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sideboard and carried a tray to the table with a bottle of whiskey and four glasses. George wasn’t much of a drinker, she remembered, and neither was Jesse. She didn’t know about Sundance. A small toast, she was thinking, to the success of whatever caper her visitors had just pulled off.
    Jesse poured a finger of whiskey into each glass and passed them around the table to the men. “May you live long and free,” he said, holding his own glass toward George and Sundance.
    Mary took her seat again as the men downed the whiskey. She hated the taste of whiskey, hated the smell, hated the ways it had changed her friends, drove them off their lands, turned them into whores and bums that hung around the agency on the reservation, looking for handouts. She considered making herself a cup of tea, but she didn’t want to leave the table and miss the conversation.
    â€œWhat was it this time?” Jesse set his glass down. Most of the brown whiskey remained, shimmering in the candlelight. “Horses? Bank?”
    â€œNah.” George shook his head. “Never was much for rustling horses. Not enough money in it.”
    â€œYou used to like it well enough.” Mary felt all four pairs ofeyes turn to her. “You went to prison in Laramie for stealing a horse.”
    George threw his head back and laughed. “Stole a few horses in my time, but I never stole
that
horse.”
    â€œStrikes me banks are more dangerous,” Jesse said.
    Sundance had turned toward George, staring at his profile. “Better leave it at that.”
    â€œTomorrow morning everybody in these parts will hear the news. Moccasin telegraph is better than the real thing. What difference if our friends hear it first?” George dropped his chin and chuckled. “Let’s just say the Union Pacific Overland Flyer Limited had to make a sudden stop down around Wilcox.”
    â€œTrain?” Jesse was partway to his feet. “You saying you robbed a train? Nobody can get away with that.”
    Mary could feel the muscles in her stomach tightening. Robbed the Union Pacific! George had stepped into another world, gone to a place from which he could never return. The railroad company would never forget. They would run him and Sundance and the rest of the gang into the ground.
    â€œSomebody flagged the train down. Naturally the engineer stopped, thinking the bridge ahead was out. Well, it was about to be out, but not until the gang ordered the conductor to cut off the passenger cars behind the baggage car. After that the engineer obligingly pulled the baggage, express, and mail cars across the bridge before the whole thing blew to smithereens. Two miles up track, the engineer stopped again. It’s a wonder the baggage car didn’t blow sky-high when that fool express messenger refused to open the door. The gang had to set off another blast of dynamite. Blew off the roof and flattened that fool against the back wall. They blew the safe when he refused to open it. The man is crazy! The gang filled up the bags with him limping around, crying, saying the railroadwas gonna fire him and how was he supposed to feed his kids? I ask you, how was his kids supposed to eat if he’d been blown to pieces?”
    â€œThey’re going to come for you with a posse the size of an army,” Jesse said.
    â€œThey’ll have to find us first.”
    â€œYou used the old method?” Mary said. George had told her once that he planned the robberies and the rustling. Everything thought out ahead of time, every possibility taken into account. The gang would stash horses, water, and food along the getaway route, so they could cover a hundred miles, two hundred miles, on fresh horses, while the posse’s horses would run out of strength.
    George was grinning. “We rode all day before we stopped to split up the takings. Then we took different directions. Me and Sundance kept going north until we reached