Breakheart Pass

‘That’s precisely what I mean. Fifteen minutes, Banlon. Just fifteen minutes.’

‘But Captain Oakland and Lieutenant Newell -’

‘They’ll just have to catch the next train, won’t they?’

‘But, sir, that might be days -’

‘At the moment, I’m hardly in the mood to worry over the welfare of the Captain and the Lieutenant.’ He turned to the others and gestured towards the steps leading up to the front of the first coach. ‘It’s cold and it’s going to be a damned sight colder. Governor, with your permission, I’d like Major O’Brien stay with me a little. Just until this fellow Deakin is brought along. Nothing against my own men, mind you, none better, but I don’t trust them to cope with a slippery customer like Deakin. But I think the Major can cope admirably - and without exerting himself unduly. Just till Pearce gets back.’

O’Brien smiled and said nothing. Governor Fairchild nodded his agreement, then hastily mounted the steps. Even in the past fifteen minutes the late afternoon had become noticeably colder.

Claremont nodded briefly to O’Brien, then slowly began to walk the length of the train, from time to time slapping his very English swagger-stick - his sole concession to individuality or eccentricity, it all depended upon how one viewed it - against his leather riding boots. Colonel Claremont knew next to nothing about trains but he had been born with an inspectorial eye and rarely passed up the opportunity of exercising it. Further, he was the commandant of the train and Claremont believed in keeping a close and jealous eye upon his own, however temporarily that property might remain in his keeping.

The first coach consisted of the officers’ day compartment - that into which the Governor had so recently and thankfully disappeared - the night compartments for the Governor and his niece and, at the rear, the officers’ dining saloon. The second coach consisted of the galley, sleeping quarters for Henry and Carlos who were steward and cook respectively, and the officers’ night compartment. The third coach was the supply wagon, the fourth and fifth the horse wagons. The first quarter of the sixth wagon was given over to the troops’ galley, while the remainder of it and all of the seventh coach was given over to the troops’ accommodation. None the wiser for his tour of inspection, Claremont reached the brake van, then, hearing the sound of hooves, looked towards the front of the train. Bellew had rounded up his lost sheep: as far as Claremont could ascertain he had the entire cavalry detachment with him.

Sergeant Bellew himself was in the lead. He held loosely in his left hand a rope, the other end of which was looped round Deakin’s neck. Deakin himself, because of the twelve-inch hobble, was forced to walk in a ludicrously fast, stiff-legged gait, more like a marionette than a human being. It was a shameful and humiliating position for any grown man to find himself in but it left Claremont totally unmoved. He paused just long enough to see O’Brien move out to intercept Bellew, then swung himself up the brake van’s steps, pushed open the door and passed inside.

Compared to the chill outside, the atmosphere inside the brake van was close on stifling, almost oppressively hot. The reason for this was not far to seek: the cordwood-burning stove in one corner of the van had been stoked with such skill and devotion that its circular, removable cast-iron top glowed a far from dull red. To one side of the stove was a bin well stacked with cordwood: beyond that again was a food cupboard - if the cordwood bin was anything to go by, Claremont thought, the cupboard would be far from empty - and beyond that again was the massive brake wheel. To the other side of the stove was a massive and massively over-stuffed armchair then, finally, a mattress piled high with faded army issue blankets and what looked like a couple of bearskins.

Almost buried in the depths of the armchair and reading a book through a pair of steel-rimmed and steel-legged glasses was a man who could only, in all fairness to the ancient cliche, be described as a grizzled veteran. He had a four-day growth of white beard on his face; his hair, if hair he had, was invisible beneath what looked like a Dutch bargee’s peaked hat, pulled low over the ears, no doubt to keep out the cold. He was cocooned in considerable but indeterminate layers of clothing, the whole topped off with an Eskimo-type anorak made from equally indeterminate furs. To defeat the ill intent of even the most cunning of draughts, a heavy Navajo blanket stretched from his waist to his ankles.

