Bill Earngey

MIDNIGHT MOUNTAIN,

Frisco Depot, July 4, 1906

He sat his big Arkansas mule crossways, right leg hooked in front of the saddle, left boot stuck down into a stirrup. He sat as he was: tall, lean, old, and violent. Directly ahead, from his broadside, about 20 yards down the track, a cabbage head laid by the rock depot, spouting hot white clouds of steam hissing chalk-colored dust.

  Every man climbing off the train acknowledged the old man by touching a hat brim or drawing back a tight smile. Some tried both, thinking it a charm, hoping he wouldn't pull out the last half of the big buffalo rifle.

  He pulled it out anyway, laid it comfortably against the crook of his right knee, and leaned forward a touch, admiring the depot's red, white, and blue bunting.

  The engineer, long past impatient with a wreck of an old man blocking his track, yanked loose a king-hill load of steam, a furious white whistle that made the big mule twitch.

  The engineer stared down the track. He froze, gagged, then tried out a phony smile to fend off the blue flame shooting out of the big rifle. Its explosion sent shock waves echoing off the limestone depot at the same time a load of soft lead slapped the cabbage head right above its glass eye.

  The engineer fainted, the depot crowd cheered like it was fireworks, and the old man turned the mule east, picking his way back across the sidetracks toward the purple haze hanging over Midnight Mountain.

  Two lawyers and a land agent sat in a hack, "Thought he'd shot the man." "Looked too old to pick up a rock." "Why'd he shoot the train?"

  The hack driver looked down on them, "You gentlemen headed to town?" The land agent threw up a hand, pressing the big Indian, "Hates trains? What for?"

  The driver pushed ahead, "You'd be best put up at Mrs. Carter's. It's clean, downtown, food's cheap, and all of you'd fit the one bed."

  The land agent puckered up and shook his head. "Why does he hate trains?"

  The driver spit. "Been shooting trains every Fourth of July ever since they started hauling in folks like you."

  The land agent: "Hates them, Why?" The Indian: "Because they won't die when he shoots 'em."