Read by Silas Hawkins (1st story in podcast, at 1m 50s)
Three gunshots rang out across the night. None of us around the campfire flinched or looked up past the brims of our cutters. We didn't even slow our chewing.
The shots weren't anything unexpected. Pop-pop-pop, the signal we'd been waiting on. They told us that soon it'd be here – the Overnight Express. Brimmed, snorting, the glorious envoy of the big-shots. And to think – here! Here! In our crude and ungoverned wilderness! My, what a privilege! Right about now it was likely putting on a display of evolution for us Godfearing country folk, picking up a righteous head of steam. Like a rabbit running straight for the snare.
I was gnawing around the core of my apple when the boy returned from up-top the valley. Like he'd a flea up his ass he galloped his horse down the side of the ridge, leaping the tracks like a Kentucky fence. He dismounted while still on the move.
“Overnight's coming, pa,” he frothed. “Ten carriages. Ten! Lit up and all.”
I rose slowly from the campfire, spitting the apple-seeds toward that richer soil away from the tracks.
“Lit up, huh? And all.” I yawned, stretched, cricked my neck. “Sure's a good sign. Them carriages must be strung out like a seam of gold.”
“Like nuggets,” the boy exclaimed, beaming like a coyote in the hen house. “Make that bars! Great damn bars of gold!”
The communal pot of stew, poached, boiled twice, was down to the gravy. I poured the dregs of my coffee over the campfire, extinguishing it. I signalled that the men around the other fires do the same – save one. For the torches. The trees.
“You think six'll be enough, pa?” the boy asked. I told him six was plenty. “You sure, pa?” Wasn't I always? I loosened the buckle of my holster. All that stew and apple had me bloated. The boy went on with his questioning.
“D'you think we should light them up now, though, the trees? How about it, pa? Set them burning? Give that Overnight a scare good and–”
“Keep your powder dry, spark. That train'll see what's coming to it soon enough – but not until after it gets around the bend a couple miles out. There's too much thicket in the way till then, see?”
I knelt and placed a hand on the track. The iron was slick with midnight dew; but I could already feel the Overnight coming, chugging, tremoring, rattling like a chest of sovereigns.
I looked up at the boy, all stern faced and moon-lit.
“Yeah, there's still time. When we see the Overnight, she'll see us. Until then,” I made plain, “we hold our fire.”
But the boy didn't do holding. He was young, impetuous. Like all his generation he wanted things done double-quick and now. He already had his gun drawn, his mask up over his chin. He clapped his hands and went about the men, rallying them into position like they was chickens. He needn'ta. They was well oiled. They knew their places:
Three men to a tree; six trees, spaced out along the tracks like the teeth of a fastener, a wedge already cut into the base of each trunk. One man stood to the side, his axe up and aimed at the wedge; the second man leant shoulder-first behind the tree, ready to push it should it need convincing. When the order was given and the axes came down and the pushers did their pushing, a third man would light the tree with his torch. All three would have to be away quickly; what with the tar slathered generous up its bark, and not discounting its onion-skin leaves and the long dry summer we'd been tolerating, those trees'd take like God's own burning bush, six damned pillars of fire coming down.
I caressed the track, closed my eyes. The Overnight was closing. I could feel its heartbeat, soft, steady, nice and regular, a fat, unsuspecting hog. I looked back to the trees, the men, their axes glinting in the moonlight. Yeah ... Like always, it was going to make for one hell of a sight. One for the ages.
Having shooed the boy away I gave the track a final embrace; then I took up my hat and my rifle and began walking. After two-dozen sleepers I waited, listening, surveying the night like an eagle does the floor of a canyon. A minute passed until a ribbon of smoke, far off, thin as a string, began rising over the treeline.
“You know,” the boy said, telling anyone who'd listen, “I once knew a guy who cheated death with nothing but the power of certitude ...
“He and I got mixed up in a gunfight out near Westpoint. A bunch of local buckhorns got the wrong idea about something we might've said. We thought nothing of it. But just as we was falling out the bar the next morning they began shooting at us from across the street. We took cover behind a downed horse and went about shooting back. A lucky shot on the buckhorns' part caught my buddy clean through the crown of his hat, right between the feathers. Sheew! In and out, no confusing, two hard and hollow cracks like a nail driven through a coconut.
“Well, shit. That's that, I figured. It was nice knowing you, old buddy. I waited for him to go stiff, like what happens when you put down a calf, all locked-up at the knees before it drops to the grass. But, instead, buddy just kept on reloading his gun, one cartridge at a time, idly filling the chambers like he's sorting change – and all the while the bullets keep on whizzing around our ears and I'm just laying there against the ass of that dead horse, peering up at buddy's hat, the feathers, his skull, the two holes where the sunlight's peeking through it.
“'Hey, buddy,' I tell him. “'You've been shot, you know?'
“'Yeah?' he says.
