  We propose a robust and decoherence insensitive scheme to generate
controllable entangled states of two three-level atoms interacting with an
optical cavity and a laser beam. Losses due to atomic spontaneous transitions
and to cavity decay are efficiently suppressed by employing fractional
adiabatic passage and appropriately designed atom-field couplings. In this
scheme the two atoms traverse the cavity-mode and the laser beam in opposite
directions as opposed to other entanglement schemes in which the atoms are
required to have fixed locations inside a cavity. We also show that the
coherence of a traveling atom can be transferred to the other one without
populating the cavity-mode.
