Breakheart Pass

  Claremont said: 'Here. Bunk down on one of the couches.'

  'What? Next the liquor cabinet?' He made to move away but Claremont's voice stopped him.

  'Deakin.' Deakin turned. 'You'd a long haul out there. I didn't mean it that way. Cold?'

  'I survived.'

  Claremont looked at Governor Fairchild, who hesitated, then nodded. Claremorit reached into the cabinet behind him, lifted out a bottle of bourbon and handed it to Deakin, who almost reluctantly accepted it. The Colonel said: 'As Miss Fairchild said, you're innocent until you are proved guilty. If you follow me. Might warm you up a little, Deakin.'

  'Thank you, Colonel. I appreciate that.'

  Deakin left. As he moved towards the passageway leading to the rear of the coach Marica looked up, the tentative beginnings of a smile on her lips. Deakin walked impassively by and Marica's face became as expressionless as his own.

  Almost impossibly, the three of them managed to squeeze into that tiny galley. Carlos and Henry accepted generous measures from Deakin's bottle while Deakin himself set about attacking a meal imposing in quantity but indeterminate in quality: Carlos, understandably, had not been at his culinary best. Deakin scraped the plate with his fork, picked up his own glass and drained it.

  Carlos said apologetically: 'Sorry, Mr Deakin, sir. Afraid it got a bit tough in the oven.'

  Deakin didn't ask what 'it' was. 'It was fine, just fine and just what I needed.' He yawned. 'And I know what I need now.' He picked up the bourbon bottle, then set it down again. 'Never was much of a drinking man. Think you boys can attend to this for me?'

  Carlos beamed 'We'll try, Mr Deakin. We'll certainly try.'

  Deakin left for the day compartment. As he entered, the Governor, Claremont, O'Brien and Pearce – Marica was already gone – were leaving for their sleeping quarters, none of them so much as looking at Deakin, far less vouchsafing a word. Deakin, in turn, ignored them. He put some more wood in the stove, stretched out on the settee at the front of the coach, pulled out his watch and looked at it. It was one o'clock.

  SEVEN

  'One o'clock,' Sepp Calhoun said. 'You will be back by dawn?'

  'I shall be back by dawn.' White Hand descended the steps of the commandant's, office and joined his men, at least fifty Indians already assembled in the Fort compound. All were mounted and horses and men were whitely covered in the thickly driving snow. White Hand swung into his own saddle and lifted his hand in grave salute; Calhoun lifted his own in acknowledgment. White Hand wheeled his horse and urged it at a fast canter towards the compound gate; his fifty horsemen followed.

  Deakin stirred, woke, swung his legs over the edge of the couch and again consulted his watch. It was four o'clock. He rose and moved quietly down the passageway past the Governor's and Marica's sleeping quarters, through the dining compartment and through the end door, out on to the rear platform of the first coach. From that he transferred to the front platform of the second coach. Moving very stealthily now, he peered through the window of the door leading into the second coach.

  Not five feet away a pair of lanky legs protruded from the galley out into the passageway. The legs were unmistakably those of Henry. Even as Deakin watched, the legs uncrossed and recrossed themselves. Henry was unmistakably awake.

  Deakin drew back from the window, his face thoughtful. He moved to one side of the platform, climbed up on the platform rail, reached up and, after a struggle, succeeded in hauling himself on to the roof. On his hands and knees, moving from the safety of one central ventilator to the next, he made his way across the precarious route offered by the snow- and ice-encrusted roof, a journey made no easier by the jolting, swaying coach.

  The train was moving along the side of a narrow and deep ravine, the track-side closely bordered by heavily snow-weighted conifers. The sagging branches of the pines appeared almost to brush the roof of the train. On two occasions, as if warned by instinct, he glanced over his shoulder just in time to see such heavy branches sweeping towards him and both times he had to drop flat to escape being swept from the roof of the train.

  He reached the rear of the second coach, edged his way forward with millimetric stealth and peered down. To his total lack of surprise, Carlos, muffled to the ears against the bitter cold, paced to and fro on the platform. Deakin inched his way back from the rear edge, turned, got to his hands and knees and crawled back for a few feet. Then he stood and continued walking forward, maintaining his balance only with the greatest difficulty.

