Deakin was not the only one in that coach who was not asleep. Marica sat upright on the narrow bunk which occupied more than half of her tiny cubicle, thoughtfully biting her lower lip and glancing occasionally and irresolutely at her door. Her thoughts were centred on precisely the same matter as was engaging the attention of Deakin himself – the uncomfortable predicament in which the latter found himself. Suddenly, decisively, she rose, pulled a wrap around her and moved silently out into the passageway, closing the door as silently behind her.
She put her ear against the door next her own. It was clear that, within, silence was not at a premium: judging from the stentorian snores, the Governor of the State of Nevada had decided to let tomorrow's troubles look after themselves. Satisfied, Marica moved on, opened the door to the day compartment, closed it behind her and looked down at Deakin. He returned her gaze, his face giving away nothing. Marica forced herself to speak in a calm and detached manner.
'Are you all right?'
'Well, well.' Deakin looked at her with an expression of faint interest in his face. 'Perhaps the Governor's niece isn't quite the cocooned little marshmallow she seems to be. You know what the Governor or the Colonel or, for that matter, Pearce would do to you if you were found here?'
'And what would they do to me?' A degree of acerbity was not lacking in her voice. 'I hardly think, Mr Deakin, that you are in a position to warn or lecture anybody. And I would remind you that today is today and not a hundred years ago and I can get by quite well, thank you, without any cotton-wool or rose-petals. I asked you if you were all right.'
Deakin sighed. 'That's it – kick a man when he's down. Sure I'm all right. Can't you see? I always sleep this way.'
'As a form of wit, sarcasm is wasted on me.' Her voice was cold. 'And it looks as if I'm wasting my time on you. I came to ask if I can get you something.'
'Sorry. No offence. John Deakin is not at his best. As regards your offer – well, you heard what the Marshal said. Don't waste your sympathy on me.'
'What the Marshal says goes in my left ear and out the right.' She ignored the slight surprise, the increasing interest in his face. 'There's some food left in the galley.'
'I've lost my appetite. Thanks, all the same.'
'A drink?'
'Ah, now! Did I hear the sound of sweet music?' He straightened, with difficulty, until he had reached a vertical sitting position. 'I've been watching them drinking all evening and it hasn't been pleasant. I don't like being spoon-fed. Could you untie the ropes on my wrists?'
'Could I – do I look mad? If once you got your hands free, you – you–'
'Would wrap them round your lovely neck?' He peered more closely at her neck while she regarded him in stony silence. 'It is rather lovely. However, that's hardly the point. At this moment, I doubt whether I could wrap my two hands round a whisky glass. Have you seen my hands?'
He twisted round and let her see them. They were blue and almost grotesquely swollen, with the thongs cutting deeply into the badly puffed flesh of the wrists. Deakin said: 'Whatever else our Marshal lacks, you must admit he brings a certain enthusiasm to the task on hand.'
Marica's face was tight-lipped, both anger and compassion in her eyes. She said: 'Do you promise–'
'My turn now. Do I look mad. Escape? With all those nasty Paiutes out there. I'd rather take my chance on the Governor's rot-gut whisky.'
Five minutes elapsed before Deakin could take that chance. It took Marica only a minute to untie him, but it took Deakin another four, after hopping to the nearest armchair, to restore a measure of circulation to his numbed hands. The pain must have been excruciating but his face remained immobile. Marica, watching him intently, said: T think John Deakin is a great deal tougher than everybody seems to give him credit for.'
'It ill becomes a grown man to bellow in front of a woman.' He flexed his fingers. 'I think you mentioned something about a drink, Miss Fairchild.'
She brought him a glass of whisky. Deakin drained half of it in one gulp, sighed in satisfaction, replaced the glass on the table by his side, stooped and started to free the ropes binding his ankles. Marica jumped to her feet, her fists clenched, her eyes mad; she remained like that for the briefest of moments, then ran from the compartment. She was back in seconds while Deakin was still untying his ankles. He looked in disfavour at the small but purposeful-looking pearl-handled pistol in her hand. He said: 'What are you carrying that around for?'
