Breakheart Pass

Garritty swung viciously and without warning at him. Deakin staggered backwards, caught a chair behind his knees and fell heavily to the floor. Hatless now, he remained as he had fallen, quite conscious and propped on one elbow, but making no attempt to move. Blood trickled from a corner of his mouth. In what must have been an unprecedented effort, every single member of the regular clientele had risen to his feet: together, they pressed forward to get a closer view of the proceedings. The expressions on their faces registered a slow disbelief ultimately giving way to something close to utter contempt. The bright red thread of violence was an integral and unquestionable element of the warp and woof of the frontier way of life: unrequited violence, the meek acceptance of insult or injury without any attempt at physical retaliation, was the ultimate degradation, that of manhood destroyed.

Garritty stared down at the unmoving Deakin in frustrated incredulity, in a steadily increasing anger which was rapidly stripping him of the last vestiges of self-control. Pearce, who had moved forward to forestall Garritty’s next expression of a clearly intended mayhem, was looking oddly puzzled: then the puzzlement was replaced by what seemed an instant realization. Mechanically, almost, as Garritty took a step forward and swung back his right foot with a clearly near-homicidal intent, Pearce also took a step forward and buried a none too gentle right elbow in Garritty’s diaphragm. Garritty, almost retching, gasped in pain and doubled over, both hands clutching his midriff: he was having temporary difficulty in breathing.

Pearce said: ‘I warned you, Garritty. No violence in front of a US Marshal. Any more of this and you’ll be my guest for the night. Not that that’s important now. I’m afraid the matter is out of your hands now.’

Garritty tried to straighten himself, an exercise that clearly provided him with no pleasure at all. His voice, when he finally spoke, was like that of a bull-frog with laryngitis.

‘What the hell do you mean - it’s out of my hands?’

‘It’s Federal business now.’

Pearce slipped the ‘Wanted’ notices from their envelope, leafed rapidly through them, selected a certain notice, returned the remainder to the envelope, glanced briefly at the notice in his hand,glanced just as briefly at Deakin, then turned and beckoned to Colonel Claremont who, without so much as a minuscule twitch of the eyebrows, walked forward to join Pearce and O’Brien. Wordlessly, Pearce showed Claremont the paper in his hand. The picture of the wanted man, little better than a daguerreotype print, was a greyish sepia in colour, blurred and cloudy and indistinct in outline: but it was unmistakably a true likeness of the man who called himself John Deakin.

Pearce said: ‘Well, Colonel, I guess this buys me my train ticket after all.’

Claremont looked at him and said nothing. His expression didn’t say very much either, just that of a man politely waiting.

Pearce read from the notice: “Wanted: for gambling debts, theft, arson and murder.”’

‘A nice sense of priorities,’ O’Brien murmured.

“John Houston alias John Murray alias John Deakin alias” - well, never mind, alias a lot of things. “Formerly lecturer in medicine at the University of Nevada.”’

‘University?’ Claremont’s tone reflected the slight astonishment in his face. ‘In those Godforsaken mountains?’

‘Can’t stop progress, Colonel. Opened in Elko. This year.’ He read on: “Dismissed for gambling debts and illegal gambling. Embezzlement of university funds subsequently discovered, attributed to wanted man. Traced to Lake’s Crossing and trapped in hardware store. To cover escape,used kerosene to set fire to store. Ensuing blaze ran out of control and central part of Lake’s Crossing destroyed with the loss of seven lives.”’

Pearce’s statement gave rise to a splendid series of expressions among onlookers and listeners, ranging from incredulity to horror, from anger to revulsion. Only Pearce and O’Brien and, curiously enough, Deakin himself, registered no emotion whatsoever.

Pearce continued: ‘“Traced to railroad repair shops at Sharps. Blew up wagonload of explosives destroying three sheds and all rolling stock. Present whereabouts unknown.”’

Garritty’s voice was still a croak. ‘He - this is the man who burnt down Lake’s Crossing and blew up Sharps?’

‘If we are to believe this notice, and I do believe it, this is indeed the man. We all know about the long arm of coincidence but this would be stretching things a bit too far. Kind of puts your paltry hundred and twenty dollars into its right perspective, doesn’t it, Garritty? By the way, I’d pocket that money right now if I were you - nobody’s going to be seeing Deakin for a long, long time to come.’ He folded the notice and looked at Claremont. ‘Well?’

They won’t need a jury. But it’s still not Army business.’

Pearce unfolded the notice, handed it to Claremont. I didn’t read it all out, the notice was too long.’ He pointed to a paragraph. I missed this bit, for instance.’

Claremont read aloud : “‘The explosives wagon in the Sharps episode was en route to the United States Army Ordnance Depot at Sacramento, California.” He folded the paper, handed it back and nodded. ‘This makes it Army business.’

TWO (#ulink_3574e5e6-885b-5ec6-9fc0-6ad29eeec313)

Colonel Claremont, whose explosive temper normally lay very close to the surface indeed, was clearly making a Herculean effort to keep it under control. It was just as clearly a losing battle. A meticulous and exceptionally thorough individual, one who cleaved to prescribed detail and routine, one who had a powerful aversion to the even tenor of his ways being interrupted, far less disrupted, and one who was totally incapable of suffering either fools or incompetence gladly, Claremont had not yet devised, and probably never would devise, a safety-valve for his only failing as an officer and a man. Not for him the gradual release of or sublimation for the rapid and rapidly increasing frustration-based anger that simmered just below boiling point and did all sorts of bad things to his blood pressure. In geological terms, he neither vented volcanic gases nor released surplus superheated energy in the form of spouts and geysers: like Krakatoa, he just blew his top, and the results, at least for those in his immediate vicinity, were, more often than not, only a slight degree less devastating.

