As Heyes and the Kid climbed the steps to the train station, there were lines of marshals on either side of them. The uniformed young men were keyed up by their famous charges and the threat of a gang coming to spring them. The partners hurried to get out of the rain, and because their guards were pulling them along by their heavy chains. The two prisoners were urged to walk as fast as they could toward the platform where a train with only a coal car, a caboose and two passenger cars waited to take them to Laramie, home of the Wyoming State Penitentiary. The marshals didn't want any attempts to free their notorious charges. A cordon of officers kept the public several yards back.

No one gave them any trouble until they came to a little group of people on the platform who tried to get near the infamous partners. The marshals hurried their charges past an unexpected crowd of Heyes' friends from New York. There was no time for more than a glimpse of the teary-eyed Beth on Charlie Homer's arm, with Jim as their side – those friends Heyes had seen in court, but he was far more surprised to catch all too fleeting sight of Paul Huxtable, Everett Carter, Neal George, Polly Moore from the clinic, and most surprising of all, the young undergraduate Karen Horn. The Kid had never seen many of them, nor had they seen him. It was a terrible moment for these people from two sides of Heyes' life to finally see each other, without even time to say hello.

Shouts followed Heyes and the Kid, all overlapping. Tough little Jim leaned the closest and yelled, "Hang in there, Heyes, K-Kid! You're gonna make it!"

"We believe in you!" yelled Everett Carter anxiously.

"I can't believe it, Heyes!" called Neal George sorrowfully, and angrily. "They can't do this to you guys! It's wrong!"

Heyes could see that young Paul Huxtable was in tears.

At the last, as the boys were climbing onto the train and waving to their friends. With marshals all around them, Heyes from that higher vantage point saw his fiancée mouthing what he was sure was, "Never give up!" He blew her a kiss and nodded, but his eyes belied the positive gesture. Beth was far from sure that Heyes would last long in so hard a prison. She wiped her eyes as her lover vanished from sight.

The boys kept looking back behind them as the train carried them away from their friends and all they had known before. But soon Cheyenne disappeared into the hills behind them. As they got out into the countryside, they settled into their ride with a dozen marshals sharing the train car with them and more in the cars on either side. For a while, Heyes and the Kid both just looked blankly out at the Wyoming landscape going by the windows, still not quite believing what was happening to them. The Kid studied Heyes' dark eyes. He felt that he had not seen his partner look so hopeless since the days just after he had been shot in the head; then Heyes had been unable to even understand speech, much less say a word.

But without warning Heyes seemed to snap out of his depression. He said lightly to one of their guards, "This is awful dull, gentlemen. Anybody got a deck of cards, or better yet, two?"

"Come on Heyes, you got no money on you to play poker or blackjack! And even if you did, they'd take your winnings away from you in prison," laughed a young red-haired marshal.

Heyes grinned and asked, "Who said anything about poker? There's other stuff you can do with cards! I'll show you." The Kid watched in surprise as his partner went from desperate despair to charming smiles and showmanship. Curry darted a questioning glance at Heyes. The wary dark eyes that looked back told the Kid to watch for something to happen when the marshals were distracted. The Kid then knew without a doubt what it would be. He gave Heyes the tiniest grim shake of his head with his own eyes filled with warning. Heyes' return gaze flared angrily. But by the time any lawman could see, he was smiling again.

A grizzled old marshal laughed at Heyes and tossed him a deck of cards in a battered cardboard box. Despite his chains, Heyes caught them with ease. Another pack came flying from a couple of rows away. The infamous outlaw leaned forward and snatched the errantly arching deck effortlessly out of the air behind his back without even seeming to look to find it.

Heyes looked questioningly at the head marshal sitting next to him and gestured to the floor of the car, where he would have plenty of flat space to put his card skills to work. The man shrugged and nodded. What dangerous thing could a notorious outlaw do on the floor that he couldn't on a seat? Then Heyes pointed at his chains. The marshal hesitated a long moment before he agreed to take them off. But he watched Heyes like a hawk. There were marshals encircling the famous escape artist, every one of them with a gun at hand, so it seemed terribly unlikely that anything untoward could happen. But with Hannibal Heyes, one could never be sure.

