.”

***

In the locomotive, the engineer was being held at gunpoint by a man named Beck. Beck had a nasty scar running down his cheek and onto his neck. His lower lip was split open by the scar and in the gap a yellow tooth grinned and stank of rot. Beck was the biggest and most intimidating Barking Brother of them all. He was a total brute. His instructions were to wait for Tom in the locomotive. When Tom came, they would slow down the train and jump off together. That was the plan.

“Please listen to me,” the engineer begged, “in two miles we shall reach Dead Lawyer’s Bend. Have you heard of it? ’Tis a very sharp bend indeed, good sir. If we keep going at this pace, why, when we reach the bend, this train will jump the tracks and we’ll all be crushed to bits by the rocks! Do you want to be crushed to bits by the rocks? If I were you, I would think long and hard about that before I answered.”

Beck stared at the engineer silently. A ball of drool slid out of the cut in his lip and plopped on the ground.

“If we keep going at this speed we are going to be crushed! Do you understand?”

“We wait for Tom,” said Beck. “That is the plan.”

“God damn it,” said the engineer.

***

Chickadee and Kid moved through the kitchen coach which contained a sweating cook and two sweating waiters. A stove was burning, making the place hotter than ever.

“What is cooking, dear cook?” Kid asked.

“Beans and turkey stew and corned bread,” said the cook with a tired smile, sweat jumping off his lip as he spoke.

In the dining coach, Kid took all the silverware and put it in the dress while passengers protested, crying, “Hey!” “Oh my!” and “How do you expect me to eat my dinner now?”

In the next coach, they once again came across the skinny woman in the blue gown who had earlier made a call for courage. She stood when the outlaws entered and asked quite innocently, “Are those horrible bandits gone?”

“Which ones?” Chickadee asked. “The ones in in the bowler hats or us?”

“Oh, please no,” she said. “I had hoped that you lot were a more noble sort of outlaw than them.”

Chickadee grinned sheepishly.

“Then again,” she sighed, sitting back down, “I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

“I suppose not,” agreed Chickadee as he began to make his way down the aisle.

“I say!” she exclaimed when he passed her. “That is my dress you’re carrying! What sort of scandalous affair resulted in this?”

“Is it your dress?” said Chickadee, examining the sleeve. “We found it in the luggage coach. Do you mind terribly if we borrow it?”

“I certainly do! I want it back! It’s a family heirloom. My mother wore that dress and my uncle Jimmy before her.”

“What a unique man!”

“He had his unique qualities, yes, but who is without them?”

“Well, you are, once we steal this dress from you.”

“Oh, dash it! You will pay for this thievery bountifully!”

“Not today, though,” said Chickadee. He looked at Kid and said, “You don’t think we’ll pay today, do you?”

“We might pay today, but certainly not bountifully.”

Chickadee was satisfied. The two carried on through the coaches to the engine. They climbed over the coal and tumbled into the engine room where Beck and the engineer were waiting for Tom Wichita. At their arrival, Beck spun around and drew a second pistol, he aimed both of his pistols at Chickadee and Kid.

“Where is Tom?” he asked.

“Tom has abandoned train,” said Kid, dumping coal from his boot.

“A wise move,” said the engineer. He turned to Beck. “May I slow down the train now, you giant oaf?”

“No,” Beck growled. “We wait for Tom.”

“Not I,” said the engineer. “Not even for a minute more.” He rolled up his sleeves and leapt off the speeding locomotive in stunning fashion.

“Why would he do something like that?” Chickadee asked.

“The fear of getting crushed on the rocks will make a man do marvelous things,” said Beck matter-of-factly.

“Are we currently in danger of being crushed by rocks?” asked Chickadee. “Because if so, I firmly believe that now would be the time to mention it.”

“I shall put it this way,” said Beck, “we are currently careening toward Dead Lawyer’s Bend at a speed so great that this entire train is certain to be thrown from the tracks and into the rocks.”

“What a way to put it,” said Chickadee, rubbing his head.

“Do you know how to stop this locomotive?” asked Kid.

“I do not,” said Chickadee, and turning to Beck. “What did you say the name of the bend was again?”

“Dead Lawyer’s Bend.”

“An ominous-sounding bend.”

“To be sure.”

“I suppose there’s nothing left to do but to try to stop the train.”

“I cannot let you,” said Beck.

“Please try not to be ridiculous.”

“I’ll try whatever I like.”

Chickadee pushed past Beck and attempted to decipher the various gauges and levers, but found it made little sense.

“Right,” said Chickadee. “When in doubt!” He threw a switch at random and the train lurched forward even more vigorously than before, huffing and puffing and chugging at ungodly speed.

“How far to Dead Lawyer’s Bend?” Chickadee asked as he put that switch back how he had found it and fiddled with a different one.

“We can’t be far now,” Beck drooled reassuringly.

Chickadee spat over his shoulder and tugged a large lever as far back as it would go.