The Colonel had an audience of eight. A rather apprehensive Governor, Marica, chaplain and doctor stood just outside the main entrance to the Imperial: some little way along the boardwalk O’Brien, Pearce and Deakin were also watching the Colonel in full cry, although it was noticeable that Pearce had an even closer eye for Deakin than he did for the Colonel. The eighth member was the unfortunate Sergeant Bellew. He was rigidly at attention, or as rigid as one can be when seated on a highly restive horse, with his gaze studiously fixed on a point about a couple of light years beyond the Colonel’s left shoulder. The afternoon had turned cold but Bellew was sweating profusely.

‘Everywhere?’ Claremont’s disbelief was total and he made no attempt to hide it. ‘You’ve searched everywhere?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Officers of the United States Cavalry can hardly be a common sight hereabouts. Someone’s bound to have seen them.’

‘No one we talked to, sir. And we talked to everyone we saw.’

‘Impossible, man, impossible!’

‘Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir.’ Bellew abandoned his rapt contemplation of infinity, focused his eyes on the Colonel’s face and said, almost in quiet desperation: ‘We can’t find them, sir.’

The colour of the Colonel’s complexion deepened to a dangerous hue. It required no great feat of the imagination to see that the lava of his fury was about to erupt. Pearce took a couple of hasty steps forward and said: ‘Maybe I can. Colonel. I can pick twenty, thirty men who know every hole and corner in this town - and heaven knows there are not a great number of those. Twenty minutes and we’ll find them, if they’re here to be found.’

‘What the devil do you mean - if?’

‘What I say.’ It was obvious that Pearce was in no placatory mood. ‘I’m offering to be of assistance - and I don’t have to offer. I don’t expect a “thank you”, I don’t even expect an acceptance. A little courtesy would help, though. Yes or no.’

Claremont hesitated, his blood pressure fractionally easing. He’d been brought up short by Pearce’s curt tone and had to remind himself, painfully and almost forcibly, that he was dealing with a civilian, one of that unfortunate majority over whom he had neither control nor authority. Claremont kept his contact with civilians to a basic minimum, with the result that he had almost forgotten how to talk to them. But the root cause of his temporary indecision was the galling and humiliating prospect that those unwashed and undisciplined derelicts of Reese City might succeed where his own beloved troops had failed. When he did reply it cost him a very considerable effort to speak as he did.

‘Very well. Marshal. Please do that. And thank you. Departure time, then, twenty minutes. We’ll wait down at the depot.’

‘I’ll be there. A favour in return. Colonel. Could you detail two or three of your men to escort the prisoner to the train?’

‘An escort?’ Claremont was openly contemptuous. ‘Hardly, I would have thought, a man of violence, Marshal.’

Pearce said mildly: ‘It depends upon what you mean by violence, Colonel. Where the violence involves himself - well, we’ve seen he’s no lover of bar-room brawls. But on his past record he’s quite capable of burning down the Imperial or blowing up your precious troop train the moment my back is turned.’

Leaving Claremont with this cheerful thought, Pearce hurried into the Imperial. Claremont said to Bellew: ‘Call off your men. Take the prisoner down to the train. Have his hands tied behind his back and put him on an eighteen-inch hobble. Our friend here seems to have the habit of disappearing into thin air.’

‘Who do you think you are? God almighty?’ There was a trace, slight though the combination was, of self-righteous anger and quavering defiance in Deakin’s voice. ‘You can’t do this to me. You’re not a lawman. You’re only a soldier.’

‘Only a soldier. Why, you -’ Claremont held himself in check then said with some satisfaction: ‘A twelve-inch hobble. Sergeant Bellew.’

‘That will be a pleasure, sir.’ It was obviously an even greater pleasure for Sergeant Bellew to have his and his Colonel’s displeasure directed against a common antagonist, however innocuous that antagonist might seem, rather than have the Colonel’s wrath directed against him personally. Bellew withdrew a whistle from his tunic, took a deep breath and blew three ear-piercing blasts in rapid succession. Claremont winced, made a gesture that the others should follow him and led the way down towards the depot. After about a hundred yards, Claremont, O’Brien by his side, stopped and looked back. There was issuing forth from the doors of the Imperial what must have been an unprecedented exodus in the annals of Reese City. The motley crew could hardly have been classified under the heading of the halt and the lame and the blind, but they came pretty close to qualifying for it.

Due to the fact that the dilution of their whisky with water would have brought immediate and permanent ostracism to any of the Imperial’s devoted clientele, at least half of those who emerged had the rolling, weaving gait of a windjammer sailor who had spent too long at sea. Two of them limped badly and one, no soberer than the rest, was making remarkably good time on a pair of crutches; he at least had the support that the others lacked. Pearce joined them and issued what appeared to be a series of rapid instructions. O’Brien watched the grey-bearded band disperse in a variety of directions and slowly shook his head from side to side.

He said: ‘If they were on a treasure hunt for a buried bottle of bourbon, I’d have my money on them any day. As it is -’

‘I know, I know,’ Claremont turned dispiritedly and resumed the trek to the depot. Smoke and steam were issuing profusely and Banlon, clearly, had a full head of steam up. The engineer looked out.

‘Any signs, sir?’

‘I’m afraid not, Banlon.’

Banlon hesitated. ‘Still want me to keep a full head of steam up, Colonel?’

‘And why not?’

‘You mean - we’re going to pull out with or without the Captain and the Lieutenant?’