“'Yeah!' I says back. 'Shot. Through the head. Look.'
“Like he's doffing to a lady he takes off his hat and fingers around the hole in the middle of his forehead. He examines his fingertips – bit of blood, not much else. He shrugs and goes on sorting.
“'Shot, you reckon?' he says, unconvinced. 'Like done?'
“'Yeah,' I tells him again. 'Done.'
“'Naw,' he says eventually, all certain, as night follows day. 'Now that doesn't seem hardly right, does it?' And so he gives me a wink, spin-flicks the cylinder of his gun back into place, and returns right-on with his shooting." The boy shook his head. “Well, I guess if you refuse to believe that your time's up, that you're done, then there ain't nothing anyone can say to dispute it.”
I let his finale hang in the silence. “You preached that sermon before, son? Seems to think I've heard it already, like I told you it first to begin with.” I turned to look over my shoulder. “Yeah. Almost certain ...”
The boy grinned, so big it showed through his mask. “It sure makes for a good omen, pa. Every time you tell it we get a good haul, so I tells it now and tells it with my own certain certitude–”
The tracks started buzzing, like bees in a bottle. I turned back around and raised my hand. There I held it. Only when the headlamp of the Overnight came around the bend, and its golden beam shone between my fingers, did I bring it down.
Without lag or question the men brought down their axes. Six distinct cracks, all in unison. A push and a rush of torches and the trees took on a blaze, the thicket around us switching from silver to the wildest dance of reds, blues, oranges and blacks. Leaves crackled, branches snapped, bark popped, shrivelled and curled and the six trees fell heavy upon the tracks – like ol’ buddy should've.
The fire erupted behind me. My shadow, the profile of the outlaw with the rifle over his shoulder, reached all the way to the oncoming Overnight. The driver couldn't miss it. He'd see the flames, the outlaw, the men, the burning trees obstructing the tracks. Fearfully he'd react in the only way he knew how – he'd vent the train's boiler and tug back on that brake. Twelve wheels would seize. Ten carriages would shunt into one another like neck bones.
There'd be shrieking inside, the passengers wetting their deep-pocketed pants. Foreseeing derailment, the driver would shut his eyes and duck down onto his knees and get busy praying. But he needn't. Us country boys had measured it all right. There was track enough. Just like all those trains our daddies and our granddaddies had held up before us, the Overnight would grind to a stop, safe and sound, inches from the boots of this outlaw. Like the boy said, it was all a matter of certitude.
'Cept it wasn't. This time there was no slamming of brakes, no slowing heartbeat; it only got stronger, faster, a steady chuff, chuff, chuff rising to a chft-chft-chft. All of a sudden a thousand tons of new-world metal was right on top of me, the shadow of that fearless outlaw running coward over my shoulder.
I dropped my rifle and threw myself to the side. I reeled around just in time to see six trees explode like they was nothing but wads of charcoal. The men scattered. The horses broke loose. The Overnight cut right on through, clean through, thank you; and the carriages carried along after, those big-shot passengers inside not even bothering to look up from their potboilers or their sirloins or their slices of sweet apple pie. Our outmoded intervention wasn't anything to them; they just kept merrily on their way, right on time, onwards towards the city and the dawn of a new day.
The dance of the reds and blues petered. The silver faded to an obscure grey. I heaved myself up off the dirt. My rifle was in two pieces. I found my hat about half a mile down the tracks, flattened like a pelt. I stood beside it for some time, just thinking, brushing the smoulder from my arms and my face as I gazed up at the stars. The ravens, I heard, were beginning their chorus.
The boy rode up with my horse in tow, his own snorting the ash.
“Come on, pa! About! You've still got your head and we've still got time! We make quick we can still get after the Overnight before the border.”
I knelt to the track. I gripped it. It didn't hold anything but cold.
“Forget it,” I said to the boy as I climbed stiffly up onto my horse. From the saddle I watched as the Overnight's distant smoke merged with the clouds. “Our time's at an end, son. It was fun while it lasted – but I'm telling you, it's over.”
I turned my horse.
“Of that, I'm certain.”
(c) Scott Tierney, 2025
Scott Tierney's writings include the sci-fi epic Tomorrow is Another Year, the novella Kin, & the comic book series Pointless Conversations. His short stories have been published widely, including Horror Tree, Bristol Noir, After Dinner Conversation, and HumourMe. Examples of his writings & illustrative work can be found at scotttierneycreative.com
Silas Hawkins is a fine old ham. Favourite voice credits: all voices in animation Summerton Mill (CBeebies) and BBC4 documentary Latin Music USA. Recent theatre: Clement Attlee and Vodka with Stalin – both by Francis Beckett. In June he’ll be giving his ‘dead sheep’ in Edmund Green’s The Rise and Fall of Margaret Thatcher. Also coming soon – reprise of Putin-esque villain Doctor Popp in Jazz Cow (animation).
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