Алистер Маклин - Breakheart Pass

‘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.’

‘Fancy 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 lip-compressing 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.’