The station was a brilliant mock-up from the Colorado narrow-gauge era – a low building in faded clapboard ornamented with gingerbread along its eaves. Its name ‘Thunder-bird Halt’ was in old-style ornamental type, heavily seriffed. Advertisements proclaimed ‘Chew Roseleaf Fine Cut Warranted Finest Virginia Leaf’, ‘Trains Stop for all Meals’, ‘No Checks Accepted’. The engine, gleaming in black and yellow varnish and polished brass, was a gem. It stood, panting quietly in the sunshine, a wisp of black smoke curling up from the tall stack behind the big brass headlight. The engine’s name ‘The Belle’ was on a proud brass plate on the gleaming black barrel and its number, ‘No. 1’, on a similar plate below the headlight. There was one carriage, an open affair with padded foam-rubber seats and a daffodil Surrey roof of fringed canvas to keep off the sun, and then the brake van, also in black and yellow, with a resplendent gilt-armed chair behind the conventional wheel of the brake. It was a wonderful toy even down to the old-fashioned whistle which now gave a sharp admonitory blast.
Scaramanga was in ebullient form. ‘Hear the train blow, folks! All aboard!’ There was an anticlimax. To Bond’s dismay he took out his golden pistol, pointed it at the sky and pressed the trigger. He hesitated only momentarily and fired again. The deep boom echoed back from the wall of the station and the station-master, resplendent in old-fashioned uniform, looked nervous. He pocketed the big silver turnip watch he had been holding and stood back obsequiously, the green flag now drooping at his side. Scaramanga checked his gun. He looked thoughtfully at Bond and said, ‘All right, my friend. Now then, you get up front with the driver.’
Bond smiled happily. ‘Thanks. I’ve always wanted to do that since I was a child. What fun!’
‘You’ve said it,’ said Scaramanga. He turned to the others. ‘And you, Mr Hendriks. In the first seat behind the coal-tender, please. Then Sam and Leroy. Then Hal and Louie. I’ll be up back in the brake van. Good place to watch out for game.’Kay?’
Everybody took their seats. The station-master had recovered his nerve and went through his ploy with the watch and the flag. The engine gave a triumphant hoot and, with a series of diminishing puffs, got under way and they bowled off along the three-foot gauge line that disappeared, as straight as an arrow, into a dancing shimmer of silver.
Bond read the speed gauge. It said twenty. For the first time he paid attention to the driver. He was a villainous-looking Rastafari in dirty khaki overalls with a sweat rag round his forehead. A cigarette drooped from between the thin moustache and the straggling beard. He smelled quite horrible. Bond said, ‘My name’s Mark Hazard. What’s yours?’
‘Rass, man! Ah doan talk wid buckra.’
The expression ‘rass’ is Jamaican for ‘shove it’. ‘Buckra’ is a tough colloquialism for ‘white man’ .
Bond said equably, ‘I thought part of your religion was to love thy neighbour.’
The Rasta gave the whistle halyard a long pull. When the shriek had died away, he simply said ‘Sheeit’, kicked the furnace door open and began shovelling coal.