As Claremont entered, the brakeman stirred, courteously removed his glasses and peered at Claremont with pale blue watery eyes. He blinked in surprise, then said: ‘This is indeed an honour, Colonel Claremont.’ Although over sixty years had passed since the brakeman had made his one and only crossing of the Atlantic, his Irish brogue was still so pronounced that he could have left his native Connemara only the previous day. He struggled to rise - no easy task from the position into which he had wedged himself - but Claremont waved him to sit down. The brake-man complied willingly and cast a meaningful glance towards the opened door.

Claremont made haste to close it and said: ‘Devlin, isn’t it?’

‘Seamus Devlin at your service, sir.’ ‘Bit of a lonely life you lead here, isn’t it?’ ‘It all depends upon what you mean by lonely, sir. Sure, I’m alone but I’m never lonely.’ He closed the book he had been reading and clasped it tight in both hands. ‘If you want a lonely job, Colonel, it’s up there in the driver’s cab. Sure, you’ve got your fireman, but you can’t talk to him, not with all that racket up front there. And when it’s raining or snowing or sleeting you’ve got to keep looking out to see where you’re going, so that you’re either frying or freezing. I should know, I spent forty-five years on the footplate but I got a bit past it a few years ago.’ He looked around him with some pride. ‘Reckon I’ve got the best job in the Union Pacific here. My own stove, my own food, my own bed, my own armchair -’

‘I was going to ask you about that,’ Claremont said curiously. ‘Hardly Union Pacific standard issue, I should have thought.’

‘I must have picked it up somewhere,’ Devlin said vaguely.

‘Many more years to retirement?’

Devlin smiled, almost conspiratorially. ‘The Colonel is very - what do you say? - diplomatic. Yes, that’s right, diplomatic. Well, sir, you’re right, I’m afraid I’m a mite old for the job but I kind of lost my birth certificate years ago and that made things a bit difficult for the Union Pacific. This is my last trip, Colonel. When I get back east, it’s my grand-daughter’s home and the old fireside for me.’

‘May heaven rain cordwood upon you,’ Claremont murmured.

‘Eh? I mean, I beg the Colonel’s pardon.’

‘Nothing. Tell me, Devlin, how do you pass the time here?’

‘Well, I cook and eat and sleep and -’

‘Yes, now. How about sleep? If you’re asleep and a bad corner or a steep descent comes up what -’

‘No trouble, sir. Chris - that’s Banlon the engineer - and I have what they call these days communication. Just a wire inside a tube, but it works. Chris gives half a dozen pulls, the bell rings in here and I give one pull back to show that I’m in the land of the living, like. Then he gives one, two, three or four pulls, all depends how much pressure he wants me to put on the wheel. Never failed yet, sir.’

‘But you can’t spend all your time just eating and sleeping?’

‘I read, sir. I read a lot. Hours every day.’

Claremont looked around. ‘You’ve got your library pretty well hidden.’

‘I haven’t got a library. Colonel. Just this one book. It’s all I ever read.’ He turned the book he held in his hand and showed it to Claremont: it was an ancient and sadly battered family Bible.

‘I see.’ Colonel Claremont, a strictly non-churchgoer whose closest brushes with religion came in his not infrequent conducting of burial services, felt and looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘Well, Devlin, let’s hope for a safe trip to Fort Humboldt and a safe last passage back east for you.’

‘Thank you, sir. Much obliged, I’m sure.’ Devlin had resumed his steel spectacles and had the Bible opened even before the Colonel had the brake van door closed behind him.

Claremont walked briskly towards the front of the train. Bellew and half a dozen of his men were busy dismantling the horse wagon ramps. Claremont said: ‘Livestock and men. All accounted for?’

‘Indeed, sir.’

‘Five minutes?’

‘Easily, Colonel.’

Claremont nodded and continued on his way. Pearce appeared round the corner of the depot building and hurried towards him. Pearce said: ‘I know you’ll never do it. Colonel, but you really do owe Bellew and his men an apology.’

‘No signs of them? None at all?’

‘Wherever they are, they’re not in Reese City. My life on it.’

Claremont’s first reaction, oddly enough, had been one almost of relief - relief that Pearce and his derelict posse had not succeeded where his own men had failed. But now the full implication of their apparent desertion or unforgivably delayed absence returned with renewed force and he said without unclenching his teeth: ‘I’ll have them court-martialled and dismissed the service for this.’