Heyes slid to the floor, taking the cards with him. The vibrating floor of the train car rattling over the tracks wasn't the best card table in the world, but it would do. The marshals leaned in around Heyes and watched to see what he was going to do with two decks of cards and no money or chips. The Kid leaned over to watch, too. He knew why Heyes was doing this, but he actually wasn't sure exactly what it was that his partner would do. The five pat hands trick? The mind reading trick?

But no, Heyes got out the two decks and shuffled each in the regular way. Then he shuffled one deck in each hand, riffling through the two decks simultaneously. Then the cards flared and fanned gracefully in pretty arcs in both hands at once. Then Heyes had the cards running smoothly as water from hand to hand. Then he was making a series of elegant interlocking geometric shapes with the cards as they cascaded from his upper hand to his lower hand and then climbed back up. Soon every marshal in the car was there, joined by a couple from the car next door. They gathered around intently watching Heyes' silent artistry. There was no sound from the master card man except the soft purring and flicking of the cards.

Heyes demonstrated a fabulous parade of deck flourishes and visual surprises. Cards appeared and disappeared like magic, prompting gasps and laughs. The Kid watched, as entertained as anyone else in the crowd. It was a beautiful sight as his partner demonstrated more and more of the tricks and decorative displays that he had practiced just for pleasure since he was a boy. Except for a couple of fancy shuffles that he had occasionally used when he and the Kid were making a few bucks dealing in some saloon, no one but the Kid and Heyes himself had ever seen Heyes do any of these showy moves. The marshals applauded and whistled in delight. The Kid gaped at a fluttering series of cascades that even he had never seen before, and then a spectacular run of cards flashing into and out of both his partner's hands between different fingers at lightning speed.

Heyes gathered the decks back and paused for a moment. He wiped his brow with a white on blue polka dotted handkerchief. He spoke for the first time since he had begun his performance. "Can't somebody open a window? Gettin' hot in here!"

"Sure, Heyes!" said one of the marshals, who put up a window to let in some sooty air. "Gosh, I never heard you did cards tricks!" The other marshals murmured agreement. In truth, no one but the Kid had ever known it. Even Curry had seen such flashy maneuvers only rarely. Heyes usually kept them for his own private amusement.

"Well, now you know," said Heyes smoothly, and then went back to his incredible parade of sleight of hand tricks and card fireworks. As he exercised his card skills, the Kid noticed, Heyes let his tricks keep him moving always to his left. Under cover of spectacular card moves, he was moving closer and closer to that opened window, just an inch or so at a time. Finally, he was right under the window.

Suddenly, in the midst of a spectacular two-deck flourish, Heyes let the cards go. 104 cards filled the air and fluttered down as Heyes laughed as his own apparent clumsiness. The chuckling marshals leaned over to pick up the fallen cards from all over the train car. While they looked away from him, Heyes stood swiftly and caught the Kid's eye. His partner crossed his arms and shook his head emphatically. No. He would not turn to the criminal's standard last desperate plan.

When Heyes looked toward the head marshal, it was with no surprise that he saw that the man's gun cocked in his hand. The mustachioed head marshal muttered quietly to one of his men, "Close that stupid window. If these men got out, we'd have to shoot them down." He glanced sharply at Heyes to point out that he was well aware of what the famous outlaw had nearly done. Or had he? Even the Kid was not quite sure if Heyes had ever really been serious about going out that beckoning window and taking a hail of bullets in his back – or if it had just been one last gesture to demonstrate his control over his own fate.

Heyes shrugged and knelt to pick up the cards and gather them back into decks to continue his tricks. The senator's words - "Never, never, never give up," echoed in his head. And Beth's whispered exhortation. So Heyes passed up the easy way and turned to the hard road ahead to which the Kid had already committed himself. Heyes glanced up from the train floor and caught a glimpse of a tiny, crooked smile from his partner.

The young carrot-topped marshal gaped at Heyes in shock as he belatedly understood that he had just witnessed the approach and retreat of violent death. No one else was so graceless as to take notice of their charges' flirtation with suicide by marshal. Heyes ignored the young man and went on with the show for a few minutes more. There was a polite smattering of applause from the crowd of marshals as the cards cascaded and fanned and flashed. But the lighthearted mood was gone. The air in the car felt cool as a soft rain fell on the Wyoming hills outside Laramie.