'Uncle said that if the Indians ever got me ' She broke off, her face furious. 'Damn you! Damn you! You promised me–'
'When a person's a murderer, arsonist, thief, cheat and coward, you can hardly be surprised when he turns out to be a liar as well. In fact, you'd be a damned idiot to expect anything else.' He removed the thongs from his ankles, pushed himself rather shakily to his feet, advanced two steps and casually removed the gun from her hand as if she had no intention of firing it, which she clearly hadn't. He pushed her gently down into an armchair, placed the little pistol on her lap, hobbled back to his chair and sat down, wincing briefly. 'Rest easy, lady. As it so happens, I'm not going anywhere. A little circulation trouble, that's all. Would you like to see my ankles?'
'No!' She was obviously seething with anger at her own lack of resolution.
'To tell you the truth, neither would I. Is your mother still alive?'
'Is my–' The unexpected question had caught her completely off-balance. 'What on earth has that to do with you?'
'Making conversation. You know how difficult it is when two strangers meet for the first time.' He rose again and paced gingerly up and down, glass in hand. 'Well, is she?'
Marica was curt. 'Yes.'
'But not well?'
'How would you know that? Besides, what business is it of yours?'
'None. Just that I'm possessed of an incorrigible degree of curiosity.'
'Faney words.' It was questionable whether Marica was capable of sneering but she came very close to it. 'Very fancy, Mr Deakin.'
'I used to be a university lecturer. Very important to impress upon your students that you're smarter than they are. I used big words. So. Your mother is not well. If she were it would be much more natural for a fort commandant to be joined by his wife rather than his daughter. And I would have thought that your place would have been by your sick mother. And it strikes me as very odd indeed that you should be permitted to come out here when there's cholera in the Fort and the Indians are so restive. Don't those things strike you as odd, Miss Fairchild? Must have been a very pressing and urgent invitation from your father, though for God knows what reasons. The invitation came by letter?'
'I don't have to answer your questions.' But it was apparent that, nonetheless, the questions intrigued her.
'In addition to all my other faults the Marshal listed, I've more than my fair share of persistent impertinence. By letter? Of course it wasn't. It was by telegraph. All urgent messages are sent by telegraph.' Abruptly, he switched his questioning. 'Your uncle. Colonel Claremont, Major O'Brien – you know them all very well, don't you?'
'Well, really!' Marica had renewed her lipcompressing expression. 'I think it's quite intolerable–'
'Thank you, thank you.' Deakin drained his glass, sat and began to retie his ankles. 'That was all I wanted to know.' He stood up, handed her another piece of rope, then turned with his hands clasped behind his back. 'If you would be so kind – but not quite so tight this time.'
Marica said slowly: 'Why all this concern, this interest in me? I should have thought that you yourself had enough worries and troubles–'
'I have, my dear girl, I have. I'm just trying to take my mind off them.' He screwed his eyes as the rope tightened on his inflamed wrists. He said protestingly:
'Easy, now, easy.'
She made no reply, tightened the last knot, helped ease Deakin to first a sitting, then a lying position, then left, still without a word. Back in her own cubicle, she closed the door softly behind her, then sat on her bed for a long
time indeed, her eyes unfocused but her face very thoughtful and still.
In the redly and brightly illuminated driving cab the face of Banlon, the engineer, was equally thoughtful as he divided his time and attention between the controls and peering out the side window to examine the track ahead and the skies above. The black mass of cloud, moving rapidly to the east, now obscured more than half the sky; in a very short time indeed the darkness would be as close to total as it could ever be in uplands where mountains and pines – and increasingly the ground itself – were overlaid with a blanket of white.
Jackson, the fireman, was as close a carbon copy to Banlon as it was possible to be – abnormally lean, dark-complexioned and with two enormous crows' feet that traversed his parchment face from the ears almost to the tip of his nose. Despite the cold, Jackson was sweating profusely: on steep gradients such as this, the continuous demand for a full head of steam gobbled up fuel almost as quickly as it could be fed into the cavernous maw of the fire-box, casting Jackson in the role of little less than a slave to a very demanding master. He heaved a last section of cordwood on to the glowing bed of coals, mopped his forehead with a filthy towel and swung the door of the fire-box shut. The immediate effect was to reduce the footplate to a state of semi-darkness.
Banlon abandoned the cab window and moved towards the controls. Suddenly there came a loud, metallic and very ominous rattle. Banlon addressed a series of unprintable epithets towards the source of the sound.
