"Ah damn!" he muttered under his breath as he saw the obstruction on the tracks up ahead. Reaching for the brake, he dropped his eyes from the track just long enough to miss the flash of color just inside the tree line.
The train squealed to a stop and he stood up and hollered back, "James! Help me get this shit off the track!" Within seconds, James appeared.
As they stepped down off the train, two ladies rode out of the woods with rifles pointed directly at them.
"Hello Gentlemen," called the dark haired woman as she dismounted from a coal black stud. "We came to relieve you of your gold and valuables. Now, if you please, shall we step back into that train, Mr. Engineer?" she said, motioning toward the train with the rifle. Before boarding the train, the dark haired woman handed her rifle to the other woman who placed it in the scabbard of the black stud. She then pulled a .44 from her hip and trained it upon the engineer. "Let's go!" she demanded.
The other woman, a slim blonde, kept her rifle trained on James. "Move one inch, Mr., and I'll drop you where you stand!" she said in a hard voice.
"Not me, Ma'am!" James replied calmly. "Got me a wife and young'uns. Can't go gettin' killed for something that ain't mine."
"Smart man," the blonde laughed. "Just stay still then."
Inside the train, the two moved to the car holding the safe.
"You're not afraid of getting hung if they catch you?" the engineer asked.
"No," the woman snapped. "Just tell him to open the damned door!"
"Bill! Open the door before this woman fills me full of holes!"
The latch on the door clicked and the door swung open slowly. Bill stood to the side of the safe, a shotgun pointed directly at them.
"Don't Bill. It ain't worth losin' your life over. Just let her have it."
Bill lowered the hammer on the shotgun and placed it on top of the safe. He raised his hands in the air over his head and slowly backed away.
Pushing the pistol into the small of the engineer's back, the brunette ordered: "Open it!"
Sighing heavily, the engineer bent down and opened the safe.
"Just take it and go!" he said.
She removed a sack from under her gun belt and said, "Put it in here. Everything of value." As he loaded up the sack, her eyes darted back and forth between the two men, watching for some sign that they would try to go for a gun.
"That's it, Miss," the engineer said as he stood and held the sack out to her.
She stood and studied the man for a few minutes. Older, but still in good shape. Dark hair that was now beginning to gray. Skin toughened by the weather. "You're comin' with us," the woman said, motioning him ahead of her. "Billy boy, step out behind him!"
With the pistol aimed that their backs, they made their way back toward the front of the train. Upon stepping off the train, the engineer noticed yet another woman hidden amid the trees, with a rifle aimed in their direction.
"I didn't hardly think two women would pull this off," the engineer stated to his captor.
"If you do like you're told, you'll live through this," the brunette said, pushing the pistol into the small of his back. She waved to the other woman in the trees who emerged with another horse in tow.
"Can you get her back, James?" the engineer asked nodding toward the train.
"Yeah," James answered, "just try to make it back alive, Doug."
"I'll try," the engineer nodded.
"Mount up!" the brunette called. Looking at Doug, she said sharply, "Try to run, you're dead! Understand?"
He nodded his head, "Yes, Ma'am."
From atop the rise above the trees, he looked back to see some of the men scurrying about clearing the debris off the track, as the train kicked puffs of coal black smoke into the air...
They rode late into the evening dusk, stopping shortly before full dark. They set up camp near the base of a mountain, using a cave as cover. A clear mountain stream flowed almost in front of the cave, coming down the side of the mountain about two miles to the west of them.
Doug had been placed inside the cave on a pallet with his hands and feet tied. With his back to the wall, he was still able to see out to the fire where the women now sat dividing their loot. He could hear them murmuring among themselves but couldn't make out more that a word or two that was carried to him on the breeze. As a bit of time passed, the brunette stood and stretched. Saying something to the other two women at the fire, she then headed toward the cave.
"You okay?" Need any water or anything?" she asked Doug.
"I'm fine, Ma'am," Doug replied.
"We'll get you something to eat in a bit," she said as she turned and left the cave.
He watched her walk down toward the stream, the darkness finally consuming all but the glint of silver coming off the gun she wore at her hip. She wasn't a skinny woman like the blonde. She had some padding where she needed it. She was the kind of woman who turned his head. If things had been different...who knew? Right now, he had to worry about getting out of this situation alive.
His attention was drawn back to movement just outside the firelight by the stream. Straining to see better, he saw someone removing their clothes and since the other two women were still by the fire, it could have only been the brunette.
A splash of water, followed by "Damn, that's cold!", started a wave of laughter by the fire.
"I told you!" the blonde yelled down.
"It's not bad once you get used to it," the brunette called back.
"I'll wear my dust, thank you," the other woman now spoke up in a smoky voice.
Doug hadn't really noticed this woman until now. She had short black hair, with a slim body like the blonde. What looked like a rope burn circled her neck. He hadn't noticed this before because of the kerchief that had covered her neck until they had reached the camp.
Now as he studied the two women who sat by the fire, he realized that his personal favorite would have been the brunette.
He could feel himself getting hard with the thoughts of what the woman in the stream would look like under the men's clothing she wore. His tied hands rubbed against his erection, trying to arrange things to a more comfortable position.
When he looked toward the fire again, he was rewarded with what he wanted to see. The brunette stood there with a blanket draped around her shoulders, facing the cave. She wore nothing under the blanket. Her skin glistened as the firelight flashed off the beading water that was reluctant to leave her body. Her hair, wet and laid flat against her scalp was now the color of a raven's wing. He took in the scene in front of him in wonder. She was as beautiful as he had imagined, and his own body began to give him away.