The train jolted and squeaked loudly. Sparks shot out from under the wheels. Chickadee stuck his head out the window and saw the bend coming right toward them. They were still moving much too fast.

Dead Lawyer’s Bend went something like this: It turned to the left, to avoid a rather daunting-looking stack of rocks, then it turned completely back around to the right, then it straightened out, then it took another left, then it straightened out once more and arrived in Boonsberry.

The locomotive poured into the first bend easily enough and began to tip to the right. The left side of the train rose up and the right side sunk.

“Get to the left side. Try to balance it out!” Chickadee shouted.

“No,” said Beck, still pointing his pistols, “nobody moves!”

“Are you in possession of a death wish?” asked Kid. “Because it sure seems like you are in possession of a death wish!”

The train suddenly dropped and just as suddenly tipped to the left, leaning so far over this time that it began to feel highly improbable that it would ever right itself again. In the midst of all this, Beck lost his footing, tumbled to the floor, hit his head, and passed out.

Chickadee and Kid grabbed ahold of a pipe that ran along the right side of the train to keep their balance. The train leaned further still. As it tipped toward a crunching end, Kid and Chickadee’s feet lifted off the floor and dangled there.

“Is he all right?” Chickadee asked, referring to Beck.

Kid looked over his shoulder at Beck’s crumpled form. Beck, in his unconsciousness, had managed to hold onto his two pistols. One was aimed nonchalantly at his foot and the other was jammed up his nose. His mouth hung open in dumb stupor. His eyes were loosely shut. As the train leaned still further, Beck’s body slid down and fell off the train.

Kid looked back at Chickadee.

“He’s gone,” Kid said.

Chickadee nodded.

It was at the point that it seemed most certain that the train would hit the ground and slide into the rocks that the rails straightened and the train was thrown back onto all of its wheels.

In the third coach back, while the train was tipping, the skinny woman dressed in the navy-blue gown had said, “You simply must visit the Foggy Mountains. They are unbearably romantic.”

“Perhaps I shall,” said the man sitting next to her. He was of a weak and fragile disposition, with a saggy brown suit draped over his fencepost body. “I do enjoy the feeling of pure elation and heart failure that a good romance brings.”

The woman in navy-blue laughed.

In the kitchen coach, the tipping of the train upset each and every one of the cook’s boiling pots of turkey stew. Steaming lumps of turkey slipped and bounded all through the coach while the cook had a fit.

“If you truly enjoy romance as you say you do,” the navy-blue woman went on, “then I suggest you visit Sorrow Forest. It is a forest made up entirely of weeping willows. What an incredibly sobering place! My travels have taken me there on three occasions, each more sad than the last. On my third stay in the forest, I sobbed and moaned the entire time like a poor, unfortunate child. Can you imagine that? My traveling companion, a sensible girl named Tiffany, could not stand my wailing. She left me after the third week and wrote me a letter from the city explaining herself. Do you know what she said?”

“Stop that turkey stew!” screamed the chef, his face a boiling red. One of the slippery lumps of turkey flew from a waiter’s hand and hit him wetly in the face.

“Gah!” said the chef.

“I cannot imagine what Tiffany said,” said the fragile man who sat next to the navy-blue girl.

“She said this, she said the reason she left was because she could not stand my crying for another instant. Now what kind of traveling companion is that?”

The two were so enwrapped in conversation as to not even notice for an instant the vast tipping of the train, which sent their fellow passengers tumbling hither and thither all around them.

“Well now I am being rude,” the woman decided. “Here I am going on and on and on, and I have not even given you a chance to speak. You must forgive me for that. My tongue has a tendency to get carried away. What brings you to Boonsberry?”

“I,” said the man, “am to be hung on the morrow.”

“Hung?” said the girl, taken strongly aback.

The man nodded and lifted his narrow wrists, which were chained heavily.

“Hung for what?” she asked.

“The usual,” he admitted. “I was caught stealing cows.”

“Stealing them? Why?”

“Cows bring in a fair amount of money. There is a high demand for stolen cows in all parts of the West. It is a thriving business.”

“My goodness.”

“The cows have similar sentiments on the matter.”

“I am so terribly sorry.”

“It’s not that troubling,” said the cow thief. “But if I could, may I ask one thing of you?”

“Yes. Anything.”

“It is just,” the cow thief blushed, “please come to my hanging tomorrow? It would mean such to me if you would come. Imagine how lonesome I shall feel if I do not know anyone at my own hanging.”

“But of course I shall come! I would not miss it for the world.”

“Thank you, miss… Miss? May I inquire as to your name?”

“People call me Susie.”

“Those bastards! What is your real name?”

“Oh, it is Susie. That is why people call me it.”

“Understood. My name is Lester.”

“Lester the cow thief.”

“Lester will do just nicely.”

“Does the train seem like it is speeding up to you, Lester?”

