The horse wagons! They're gone!'
'Later! Later! Come on.'
Soundlessly, the three edged their way along the centre line of the leading coach's roof. Arrived at the other end, Deakin lowered himself to the platform and peered through the coach's front observation window. Henry was clearly visible at the far end of the passageway, strategically placed with his back to the side of the dining compartment, where his constantly moving eyes could cover both the front and rear approaches. Cradled in his right hand in an unpleasantly purposeful fashion was a Peacemaker Colt.
Deakin glanced upwards, put a finger, perhaps unnecessarily, to his lips, pointed to the interior of the coach, reached up and helped both Marica and Claremont on to the platform. Still silently, he reached out a hand to Claremont, who hesitated, then handed him his gun. Deakin made a downward patting motion with his hand to indicate that they should stay where they were, climbed over the safety rail, reached for the rear of the tender and transferred his weight to one of the buffers. Slowly he hoisted himself upwards until his eyes cleared the stacked cordwood at the rear of the tender.
Banlon was peering ahead through the driving window. Rafferty had the glowing fire-box open and was busily engaged in stoking it. Leaving the door open, he turned and made for the tender: Deakin's head swiftly disappeared from sight. Rafferty lifted two more baulks of cordwood and had hardly begun to move forward again when Deakin pulled himself upward until he was in full view of either of the two men who cared to turn round. He made his way quickly but with great care over the stacked cordwood, then lowered himself noiselessly to the floor of the tender.
Banlon had suddenly become very still. Something, almost certainly a fleeting reflection or movement in his driving window, had caught his attention. He looked slowly away from the window and glanced at Rafferty, who caught his eye at the same moment. Both men turned round and looked to the rear. Deakin was four feet away and the Colt in his hand was pointed at the middle of Banlon's body.
Deakin said to Rafferty: 'I see your rifle there. Don't try to get it. Read this.'
Reluctantly almost, Rafferty took the card from Deakin's hand, stopped and read it by the light from the fire-box. He handed it back to Deakin, his face puzzled and uncertain.
Deakin said: 'Colonel Claremont and Miss Fairchild are on the first platform. Help them over here. Very, very quietly, Rafferty – if you don't want your head blown off.'
Rafferty hesitated, nodded and left. He was back within twenty seconds accompanied by Claremont and Marica. As they moved from the tender to the cab, Deakin moved towards Banlon, caught him by the lapels, thrust him back violently against the side of the cab and pushed the muzzle of the Colt, far from gently, into Banlon's throat.
'Your gun, Banlon. Vermin like you always have a gun.'
Banlon, who looked as if he were about to be sick at any moment, fought for breath against the pressure of the pistol. Under the circumstances, his attempt at outrage did considerable credit to his histrionic ability.
'What in God's name is the meaning of this? Colonel Claremont–'
Deakin jerked him forward, twisted him around, pushed Banlon's right hand up somewhere between the shoulder-blades and thrust him towards the steps and the open doorway on the right-hand side of the cab.
'Jump!'
Banlon's staring eyes reflected his horror. Through the driving snow he could just see a steep-sided rock-strewn gully rushing by. Deakin jabbed the Colt's muzzle hard against Banlon's back. 'Jump, I said.' Marica, shocked disbelief registering in her face, made to move towards Deakin; Claremont put out a restraining arm.
'The tool-box!' Banlon shouted. 'It's under the tool-box.'
Deakin stepped back, allowing Banlon to move into the safety of the cab. With his gun Deakin motioned him into a corner and said to Rafferty: 'Get it, will you?'
Rafferty glanced at Claremont, who nodded. The soldier felt beneath the tool-box and produced a revolver which he handed to Deakin, who took it and handed Claremont back his own gun. Claremont jerked his head in the direction of the rear of the tender and Deakin nodded.
'They're no fools. It won't take them long to figure that if we're not in the train we must be on top of it and if we're not there there's only one other place we can be. Anyway, the marks we left on the roof will give us away.' Deakin turned to Rafferty. 'Point your gun at Banlon and keep pointing it. If he moves, kill him.'
'Kill him?'
'You wouldn't try to just wound a rattlesnake, would you? Banlon's more deadly than any rattlesnake. Kill him, I say. He's going to die anyway. By the rope.'
