They did not want to believe it, they could not, but it worried them.
The train whistled again, and the sullen thunder rumbled. Big drops of rain spattered on the platform.
Lebo released the pack horses, and they walked away to join the other horses grazing under the trees.
Ruble Noon knew when a time had come. He could feel it deep within himself, and he took a step to the side so as to pull the shooting away from Fan’s position.
“The train’s coming,” he said quietly, “and when that train comes in, we’re loading the sacks on it. Maybe we’re lying about what’s in them, maybe we’re not; but if you want to die to find out, you can have a try … any time.”
“The great Ruble Noon,” Cristobal said. His black eyes showed contempt. “I do not believe he is that great. Always he shoots from nowhere . . . can he shoot from somewhere at men with guns?”
The moment was here, and there was no time to waste in talk. When a fight is inevitable, it is foolish to waste time in words.
“Now?” he said gently, and then he drew.
All three of them moved as one man, but Ruble Noon shot at Lang first. Lang, the cool, the quiet, the man who did not talk … Lang he wanted out of there, and Lang knew it and was smiling. He saw Lang’s gun coming up, rising too high … he was being too careful.
The report of his own gun was lost in a crash of thunder. He was moving ahead, a careful step at a time, firing with precision, but with speed.
Lang, then Lang again, then Cristobal. Manly was down, too . .. Lebo must have got him.
From behind him somebody was shooting with a rifle, and that worried him, but he did not turn.
Two for Lang .. . another for Cristobal, and a third one for Lang as the man started to rise, his face and shirt bloody.
Lang was down, though for a moment he was trying to get back up. Cristobal was still up, his fine white teeth flashing in a smile … easy, taunting-and dead. He was failing forward, the gun going from his hand.
The rifle behind them thundered again, and then the train came rushing along the track. The shooting was over, and the rain had turned into a downpour.
The bodies lay on the platform like old sacks. Lebo was down, and Ruble Noon was thumbing shells from his gun, and feeding cartridges into it. He had stopped shooting when Lang went down, and he stood there in the rain, watching Lang for signs of life.
People were staring from the tram windows. Fan was bending over Miguel Lebo, and beside her was another
man with a rifle in his hand. He was pointing with it to a window of the station.
A rifle lay on the platform underneath the window, and hanging over the broken glass was Judge Niland, as dead as a man could be.
The man who was pointing his rifle toward the Judge was J. B. Rimes.
“Mr. Mandrin,” he was saying, “I’m a Pinkerton man.”
“Not an outlaw at all?” Ruble Noon asked mildly. “I was … once. They recruited me to run down some train robbers. We had looked for you until the reward was called off, but I had a guess at who you were when you said your name was Jonas.” The rain continued to fall.
Fan tugged at Noon’s sleeve. “Jonas … the train!” He picked up a couple of the sacks. Rimes did likewise, and the express messenger took the others.
When they had reached the express car and loaded the gold inside, he looked back at Lebo. The Mexican was on his feet and was coming toward them, limping. His shirt was bloody. “Is it bad?” Noon asked. Lebo shook his head. “No … I think no.”
“Get on. You’re better off on the train than here. Let’s go.”
It was a three-car train-just the express car and two coaches. There were four passengers in the first coach- two men together, obviously easterners, and a slender, aristocratic-looking woman accompanied by a squarely built man. The woman wore a gray traveling suit; her hair was gray, her eyes a startling blue.
One of the easterners smiled tolerantly as they entered the coach. “That was quite a performance,” he said. “Does the railroad pay you to stage these little shows?” –
“I thought it was a bit overdone,” the other man commented. “Too much, don’t you know?”
Ruble Noon and J. B. Rimes helped Lebo to a seat. All of them were soaking wet.
“Too bad you had to get caught in the rain,” the first easterner said. “It kind of broke up the show.”
“What do you do for an encore?” the other asked.
Fan was helping Lebo off with his buckskin jacket. His shirt was soaked with blood.
The gray-haired woman got up from her seat and put down the fancy work in which she had been engaged. “Perhaps I can help?” she suggested. “I’ve had some experience in this line of work.”
“Would you, please?” Fan asked. “I … I’ve lived in the East until recently, and I’m afraid I…”
“Get me some water, young man,” the woman said, turning to Ruble Noon. “There’s a pan on the stove at the end of the car. My husband was heating it to shave.”
The man riding with her opened his valise. He handed Ruble a towel. “It’s the only one I’ve got. We’ll have to share it.”
Ruble Noon dried his face and hands, then took off his wet coat. He checked his gun, drying it carefully with his handkerchief.
The two easterners were silent while they looked on unbelievingly. As they watched, the older woman bathed and cleansed the gunshot wound. Lebo had been hit in the side, the bullet ripping the skin along his left ribs and cutting through the muscle. It was a bloody wound, but not a dangerous one.
Lebo looked up at Ruble Noon. “I got Cristobal,” he said.
“You knew him?”
“He was my brother-in-law.”
“Your brother-in-law!”
Lebo tried to shrug, wincing from the pain. “For nada. … He married my sister, and he left her. He was no good. He was a loudmouth. But he could shoot – he always could shoot.”
Ruble Noon sat down beside Rimes. The train was rolling south. Soon it would turn east, running along the border briefly. He put his head back against the red plush upholstery and closed his eyes.
There was only the rumbling of the train, the creaking of the car as it rounded a small curve, the occasional sound of the engine’s whistle, the pound of its drivers, and the clicking of the wheels crossing the rail-ends. He could hear the quiet talk of Fan and the older woman while they bandaged Lebo’s wound.
For the first time in weeks he could relax. Rimes was talking to the older woman’s husband, who said he operated a mine near Central City, and had come west to look over some properties.
“… deserved killing,” the mining man was saying. “Manly was involved in claim-jumping in Nevada. He always was a troublemaker.”
The train slowed, and Ruble Noon opened his eyes. “Are we stopping?”
“La Boca,” Rimes said. “Just a station. We take a big bend and go east now.”
Noon heard someone drop to the roadbed from the rear car. He listened to the sound of boots along the cinders – more than one person.
Lebo was leaning back, his eyes closed, his face pale. Fan was sitting opposite him. The older woman had gone back to the seat by Rirnes and her husband.
There was a faint sound from the front of the car, a sound so faint that Ruble Noon doubted if he had heard it-it sounded rather like the rattle of a brake pin.
Suddenly he heard the sound of the engine moving again, but their car was standing still.
He spun around and hit the aisle running. He reached the end of the car in three long strides, just in time to see the express car and the engine moving away-too far to jump.
He dropped to the roadbed, and the first person he saw was Peg Cullane. She had a rifle in her hands, and she was lifting it to shoot. The second person he saw was Finn Cagle.
The gunman fired, his bullet clanging against the back of the car, within inches of Ruble Noon’s head. Noon stepped back for partial protection from the rifle, and then as Peg fired he ran forward three quick, short steps, stopped, and shot from the hip. The bullet spun Cagle around, throwing him off balance. Dropping to one knee, Noon laid the barrel of his gun across his left forearm and shot again, and Cagle backed up and fell.