Jackson's voice was sharp. 'What's wrong?'
Banlon didn't answer at once. He reached swiftly towards the brake. There was a moment's silence, followed by a screeching, banging clamour as the train, with a concertina collisioning of bumpers, began to slow towards a stop. Throughout the train all the minority who were awake – with the exception of the bound Deakin – and most of the majority who had just been violently woken grabbed for the nearest support as the train ground to its jolting, shuddering, emergency stop. Not a few of the heavier sleepers were dumped unceremoniously on the floor.
'That damned steam regulator again!' Banlon said. 'I think the retaining nut has come off. Give Devlin the bell – brakes hard on.' He unhooked a feeble oil-lamp and peered at the offending regulator. 'And open the fire-box door – I've seen better glow-worms than this goddamned lamp.'
Jackson did what he was asked, then leaned out and peered back down the track. 'Quite a few folk coming this way,' he announced. 'They don't seem all that happy to me.'
'What do you expect?' Banlon said sourly. 'A deputation coming to thank us for saving their lives?' He peered out on his own side. 'There's another lot of satisfied customers coming up this way, too.'
But there was one traveller who was not running forward. A vague and palish blur in the darkness, he jumped down from the train, looked swiftly around him, stooped, scuttled swiftly to the track-side and dropped down the embankment to the riverside below. He pulled a peculiar peaked coonskin cap low over his forehead and started running towards the rear of the train.
Colonel Claremont, despite his pronounced and very recently acquired limp – he had been one of the heavier sleepers and the contact his right hip had made with the floor had been nothing if not violent – was the first to reach the driving cab. With some difficulty he pulled himself up to the footplate.
'What the devil do you mean, Banlon, by scaring us all out of our wits like that?'
'Sorry, sir.' Banlon was very stiff, very proper, very correct. 'Company's emergency regulations. Control failure. The retaining nut–'
'Never mind that.' Claremont tenderly rubbed his aching hip. 'How long will it take to fix? All damned night, I suppose.'
Banlon permitted himself the faint smile of the expert. 'Five minutes, no more.'
While Banlon was bringing his expertise to bear, the running figure with the coonskin cap stopped abruptly at the base of a telegraph pole. He looked back the way he had come : the rear of the train was at least sixty yards away. Apparently satisfied, the man produced a long belt, passed it around himself and the pole and swiftly began to climb. Arrived at the top, he produced from his pocket a pair of wire-cutters with which he rapidly snipped through the telegraph wires on the side of the insulators remote from the train. The wires dropped away into the gloom and, almost as quickly, the man slid down to the ground.
On the footplate Banlon straightened, spanner still in hand. Claremont said: 'Fixed?'
Banlon raised a grimy hand to cover a prodigious yawn. 'Fixed.'
Claremont spared some of the concern for his aching hip. He said : 'You sure you're fit to drive for the rest of the night?'
'Hot coffee. That's all we need – and we have all the means and the makings right here in the cab. But if you could have Jackson and me spelled tomorrow–'
'I'll see to that.' Claremont spoke curtly, not from any animosity he held towards Banlon, it was merely that the pain in his hip was clamouring for his attention again. He climbed stiffly down to the track-side, made his way down the left side of the train and climbed as stiffly up the iron steps towards the entrance to the leading coach. The train slowly got under way again. As it did so, the coonskin-hatted figure appeared over the embankment to the right of the now moving train, glanced fore and aft, moved quickly forward and swung aboard the rear end of the third coach.
FOUR
Dawn came and it came late, as dawn does in mountain valleys so late in the year and in those altitudes. The distant peaks of the previous evening were now invisible, even although measurably closer; the grey and total opacity of the sky ahead – to the west, that was – was indication enough that, not many miles away, snow was falling. And, as could be seen from the gentle swaying of the snow-clad pine-tops, the morning wind was steadily freshening. Some of the pools in the river, where the water was almost still, had ice reaching out from both banks to meet almost in the middle. The mountain winter was at hand.
Henry, the steward, was stoking the already glowing stove in the officers' day coach when Colonel Claremont entered from the passageway, passing the recumbent and apparently sleeping form of Deakin without so much as a glance. Claremont, his limp of the previous night apparently now no more than a memory, rubbed his hands briskly together.