  The large bough of a pine tree came sweeping towards him. Deakin didn't hesitate. He knew that if he didn't do it now it was questionable if he would ever summon the suicidal resolution to try again. He took a few swift running backward steps to break the impact of the branch as it caught him, arms outstretched further to break the impact, chest-high.

  He seized the branch with both hands and realized to his immediate dismay that it was nowhere near as stout as he had thought – he had been deceived by its thick covering of snow. The bough bent. Desperately he swung his feet up but even at that his back was barely two feet clear of the roof. He glanced down. An oblivious Carlos, pacing to and fro, was momentarily only feet below him, then lost to sight.

  Deakin swung his legs down and, facing rearward, his heels gouging twin tracks in the frozen snow, abruptly released his grip in the knowledge that he had an even chance of being disembowelled by one of the row of central ventilators.

  He was not so disembowelled, but for that fleeting second he was probably unaware of his good fortune, for though he had made sure to keep his head high the impact of his back striking against the coach roof was almost literally stunning. Paradoxically enough, it was that treacherous snow-frosted roof that saved his life. Had he landed on a dry roof the deceleration factor would have been so great that he would certainly have lost consciousness, if not been gravely injured: in either event the result would have been the same – his senseless or broken body would have gone over the edge. As it was, the deceleration factor was minimized by the fact that his body at once started sliding along the roof – and sliding at such speed that it seemed not only probable but certain that he would go shooting out over the rear edge and on to the track below, when damage of a very permanent nature would likely occur to him.

  Again, paradoxically, it was the potentially lethal ventilators that were his saving. More by instinct than by calculated thought he reached out for the first ventilator that came sweeping by. He had the distinct impression of his right shoulder being wrenched off and his grip was ruthlessly broken; but it perceptibly slowed his rate of travel. He reached for the next ventilator coming up and the same agonizing process was repeated; but he was sliding now at hardly more than walking pace. The third and, he could see, the last ventilator came up. Again he hooked his right elbow round it but this time brought over his left arm and clasped it round his right wrist. He must have grown a new right shoulder for it felt as if this one, too, was coming off. But he held on. His body pivoted through three-quarters of a circle until his legs as far as the knees were protruding over the left-hand side of the roof. But he held on. He knew he had to move then, knew he couldn't hang on much longer. Slowly and in great pain he hauled himself back to the centre line of the coach roof, moved to the rear end and fell rather than lowered himself to the rear platform below.

  Gasping for breath, doubled up and totally winded, he sat there for what must have been all of five minutes, feeling like the first man who had gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel. He assessed his injuries: a collection of broken ribs in front where the branch had caught his chest, a similar amount at the back where he'd crashed on to the roof and a shoulder broken in an indeterminate number of places. It took a considerable amount of gingerly investigation to establish that in fact his skeletal system was still intact. Bruising, probably massive bruising there would be and a considerable amount of pain for some time to come, but those he could try both to ignore and forget. They would not incapacitate him. He pulled himself t
o his feet, opened the rear door of the supply wagon and passed inside.

  He moved forward through the banked tiers of coffins and medical supply crates until he came to the front of the supply wagon, where he peered through one of the two small circular observation ports. Carlos was as he had been, pacing to and fro and clearly unaware that anything was amiss. Deakin shook off his sheepskin jacket, fixed it over one of the observation windows and put a piece of heavy sacking over the other. He then lit one of the oil-lamps which hung at intervals along the central length of the coach. Deakin noted with some concern that there was a very narrow chink between two of the planks on the right-hand side and it was barely possible that a thin line of light might show through. But then, to observe such a light, if light there was, one would have to be standing to the right of the coach and Carlos was at the front. Besides, there was nothing he could do about it anyway. Deakin dismissed the matter from his mind and turned to the task on hand.