Susie was right. The train was speeding up. The reason lay in the engine room with Chickadee and the Shockbite Kid. After the tracks had straightened out Chickadee assumed that they were in the clear and so undid the brakes. That was the danger of Dead Lawyer’s Bend. Just when it seemed over, it unexpectedly bended once again, and the third bend was the most severe and the most unexpected of them all.

“That was a close call,” said Chickadee, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

“It certainly wasn’t a far one,” Kid agreed.

“I say,” said Chickadee, licking his finger and holding it up to test the air, “does it feel to you like we are beginning to tip again?”

Suddenly the train tipped to the right in a flamboyant way. Dirt, coal, clutter, a money-stuffed dress, Chickadee, and Kid all slid and skidded to the right side of the engine room. There, the two outlaws became entangled, their combined eight limbs grasping and strangling and flailing desperately for something sturdy.

“We have got to apply the brakes!” Chickadee screamed as he attempted to remove Kid from his person.

“I will do it,” said Kid.

Kid broke free of the mess and pulled himself over to where the brake lever was. He yanked it back. The wheels beneath the train stopped spinning and began to screech as they had before. Sparks shot in all directions like angry flies. The train jolted and began to slow down, its floating wheels slowly lowering back toward the track.

Kid pulled the brake lever back further still and it snapped off. He held the suddenly useless lever up for Chickadee and gave an apologetic look. The wheels stopped screeching, and the train began to speed up at an alarming rate once again.

“You fool,” said Chickadee. “How will we stop the train now?”

“Not by name calling,” said Kid, and he was technically correct.

Chickadee climbed up next to Kid and took a look at the damage. It was beyond repair.

“We must stop this train!” Chickadee screamed.

Kid took on an expression of severe thoughtfulness. It is difficult to determine if the expression did any good.

“We shall have to ride it out,” he said at last.

“Ride it out?” Chickadee said with disbelief. “Are you mad? We are about to tip over from the speed of it and you suggest riding it out? Every second that we do not do something we are speeding up. There simply will not be any stopping this train if we ride it out. We will be crushed.”

“Perhaps there is an emergency brake?”

“An emergency brake?” Chickadee asked. “What would that look like?”

Kid looked around the small cabin and spotted a lever that seemed promising. It was up above their heads and painted red.

“I bet it looks like this,” he said. He reached up, grabbed the lever, and snapped it cleanly off.

“What the damn hell!” Chickadee screamed, his deep voice going up measureless octaves.

“Wait,” said Kid, tossing the second broken lever. “I’ve got it! We shall put the train in reverse!”

“Do it then,” said Chickadee with crossed arms.

Kid reached for yet another lever.

“On second thought,” said Chickadee, “let me. You will break it.”

Kid agreed.

Chickadee tugged the lever back gently and the wheels started spinning in the opposite direction. The train’s speed lessened so suddenly that both Kid and Chickadee fell forward, along with all the passengers. In the kitchen coach, all of the turkey stew bounced to the front of the coach and buried the cook.

“Help,” he screamed from the floor. “I am drowning. The turkey stew is trying to kill me!”

“Well,” said Lester as he climbed back into his seat, “if it was speeding up, it certainly isn’t now.”

Susie nodded and sat back down.

The train fell onto all of its wheels and was moving nice and slow as it approached Boonsberry. Chickadee and Kid took the train out of reverse and jumped off gently before it entered the town. They made off with the money-stuffed dress. Their horses, Montan and Mimi, met them at the agreed upon checkpoint, and from there the two outlaws rode back to their hideout, the sun burning hot on their backs.

As for the train, now taken out of reverse and without a single engineer present, it crunched, whined, and puffed through the town, gaining speed all the way, until it crashed into the Boonsberry Station.

The locomotive itself took most of the crash, the front of the machine crumpling like an accordion. The passengers, on the whole, were all right, just shaken up a bit. The sheriff did an investigation and came to the conclusion that outlaws were responsible for the crash.

“Well,” said Susie when the Sheriff questioned her, “there were these men with bowler hats who took our belongings, but then two more men appeared and some shooting started. After a bit of that, the bad fellows left the coach and I thought it was over. I was so relieved when I thought that. But then, to my horror, the two without bowler hats returned and they had my dress with them! Not this blue thing I’m wearing now but the pink one that I had in my trunk! Fortunately, the dress was insured.”

“May you describe the two who stole your dress?” the sheriff asked patiently.

“To be sure. One of the fellows had blonde hair and the other had black hair. Their clothes were cleanish and they were quite impolite. They were both tall and strong and handsome. Anybody will tell you that. It’s the truth.”

The sheriff scratched his sandpaper chin.

“They must be outlaws, or I’m a peach’s pit.”

“I hope for your sake that you are right,” said Susie.

“On you go,” said the sheriff, nodding and tipping his hat. He took Lester by his chained wrists and led him to the jail house. The sheriff already had one prisoner locked up there. He wondered if that man could give him any info about the wrecked train.

“Good luck,” Susie called after Lester.

“Thank you,” said Lester and the sheriff both.