'Me? The rope!' Banlon's face twisted. 'I don't know who you think you are, Deakin, but the law says–'
There was no warning. Deakin took one long stride forward and struck him viciously, backhanded, to send him stumbling against the controls, blood welling immediately from his nose and mouth.
'I am the law.'
EIGHT
Banlon dabbed ineffectually at nose and mouth with a wad of very unhygienic waste. His selfministrations had no noticeable effect, the blood continued to flow copiously. Banlon's normally wizened face now looked even more scraped and drawn, the brown parchment of the skin was several degrees paler and his eyes darted continuously from side to side, a trapped wild animal looking for a means of escape that did not exist. Mainly his eyes flitted from Deakin to Claremont and back again but he found no comfort there: the faces of both men were devoid of pity.
'The end of the road,' Claremont said. 'Live by the sword and you'll die by the same. John Stanton Deakin is the law, Banlon, a secret agent of the Federal Government. You will know what that means.'
Clearly Banlon knew all too well. His weasel face looked, if possible, even more hunted than before. Deakin said to Rafferty: 'Through the body, not the head. We don't want all those nasty ricochets flying about inside the cab.'
He turned his back on the company, moved into the tender and started throwing aside the cordwood from the right-hand rear corner. The eyes of Marica and Banlon did not once leave him. Claremont, Colt cocked, divided his attention between Deakin and Banlon: Rafferty, sticking to his brief, had eyes only for Banlon.
Deakin, his task evidently finished, straightened and stood to one side. Marica performed the classic gesture of putting her hand to her mouth, the dark smoky eyes huge in an ashen face. Claremont stared at the two crumpled uniformclad forms, the upper parts of whose bodies had been exposed.
'Oakland! Newell!'
Deakin said bleakly to Banlon: 'Like I said, the rope.' He turned to Claremont. 'You know now why you couldn't find Oakland and Newell in Reese City. They never left the train.'
'They found out something they shouldn't have found out?'
'Whatever it was they found, it was in this cab. They must have been killed in this cab – you can't carry two dead officers along a platform busy with soldiers. I don't think they could have seen anything suspicious or mcriminating. Not in a cab. Probably heard someone, Banlon and someone else, discussing some very odd things and mounted the cab to investigate, the last mistake they ever made.' 'Henry. That was the someone else. Banlon himself told me that they'd sent the stoker – Jackson – into town while they–'
'While they covered up the bodies of the dead men with cordwood. That's why poor Jackson had to die. He discovered the bodies.' Deakin stooped and carefully replaced some of the cordwood to cover the men. 'I think Banlon was scared that they were using wood too fast and that Jackson would find them, so he plied Jackson with tequila in the hope of making him paralytic and then disposing of the bodies while Jackson snored his head off. But all that happened was that the drink made Jackson careless in the unloading. He pulled all the wood from one corner and discovered the bodies. Then Banlon had to kill him. A heavy spanner, probably; but that didn't kill him.'
'Before God, Colonel. I don't know what this madman's talking about.' Banlon's voice was a high-pitched whine, he was projecting the image of a cornered animal more successfully
than ever. Claremont ignored him, his entire attention was on Deakin. 'Go on.'
'When Jackson hit the side of the gorge, death was instantaneous. But there was a deep cut on the back of the neck that had bled badly.'
'And dead men don't bleed.'
'Dead men don't bleed. Banlon tied a cleaning rag to Jackson's wrist, threw him out over the bridge, stopped the train, made marks in front of the cab window to show Jackson had been there and then told the tale.'
Banlon's voice was hoarse, naked fear in it. 'You can't prove any of this!'
'That's so. I can't prove either that you faked control-lever trouble to give enough time for the telegraph lines back to Reese City to be cut.'
Claremont said slowly: 'I saw Banlon adjusting the steam throttle in Reese City–'
'Slackening it, more like. Nor can I prove that he made a premature stop for fuel to allow an explosive charge to be fitted behind the front coupling of the leading troop coach – timed to go off near the top of the steepest climb in the mountains. It's easy now to guess why nobody jumped off or tried to stop the runaway. When we recover the wreckage you can be sure that we'll find that all the doors were locked from outside and that the brakeman had been murdered.'