  With the aid of a screwdriver and cold chisel with which he had thoughtfully provided himself from Banlon's tool-box, Deakin prised open the lid of a yellow brass-bound oiled wooden box marked MEDICAL CORPS SUPPLIES: UNITED STATES ARMY. The lid came clear with a wrenching, splintering sound but Deakin paid no attention. Nefarious pursuits came much easier on a moving train than on a halted one. The combination of an elderly train, rusted wheels and ancient bogies made sufficient noise as it rattled along the track to preclude normal conversation at a distance of even a few feet. Any noise from within the supply wagon, short of something like a pistol shot, would have been quite inaudible to Carlos, who was in any event concentrating upon other matters. As on an earlier occasion, Carlos had stopped pacing and was relying heavily on liquid internal warmth.

  The medical supplies were packed in unusual grey metal containers, unmarked. Deakin picked up one of the tins and opened the lid. The box was packed with gleaming metal shells. Deakin showed no reaction. The discovery, clearly, came as no shock. He opened another two tins. The contents were as before.

  Deakin left the wooden crate with its lid wrenched off – he had apparently passed the point of no return and seemed indifferent as to whether his handiwork was discovered or not – and moved on to another box, the lid of which he levered open with the same disregard for what purported to be US Government property. The contents were as they had been in the previous box. Deakin left and moved towards the rear of the supply wagon, lamp in hand, ignoring all the other wooden boxes marked as containing medical supplies. He reached the stacked tiers of coffins and began to haul one out from the bottom rack. For a supposedly empty coffin, even allowing for the state of his back and shoulder, this manoeuvre seemed to cost him a quite disproportionate deal of effort.

  Carlos wasn't indulging in anything like so considerable an amount of energy. It was apparent that he had not yet lost faith in the efficacy of bourbon as a means of warding off the intense cold; he had the neck of a bottle to his mouth, its base pointing vertically skywards. He lowered the bottle reluctantly, shook and inverted it, all to no purpose. The bottle was empty. Sorrowfully and perhaps a thought unsteadily, Carlos made for the side rail of the platform, leaned out and hurled the bottle into the night. His eyes wistfully followed the flight of the bottle until it disappeared almost immediately into the darkness and the swirling snow. Suddenly the wistful expression vanished, to be replaced not by his normal cheerful beaming expression but by a hard and chilling expression, the suddenly narrowed eyes incongruous in the moonlike face. He momentarily screwed shut those eyes and looked again but what he had seen was still there – a distinct line of light running along the side of the supply wagon. Moving with a speed and delicacy that one would not normally associate with so heavily built a character, he swung across from the rear platform of the second coach to the front platform of the supply wagon. He paused, reached inside his coat and brought out a very unpleasantlooking throwing knife.

  At the far end of the wagon Deakin removed a rather sadly splintered lid from the coffin. He lifted the lantern and looked down. His face hardened into bitterness but registered neither surprise nor shock. Deakin had found no more than he had expected to find. The Reverend Peabody's resting-place was not incongruous. He had been dead for many hours.

  Deakin loosely replaced the splintered coffin lid and dragged another coffin from its rack on to the wagon floor. From the time taken and the great degree of energy expended, this coffin was obviously very much heavier than the previous one. Deakin used the cold chisel ruthlessly and had the lid off in seconds. He looked down into the interior of the coffin, then nodded almost imperceptibly in far from slow comprehension. The coffin was full to the top with heavily-oiled Winchester repeater rifles, lever action, with tubular magazines on the forestocks.

  Deakin threw the lid loosely on top of the coffin, placed the oil-lamp on it, hauled a third coffin to the floor and, with the expertise born of practice, had the lid off in seconds. He had just time to notice that this, too, was full of brand new Winchesters when something caught his sleepless attention and his eyes shifted fractionally to the left. The oil-lamp had flickered, just once, as if in some sudden draught in a place where there shouldn't have been a draught.

  Deakin whirled round as Carlos, knife hand already swinging, flung himself upon him. Deakin caught the knife wrist and there was a brief but fierce struggle which ended, temporarily, when both men tripped over a coffin and broke apart in their fall, Deakin falling in an aisle between two rows of coffins, Carlos in the middle of the wagon. Both men were quickly on their feet, although Deakin, despite his aches and pains, or perhaps because of the cold appreciation of the fact that he was the one without a knife, was fractionally the faster. Carlos had changed his grip on his knife and now held it in a throwing position. Deakin, with no room to manoeuvre or take evasive action in those narrow confines, kicked savagely at the loose lid of the nearest coffin, the one on which the oil-lamp stood. The lid shot up in the air, momentarily obscuring Deakin from Carlos's view as the lamp shattered on the floor, plunging the supply wagon into comparative darkness. Deakin was in no mood to wait around. To fight in the darkness a man carrying a knife you cannot see is a certain form of suicide.

