The train periodically sighed, steam bellowing from the engine's sides to slowly drift and obscure the station's platform or fade into the deepening navy sky. The station was remote, the only point connected to the rails resting across a boundless, flat expanse. The clerk sat on his stool in the booth behind wrought-iron bars. With his elbows on the ticket counter he flipped pages on the till record and scribbled notes in another accounting ledger, humming to himself between intermittent scratches of his head or furrowing of his brows. By the time the train pulled away the navy sky had turned black so a cloudy, starless night hung over the station and the tracks which stretched to disappear in either direction. The booth's lantern cast a dim glow over the stubby brick platform with wood steps at its sides. The clerk flipped through his book as footsteps approached to stop before the counter.
"The next train arrives in forty minutes. Are you seeking fare?"
"Everything in the till, please."
The clerk looked up from his book at the end of a revolver, hardly wincing at the threat.
"Chances are a lawman is aboard that train, tending to it, accompanying the conductor given the frequency in robberies lately." He calmly shut his book.
"That doesn't concern me. Hand across everything within."
"My pay comes directly from this sum, and if I'm not paid I will not eat, and if I do not eat I will die anyway."
"Surely you can find sustenance elsewhere than your wage, the clemency of a passerby in the street to spare a penny. I will not be charitable. I will shoot you if you do not pass me the contents of that till through these bars."
"You can shoot me. But you will not get into this booth or till but by my hand or key before the next train arrives." The clerk withdrew a key from his vest's front pocket and held it up. "These bars are made against robbery, you will not get in before it arrives."
"Or I could shoot you for troubling me and leave without anything."
"You shoot me and they find my body to hunt you to bring to justice in short time. That train arrives in near thirty-nine minutes. Or I will let you pass on your way, and when the lawman arrives I will not tell him of your attempted crime and you will be free to travel without the law or this crime on your heels."
"You might tell him nonetheless."
"Cross my heart to my word, I will not tell him, if only you lower that pistol and go on your way."
He pulled the revolver's hammer back.
"Son, you're not going to shoo-" the revolver cracked and the clerk spun as the key dropped from his hand and bounced onto the far edge of the counter. He sunk onto the booth's floor, a bloodstain blooming on the back of his vest. The robber lowered the revolver then stepped right up to the booth. He eyed the facedown clerk, unmoving as the blood pooled under him, then used the smoking barrel to reach through the bars across the counter and slide the key closer, which he snatched up with his other hand.