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stinkin’, whiskery ol’ owlhoots.”
    â€œI’ll be sure to drink a shot of whiskey and flirt with a soiled dove for you,” Bodie said with a grin.
    â€œYeah, you do that.” Jake grew more serious. “Just keep your eyes open, Bodie. Could be you’ll have a chance to slip a few of those double eagles in your pocket without Eldon noticin’. I’ll expect you to share your good fortune if you do.”
    Bodie frowned. “I’m not sure I’d risk that, even if I did have a chance. Eldon would put a bullet through a man’s head, sure as sin, if he tried to help himself to more than his fair share.”
    â€œMaybe,” Jake said with a shrug. “And maybe it’d be worth the risk.”
    Bodie didn’t say anything else about that, and neither did Jake. Bodie worried, though, that sooner or later his friend would give in to temptation and try to double-cross Swint. That could lead to bad trouble.
    Bodie felt himself getting tense as night approached. The time seemed to go by fast.
    Too soon, Swint was calling out, “All right, boys, mount up. Time for us to go.”
    The three men he had picked to accompany him swung into their saddles. They circled west of the settlement, crossed the railroad tracks, and came in from that direction.
    The saloon didn’t have a sign on it, just the word SALOON painted in big letters on the upper part of the false front. Swint, Bodie, Hinkley, and Green tied their horses at the hitch rail in front of it and went inside.
    The place wasn’t very busy. Four men were playing poker at a table; three more stood at the bar drinking while a single bartender lazily polished glasses with a grimy rag. Bodie didn’t see a woman in the place, so if he told Jake any stories about flirting with one, he’d have to lie.
    The bartender wasn’t talkative like a lot of drink jugglers were. He brought their beers and left them alone, which was fine with Bodie. He’d hoped the beer would calm his nerves a little, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
    He would be glad when the robbery was over and done with. Despite all the things he had done, maybe he wasn’t cut out to be an outlaw.
    When it was good and dark, Swint downed what was left of the beer he’d been nursing and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “See you later, boys.”
    The other three knew what that meant. Swint was on his way to the depot. The rest of them would follow at short intervals. Green would go first, then Hinkley, and finally Bodie.
    Soon he was the last of the quartet in the saloon, and it occurred to him that he could go outside, get on his horse, and ride away. The other three were all waiting down at the train station. They wouldn’t be able to stop him. He didn’t have to go through with it. He could put this life of banditry behind him right here and now.
    But where would he go and what would he do? Not nearly as far or as much as he could with $3,000, he told himself.
    No, he would do what he’d said he would do, he decided. He wasn’t going to run out on his partners.
    He left the saloon and strolled toward the station in apparent innocence. As he neared it, a hiss came from the thick shadows beside the building. Bodie darted into the gloom and found the other three men waiting there for him.
    â€œAll right,” Swint whispered. “Cantrell, you go in and ask the fella if the train’s on time. That’ll distract him while we come in the platform door.”
    Bodie nodded, realized that Swint couldn’t see him in the darkness, and said, “I understand.”
    He left them there and stepped back into the dim glow of the lantern that hung over the depot’s entrance. Trying not to look as nervous as he felt, he went inside and found himself in a small, dusty waiting room with a ticket window to the left and a storage room to the right. A door on the other side of the waiting