'On purpose?' Marica whispered. 'Those men were all – murdered?'
Four shots rang out in swift succession followed, at once by the screaming ricochet of bullets as they struck the ironwork of the cab and went screaming off into the darkness and the snow; none, almost unbelievably, ricocheted about the interior of the cab.
'Down!' Deakin shouted. In unison they threw themselves to the floor of the cab and tender – all except Banlon. Banlon's life was already forfeit. A heavy eighteen-inch wrench miraculously appeared in his hand, sliced down in a murderous arc and struck the prone Rafferty a crushing blow on the side of the head. Banlon wrenched the rifle from the already powerless hands and swung round. He said to Claremont, who had his revolver pointing towards the rear of the tender: 'Don't move,' and to Deakin, whose gun was still in his belt: 'I wish you would.'
Neither man moved.
'Lay down your guns.'
They laid down their guns.
'On your feet. Hands high.'
The three rose, Deakin and Claremont with raised arms. Banlon said to Marica: 'You heard.'
She didn't appear to have done so. She was staring unbelievingly down at Rafferty. Quite clearly, he was dead. Banlon shifted the rifle slightly. 'Last chance, lady.'
Like a person in a dream world she slowly lifted her hands. Banlon transferred his attention to Deakin and as he did so Marica's right hand moved slowly until it was behind one of the suspended oil-lamps. If Deakin had seen the stealthy movement no slightest hint of it showed in his face or eyes. Her hand gradually closed on the lamp.
Banlon said: 'I don't know why you brought those white sheets but they're going to be mighty useful. Climb up on the cordwood there and wave one. Now!'
Marica's hand lifted the lamp clear and her arm jerked convulsively forward. Out of the corner of his eye Banlon saw the blur of light come towards him. He whirled, moving sideways, but was too late to prevent the lamp from striking him in the face. He retained hold of the rifle but was offbalance for all of two seconds, more time than a man like Deakin would ever need. His headlong dive caught Banlon in the midriff, sending the rifle clattering to the floor and Banlon staggering back to crash with stunning force against the boiler. Deakin followed like a big cat, caught Banlon by the throat and smashed his head twice against the metalwork.
Deakin's face was no longer without expression. As his eyes shifted to the left and down and rested momentarily on Rafferty's body his face was savage and bitter and almost inhuman and for the first time Marica looked on him with fear. Deakin returned his attention to Banlon. Banlon could already have been dead but Deakin neither knew nor cared. Once again Banlon's head thudded against the boiler, almost certainly crushing the occiput. Deakin lifted the man high, took two steps and threw him out over the side of the cab.
Pearce and O'Brien, guns in hands, were on the leading coach's front platform. Suddenly, both their gazes jerked sideways and they had just time to identify Banlon's tumbling body before it disappeared into the darkness. They stared at each other, then moved hastily off the platform inside the coach.
In the cab, Deakin's temporary expression of implacability had been replaced by the habitual mask of impassivity. He said to Marica: 'Go on. I know. I shouldn't have done it.'
'Why not?' she said reasonably. 'You said you couldn't prove a thing.'
For the second time that night Deakin's expression slipped. He stared at her in total astonishment. He said carefully : 'We may have more in common than you think.'
She smiled at him sweetly. 'How do you know what I think?'
In the officers' day compartment O'Brien, Pearce, Henry and the Governor were holding what appeared to be a council of war. At least, the first three were. The Governor, a brimming whisky glass in his hand, was staring at the wood stove; the expression of misery on his face was profound.
'This is terrible!' His voice was a low moan. 'Terrible. I'm ruined. Oh my God.'
O'Brien said savagely: 'You didn't think it terrible when I found out what kind of man you were, that you'd rigged elections and spent a fortune in bribes to become Governor and suggested you come in with Nathan and myself. You didn't think it terrible when you suggested Nathan here would be the ideal agent and appointed him personally to deal with the Indian reservations. You didn't think it terrible when you insisted on your share of half of all we made. You make me feel violently ill. Governor Fairchild.'
