Alistair MacLean - Breakheart Pass

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.'