“Turn the muzzle up when you shoot; it don’t do any good to hit ’em.”
He made a little ridiculous gesture.
“The maneuvers of train robbing,” he said, “are directed against the mind.”
Then he explained what each of us was to do.
White was to use the ax in order to break in the door of the express car. He, Mooney, would be the gunman, and it was my part in the business to stand on the platform between the express car and the next passenger coach to keep back the conductor or any one else who might attempt to go forward into the train.
They seemed to know precisely what the trainmen would do, and were prepared to meet it. Either the man called White had watched this train on some previous night or he had taken some other precaution to discover precisely what would happen when the train stopped at the tank, for they went into their parts when the event arrived precisely as though they had drilled for it and were entering at the cue of some director.
We were hidden in the bushes close beside the tank when the train rolled in.
To me it seemed immense, gigantic, in the darkness. The blinding headlight, the roar, and grating of the brakes seemed to make a bewildering confusion. I think I should not have moved from the bushes, in such confusion was I thrown, had I not been between the two men; and as it happened, I got up with them.
We waited until the engine had taken water and the conductor and porter had made their round of the train; then we slipped out of our hiding place as the train pulled out. We swung on to the rear platform of the express car precisely at the moment that the porter climbed on to the steps of the same platform at the other side.
Mooney jammed his gun into the man’s face.