Алистер Маклин - Breakheart Pass

Claremont said carefully: ‘He’s been what?’

‘They caught him opening up a coffin. You know, for the cholera victims.’

‘I know. I know what the coffins are for.’ Claremont sounded testy but the impatience in his voice probably stemmed from his confusion.

‘There’s as much cholera in Fort Humboldt as there are brains in my head.’ Deakin, with little or no justification, sounded thoroughly disgusted with himself. ‘Those coffins are full of Winchester rifles, repeaters, lever action tubular magazines.’

‘No such thing.’

‘There is now.’

‘How come I’ve never heard of them?’

‘Few people have – outside the factory. Production began only four months ago, none has been on sale yet – but the first four hundred were stolen from the factory. Now we know where all those stolen arms are, don’t we?’

‘I don’t know where I am. Coming or going. I’m lost. What happened to the horse wagons, Mr Deakin?’

‘I detached them.’

‘Inevitably. Why?’

Deakin glanced at the gauge. ‘A moment. We’re losing pressure.’

There was no easing of pressure in the comparative safety of the dining compartment where Fairchild and the others were holding their third council of war. It was a council singularly lacking in animation, or, for that matter, conversation. For the most part the Governor, O’Brien and Pearce sat in silent gloom, which another bottle of whisky they had obtained from somewhere seemed powerless to dispel, while Henry dispiritedly stoked the wood stove.

The Governor stirred. ‘Nothing? Can you think of nothing?’

O’Brien was curt. ‘No.’

‘There must be an answer.’

Henry straightened from the stove. ‘Begging the Governor’s pardon, we don’t need an answer.’

‘Oh, do be quiet,’ O’Brien said wearily.

Henry had his say to say and refused to be quiet. ‘We don’t need an answer because there isn’t any question. The only question could be, what happens if we don’t stop him. Well, it’s simple. He just drives on till he’s safe and sound with his friends in Fort Humboldt.’

There was a quickening of interest, a long and thoughtful silence, then O’Brien said slowly: ‘By God, I do believe you’re right, Henry. Just because he knows we’re running guns to the Indians we’ve assumed that he knows all about us, what we really have in mind. Of course he doesn’t. How could he? Nobody does. Impossible – nobody but us have been in touch with the Fort.

‘What else?’ O’Brien said expansively. ‘Well, gentlemen, it’s a bitter night. I suggest we just let Deakin get right on with his driving. He seems quite competent.’

Beaming broadly, the Governor reached for the bottle. He said with happy anticipation: ‘White Hand will certainly give him a warm welcome when we arrive at the Fort.’

White Hand was, at that moment, quite a long distance from the Fort and increasing the distance between them by the minute. The snow was still falling but not so heavily; the wind was still blowing but not so strongly. Behind White Hand, two or three score heavily muffled horsemen cantered rapidly along the base of a broad and winding valley. White Hand turned his head and looked slightly to his left and upwards. Already, above the mountains, there were the beginnings of a lightening of the sky to the east.

White Hand swung in the saddle, gestured to the east and beckoned his men on, urgently. impatiently. The Paiutes began to string out as they increased speed along the valley floor.

Deakin, too, could see the first signs of the predawn as he straightened from the open fire-box. He glanced at the steam-gauge, nodded in satisfaction and closed the door of the fire-box. Claremont and Marica, both pale-faced and showing unmistakable signs of exhaustion, occupied the two bucket seats in the cab. Deakin himself could easily have felt the same way but he could not yet allow himself the luxury of being tired. As much to keep himself alert and occupied as for any other reason, Deakin resumed where he had left off.

‘Yes. The horse wagons. I had to cut those loose. Indians – almost certainly the Paiutes under White Hand – are going to try to intercept and ambush this train at the entrance to Breakheart Pass. I know Breakheart Pass. They’ll be forced to leave their horses at least a mile away – and I don’t want them to have any more horses ready to hand.’

‘Ambush? Ambush?’ Claremont was a man groping in the dark. ‘But I thought the Indians were working hand in hand with those – those renegades back there.’

‘And so indeed they are. But they’re under the impression that the attempt to detach the troop wagons failed – and, for them, those troops must be destroyed. I had to get the Indians out of the Fort – otherwise we could never get in.’

Claremont said carefully: ‘They’re under the impression that–’

‘The missing telegraph. It was missing because I hid it. In the haybox in the first horse wagon. When we were stopped last night and I was fuelling this damned fire-box I took time off to use it. They thought I was O’Brien.’

Claremont looked at him for a long moment. ‘You’ve been very busy, Mr Deakin.’

‘I haven’t been all that idle.’

‘But why, why, why?’ Marica spread her hands helplessly. ‘Why for the sake of a few crates of rifles should Fort Humboldt be taken over? Why should the Paiutes be attacking the train? Why the killings, the massacre of those soldiers? Why should my uncle, O’Brien and Pearce be risking their lives, wrecking their careers–’

‘Those coffins aren’t arriving empty at Fort Humboldt and by the same token and for the same reason they won’t be leaving empty either.’

Claremont said: ‘But you said there was no cholera–’

‘No cholera. But there’s something else at Fort Humboldt, something quite different from cholera, something for which men will sell their lives, their honour, their souls. Have you ever heard of four men called Mackay, Fair, O’Brien – no relation of our friend back there – and Flood?’

Claremont looked down at the blood seeping slowly through the makeshift bandage. ‘The names sound familiar.’

‘Those are the four men who struck the Big Bonanza earlier this year on the Comstock. To our certain knowledge there’s already been ten million dollars’ worth taken out of the ground. There’s only one way this metal can be shipped east – on this railroad. And, of course, there’s also the regular gold bullion transport from the Californian fields. Both sets of bullion have to funnel through Fort Humboldt. It’s my guess that, at this moment, there’s more gold and silver bullion in Fort Humboldt than in any place outside the Federal vaults.’

Claremont said: ‘It’s just as well that I’m already sitting down.’

‘Make yourself at home. As you know, the state governor is notified whenever there’s going to be a large-scale bullion transport through his territory and it’s up to him to notify either the military or civilian authorities to provide the guard. In this case Fairchild notified neither. Instead he notified O’Brien, who notified Pearce, who notified Calhoun, who hired the services of the Paiutes for a stated reward. It’s all very simple, isn’t it?’

‘And the bullion was going back in those coffins?’

‘How else? Can you imagine a safer, a more foolproof form of transport? Nobody’s going to open up coffins – especially the coffins of men who have died of cholera. If need be, those bullion coffins could even be buried with full military honours – to be dug up the following night, of course.’

Claremont shook his head. His spirit seemed to have left him, he was a man close to despair. ‘All those murdering Paiutes, heaven knows how many of them, those desperadoes in the coaches behind us, Calhoun and his renegades waiting for us in Fort Humboldt–’