Russell Smith Studios, Inc.

Wyoming, 1922. A lone hunter is on a pack trip in the mountains. As he leads his small team through the hills he hears an unexpected sound overhead. He looks up to see a Curtiss JN4 Jenny flying low overhead, a sign of new technology and the coming age of air travel. He waves to the aircraft but his jenny mule is uninterested in such things.

"Help Ain't Comin'" is part two of a two painting narrative the begins with "The Devil Runs Hard". As the sun sets, our two surviving outlaws are in dire straits as they are fired upon by an unseen assailant. Their companions are gone, their last remaining horse is down, and they're running out of bullets. The worst part is, help ain't comin'!

"Steel Nerves and Iron Rails" is a tribute to one of the great legendary images of the old west - the train robbery. The classic idea of the train robbery involves bandits on horseback chasing down a train to rob it of its safe and its passengers of their valuables, but the idea of a mounted train robbery is mostly an invention of Hollywood. Although train robberies did occur, they were rare and probably never occurred as a heist from horseback. The few documented train robberies that did occur were actually carried out by bandits who had boarded the train disguised as passengers or by derailing the train. Nevertheless, the romanticized image of the train robbery from horseback endures.

In "The Devil Runs Hard" we see a band of outlaws on the run. They press their horses hard as a posse bears down on them in the depths of a canyon. Will they get away, or will there be hell to pay?