'I didn't think we'd get involved in anything like this,' the Governor muttered drearily. 'All this killing. All this murder. What peace of mind is there in this for an honest man?' He ignored or did not hear O'Brien's incredulous exclamation. 'You didn't tell me you wanted my niece as a hostage in case there was trouble with her father. You didn't tell me–'
Pearce said with feeling : 'God knows what I'd like to tell you. But I have more to think of.'
'You're supposed to be men of action.' Fairchild tried to be scathing but only succeeded in sounding depressed. 'Why don't you do something?'
O'Brien looked at him in contempt.
'Do what, you old fool? Have you seen that barricade of cordwood they've erected at the back of the tender? It would take a cannon shell to go through it, while they're probably peering through a chink, gun in hand, ready to pick off the first of us to go through that door. At six feet,' he added with gloomy finality, 'they can hardly miss.'
'You don't have to make a frontal attack. Go to the back of this coach, climb up and make your approach over the roof. That way you'll be able to look down on anyone in the tender.'
O'Brien pondered, then said: 'Maybe you're not such an old fool after all.'
While Deakin acquainted himself with the controls, Claremont stoked the fire and Marica, sitting on some cordwood with a tarpaulin over her shoulders to protect her from the snow, kept a close watch on the front of the leading coach through a strategically placed chink in the cordwood barricade. Claremont closed the fire-box and straightened.
'So Pearce it was?'
'Yes,' Deakin said. 'Pearce it was. He's been on our suspect list for a long time. It's true he was once an Indian fighter but he moved over to the other side six years ago. But to the Vvorld at large he's still Uncle Sam's man keeping a fatherly eye on the reservations. Whisky and guns. Fatherly!'
'O'Brien?'
'Nothing against him. Every detail of his military record known. A fine soldier but a rotten apple – remember that big reunion scene in Reese City with Pearce, recalling the good old days at Chattanooga in '63? O'Brien was there all right. Pearce was never within a thousand miles of it – he was an Indian scout for one of the six cavalry companies raised by what became the new State of Nevada the following year. So that made O'Brien a bad one, too.'
'Which must go for the Governor as well?'
&nb
sp; 'What else? He's weak and avaricious and a manipulator of some note.'
'But he'll hang from the same tree?'
'He'll hang from the same tree.'
'You suspected everyone.'
'My nature. My job.'
'Why not me?'
'You didn't want Pearce aboard. That put you in the clear. But I wanted him aboard – and me. It wasn't hard – not with those splendid “Wanted” notices the Service provided.'
'You fooled me.' Claremont sounded bitter but not rancorous. 'Everyone fooled me. The Government or the Army might have taken me into their confidence.'
'Nobody fooled you. We suspected there might be something wrong at Humboldt so it was thought better to have two strings to the bow. When I joined this train I knew no more about what was going on at Humboldt than you did.'
'But now you know?'
'Now I know.'
'Deakin!' Deakin whirled round as the shout came from behind him, his hand reaching for the gun in his belt. 'There's a gun lined up on the little lady. Don't try anything, Deakin.'
Deakin didn't try anything. Pearce was sitting on the roof of the leading coach, his feet dangling over the front edge, a very steady Colt in his hand and his saturnine hawk-like face creased in a very unfriendly smile.
Deakin kept his hands well away from his body which seemed a doubly advisable thing to do for, a few feet behind Pearce on the roof, he could now make out O'Brien also, inevitably with pistol in hand. Deakin called: 'What do you want me to do?'
'That's more like it, Mr Secret Service man.' Pearce sounded almost jovial. 'Stop the train.'
Deakin turned towards the controls and said sotto voce: 'Stop the train, the man said.'
He eased the brake very gently as he closed the throttle. Suddenly, in a convulsive movement, he closed the brakes all the way. The locomotive wheels locked solid and there came a series of violently metallic crashes as the buffers of the tender and the following coaches came into jarring successive contact.
The effect for the two gunmen on the roof was disastrous. The combination of the sudden deceleration and the violent jolting sent the seated Pearce sliding helplessly forward on the ice-coated roof to pitch wildly downward on to the platform beneath, his gun spinning away on to the trackside as he clutched at the safety rail to save himself. Further back on the roof O'Brien was sprawled out broadside on the length of the coach as he clung tightly to a ventilator to prevent himself from going the same way as Pearce.