Алистер Маклин - Breakheart Pass

‘I survived.’

Claremont looked at Governor Fairchild, who hesitated, then nodded. Claremont 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.

‘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 to his feet, opened the rear door of the supply wagon and passed inside.