Pearce looked at him speculatively and said: ‘I never met them, of course. Like that, were they?’

‘No, dammit, they weren’t.’ Claremont slashed viciously at the side of his riding boot and barely repressed his wince of pain. ‘Oakland and Newell were two of the finest officers I’ve ever had serve under me. But no exceptions, no exceptions. Fine officers, all the same, fine officers - Come on, Marshal. Time we were gone.’

Pearce boarded the train. Claremont looked back to check that the horse wagon doors were closed, then turned and raised his hand. Banlon gave an acknowledging wave from his cab, moved inside and opened the steam regulator. The driving wheels slipped once, twice, three times; then they began to bite.

THREE (#ulink_0c657818-b02b-5708-ae76-c602498517ad)

By dusk, the troop train had left Reese City and the level plateau on which it stood So far behind that both were completely lost to sight. The high plain had now given way to the foothills of the true mountain country and the train was climbing gently up a long, wide, pine-wooded valley, the undulations of the track following closely those of the rock-strewn river alongside which it ran. The heavens were dark, there was no trace of the afterglow of sunset that must have been hidden behind those lowering clouds; there would be no stars, that night, and no moon; the leaden sky promised only one thing - snow.

The occupants of the officers’ day compartment, understandably enough, displayed a minimum of concern for the chill bleakness and plainly deteriorating weather in the world beyond their windows. Cocooned as they were in warmth and ease and comfort, it seemed not only pointless but downright wrong to dwell upon the rigours without. Luxury is a pervasive anodyne and, for what was supposed to be an army troop train, the officers’ compartment was unquestionably very luxurious indeed. There were two deep couches with split arm-rests at the front and back, and several scattered armchairs, all splendidly upholstered in buttoned-down brushed green velvet. The embroidered looped-back window curtains, held in place by tasselled silken cords, were made of what appeared to be the same material. The carpet was rust-coloured and deep of pile. There were several highly polished mahogany tables in the vicinity of the couches and chairs. In the right-hand front corner was a liquor cabinet, which was clearly not there for the purposes of display. The entire compartment was bathed in a warm amber glow from the gimballed and gleaming copper oil-lamps.

There were eight occupants of the compartment, seven of them with glasses in their hands. Nathan Pearce, seated beside Marica on the rear couch, had a glass of whisky, while she held a glass of port wine. On the front couch, the Governor and Colonel Claremont, and in two of the three armchairs, Dr Molyneux and Major O’Brien all held whisky glasses. In the third armchair the Rev. Theodore Peabody had a glass of mineral water and an expression of righteous superiority. The only person without a refreshment of any kind was John Deakin. Apart from the fact that it would have been unthinkable to offer hospitality to a criminal of such note, he would in any case have found it physically impossible to raise a glass to his lips as both hands were bound behind his back. His ankles, too, were tied. He was sitting on the floor, most uncomfortably hunched, close by the passageway leading to the night compartments. Apart from Marica, who cast him an occasionally troubled glance, none of the others present appeared to feel that Deakin’s presence there constituted a jarring note. On the frontier, life was cheap and suffering so commonplace as hardly to merit notice, far less sympathy.

Nathan Pearce lifted his glass. ‘Your very good health, gentlemen. My word. Colonel, I never knew the army travelled in such style. No wonder our taxes -’

Claremont was curt. ‘The army, Marshal, does not travel in such style. This is Governor Fairchild’s private coach. Behind your back are the two sleeping compartments normally reserved for the Governor and his wife - in this case the Governor and his niece - and beyond that again their private dining compartment. The Governor has very kindly offered to let us travel and eat with him.’

Pearce raised his glass again. ‘Well, bully for you. Governor.’ He paused and looked quizzically at Fairchild. ‘What’s the matter. Governor? You look a mite worried to me.’

The Governor did, indeed, look a trifle worried. He seemed paler than usual, his face drawn, his lips compressed. He forced a smile, emptied and refilled his glass and attempted to speak lightly.

‘Matters of state, my dear Marshal, matters of state. Life in the legislature is not all receptions and balls, you know.’