'A bitter morning, Henry.'
'It's all that, sir. Breakfast? Carlos has it all ready.'
Claremont crossed to the window, drew the curtain, rubbed the misted glass and peered out unenthusiastically. He shook his head.
'Later. Looks as if the weather is breaking up. Before it does, I'd like to speak to Reese City and Fort Humboldt first. Go fetch Telegraphist Ferguson, will you? Tell him to bring his equipment here.'
Henry made to leave, then stood to one side as the Governor, O'Brien and Pearce entered. Pearce moved towards Deakin, shook him roughly and began to untie his knots.
'Good morning, good morning.' Claremont was radiating his customary efficiency. 'Just about to raise Fort Humboldt and Reese City. The telegraphist will be here shortly.'
O'Brien said : 'Stop the train, sir?'
'If you please.'
O'Brien opened the door, moved out on to the front platform, closed the door behind him and pulled an overhead cord. A second or two later Banlon looked out from his cab and peered backwards to see O'Brien moving his right arm up and down. Banlon gestured in return and disappeared. The train began to slow. O'Brien re-entered and clapped his hands against his shoulders.
'Jesus! It's cold outside.'
'Merely an invigorating nip, my dear O'Brien,' Claremont said with the hearty disapproval of one who has yet to poke his nose outside. He looked at Deakin, now engaged in massaging his freed hands, then at Pearce. 'Where do you want to keep this fellow, Marshal? I can have Sergeant Bellew mount an armed guard on him.'
'No disrespect to Bellew, sir. But with a man so handy with matches and kerosene and explosives – and I should imagine that it would be an odd troop train that didn't carry a goodish supply of all three of those – well, I'd rather keep a
personal eye on him.'
Claremont nodded briefly, then turned his attention towards two soldiers who had just knocked and entered. Telegraphist Ferguson was carrying a collapsible table, a coil of cable, and a small case containing his writing material. Behind him his assistant, a young trooper called Brown, was lugging the bulky transmitter. Claremont said: 'As soon as you're ready.'
Two minutes later Telegraphist Ferguson was ready. He was perched on the arm of a sofa, and from the telegraph set before him a lead passed through a minimally opened crack in the window. With his handkerchief, Claremont rubbed the misted window and peered out. The lead looped up to the top of a telegraph pole from which Brown was supported by a belt. Brown finished whatever adjustment he was making, then turned and waved a hand. Claremont turned to Ferguson. 'Right. The Fort first.'
Ferguson tapped out a call-up signal three times in succession. Almost at once, through his earphones, could be heard the faint chatter of Morse. Ferguson eased back his earphones and said: 'A minute, sir. They're fetching Colonel Fairchild.'
While they were waiting Marica entered, closely followed by the Rev. Peabody. Peabody was wearing his graveside expression and looked as if he had passed a very bad night. Marica glanced first, without expression, at Deakin, then, interrogatively, at her uncle.
'We're in touch with Fort Humboldt, my dear,' the Governor said. 'We should have the latest report in a minute.'
Faintly, the renewed sound of Morse could be heard from the earphones. Ferguson wrote, rapidly but neatly, tore a sheet from his pad and handed it to Claremont.
More than a day's journey away over the mountains, eight men sat or stood in the telegraphy room in Fort Humboldt. The central and unquestionably the dominating figure in the room lounged in a swivel chair behind a rather splendid leather-topped mahogany table, with both his filthy riding boots resting squarely on top of the desk. The spurs which he needlessly affected had left the leather top in several degrees less than mint condition, a consideration that apparently left the wearer unmoved. His general appearance attested to the first impression that there was little of the aesthetic about him. Even seated, it could be seen that he was a tall figure, bulky and broadshouldered, with a ragged deerskin jacket pulled back to reveal a sagging belt weighted down by a pair of Peacemaker Colts. Above the jacket and below a stetson that had been old while the jacket was still in its first youth, a high-boned face, hooked nose, cold eyes of a washed-out grey and a week's growth of beard overlaying a naturally swarthy complexion gave one the impression of being in the presence of a ruthless desperado, which was, in fact, a pretty apt description for Sepp Calhoun.
Breakheart Pass Page 5