  He ran for the rear door of the supply wagon, went through and closed the door behind him. He didn't even bother looking around him, there was no place to go except up. He scrambled to the roof via the safety rail, stretched himself out and looked down, waiting for Carlos to appear so that he could either jump him or, better, slide back when he did appear, wait for the appearance of his head over the top and kick it off. But the seconds passed and Carlos did not appear. Realization came to Deakin almost too late. He twisted his head around and peered forward into an opaque world filled with greyly driving snow. He rubbed the snow from his eyes, cupped his hand over them and peered again.

  Carlos, less than ten feet away, was crawling cautiously along the centre of the roof, knife in one hand and teeth gleaming in a smile in the dark face. Carlos gave the marked impression of one who who was not only enjoying himself but expected to be enjoying himself considerably more in a matter of a second or two. Deakin did not share his feelings, this was one thing he could well have done without; the way he felt at that moment, a robust five-year-old could have coped with him without too much difficulty. There was, in fact, one consideration that slightly lessened the odds against Deakin. Though Carlos's physical faculties seemed quite unimpaired, it was very questionable if the same could be said for his mental ones: Carlos was awash in a very considerable amount of bourbon.

  Deakin, on hands and knees now, swung round to face the oncoming Carlos. As he did so, he caught a fleeting glimpse ahead of what seemed, through the snow, to be the beginnings of a long trellis bridge spanning a ravine, but it could have been as much imagined as seen. He had no time for any more. Carlos, now less than six feet away and still with the same gleaming smile of wolfish satisfaction, lifted his throwing hand over his shoulder. He did not look like a man who was in the
habit of missing. Deakin jerked his own right hand convulsively forward and the handful of frozen snow it held struck Carlos in the eyes. Blindly, instinctively, Carlos completed his knife throw but Deakin had already flung himself forward in a headlong dive which took him below the trajectory of the knife, his right shoulder socketing solidly into Carlos's chest.

  It became immediately apparent that Carlos was not just the big fat man he appeared to be but a big and very powerful man. He took the full impact of Deakin's dive without a grunt – admittedly the icy surface had robbed Deakin of all but a fraction of his potential take-off thrust – closed both hands around Deakin's neck and began to squeeze.

  Deakin tried to break the Negro's grip but this proved to be impossible. Savagely, Deakin struck him with all his power – or what was left of it – on both face and body. Carlos merely smiled widely. Slowly, his legs quivering under the strain, Deakin got both feet beneath him and forced himself to a standing position, Carlos rising with him. Carlos, in fact, made no great effort to prevent Deakin from rising, his sole interest was concerned in maintaining and intensifying his grip

  As the two men struggled, fighting in grotesquely slow motion as they tried to maintain their footholds on the treacherous surface, Carlos glanced briefly to his left. Directly below was the beginning of a curving trellis bridge and, below that again, the seemingly bottomless depths of a ravine. His teeth bared, half in savage intensity of effort, half in knowledge of impending triumph as he hooked his fingers ever more deeply into Deakin's neck. It was a measure of his over-confidence, or more likely of the quantity of alcohol inside him, that he apparently quite failed to realize Deakin's intention in bringing them both to their feet. When he did the time for realization had long gone by.

  His hands grasping Carlos's coat, Deakin flung himself violently backwards. Carlos, taken by surprise and completely off-balance on that icy surface, had no option but to topple after him. As they fell, Deakin doubled his legs until his knees almost touched his chin, got both feet into Carlos's midriff and kicked upward with all his strength. The forward velocity of Carlos's fall and the vicious upthrust from Deakin's legs combined with the strong downpull of his arms, broke Carlos's stranglehold and sent him, arms and legs flailing ineffectually and helplessly, catapulting over the side of the wagon, over the side of the bridge and into the depths of the ravine below.