Breakheart Pass. Alistair MacLean

Railway’s sole employee in Reese City, was invariably to be found in the back room of the Imperial Hotel steadily consuming whisky as if it cost him nothing, which in fact it didn’t. There was an amicable but unspoken agreement between hotel proprietor and station-master: although all the hotel’s liquor supplies came by rail from Ogden, the hotel hadn’t received a freight bill for almost three years.

      Claremont, anger in his face now, pushed aside the curtain and went out, his eyes running over the length of his troop train. Behind the high-stacked locomotive and tender loaded with cord-wood, were what appeared to be seven passenger coaches with a brake van at the end. That the fourth and fifth coaches were not, in fact, passenger coaches was obvious from the fact that two heavily sparred gangways reached up from the track-side to the centre of both. Standing at the foot of the first of the gangways was a burly, dark and splendidly moustached individual in shirt-sleeves, busy ticking items off a check-list he held in his hand. Claremont walked briskly towards him. He regarded Bellew as the best sergeant in the United States Cavalry while Bellew, in his turn, regarded Claremont as the finest CO he’d served under. Both men went to considerable lengths to conceal the opinions they held of each other.

      Claremont nodded to Bellew, climbed up the first ramp and peered inside the coach. About four-fifths of its length had been fitted out with horse-stalls, the remaining space being given over to food and water. All the stalls were empty. Claremont descended the gangway.

      ‘Well, Bellew, where are the horses? Not to mention your troops. All to hell and gone, I suppose?’

      Bellew, buttoning up his uniform jacket, was unruffled. ‘Fed and watered. Colonel. The men are taking them for a bit of a canter. After two days in the wagons they need the exercise, sir.’

      ‘So do I, but I haven’t the time for it. All right, all right, our four-legged friends are your responsibility, but get them aboard. We’re leaving in half an hour. Food and water enough for the horses till we reach the fort?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘And for your men?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘Fuel for all the stoves, including the horse-trucks? It’s going to be most damnably cold up in those mountains.’

      ‘Plenty, sir.’

      ‘For your sake, for all our sakes, there had better be. Where’s Captain Oakland? And Lieutenant Newell?’

      ‘They were here just before I took the men and the horses down to the livery stables. I saw them walking up to the front of the train as if they were heading for town. Aren’t they in town, sir?’

      ‘How the devil should I know? Would I be asking you if I did?’ Claremont’s irritation threshold was rapidly sinking towards a new low. ‘Have a detail find them. Tell them to report to me at the Imperial. My God! The Imperial!’

      Bellew heaved a very perceptible but discreetly inaudible long-suffering sigh of relief as Claremont turned away and strode forward towards the locomotive. He swung himself up the iron steps into the driving cab. Chris Banlon, the engineer, was short and lean almost to the point of scrawniness; he had an almost incredibly wrinkled, nut-brown face which made a highly incongruous setting for a pair of periwinkle blue eyes. He was making some adjustments with the aid of a heavy monkey wrench. Becoming aware of Claremont’s presence, he made a last fractional adjustment to the bolt he was working on, returned the wrench to the tool-box and smiled at Claremont.

      ‘Afternoon, Colonel. This is a privilege.’

      ‘Trouble?’

      ‘Just making sure there is none, sir.’

      ‘Steam up?’

      Banlon swung open the door of the fire-box. The blast of heat from the glowingly red-hot bed of cordwood made Claremont take a couple of involuntary steps backward. Banlon closed the door. ‘Ready to roll. Colonel.’

      Claremont glanced to the rear where the tender was piled high with neatly stacked cordwood. ‘Fuel?’

      ‘Enough to last to the first depot. More than enough.’ Banlon glanced at the tender with pride. ‘Henry and I filled every last corner. A grand worker is Henry.’

      ‘Henry? The steward?’ The frown was in Claremont’s voice, not on his face. ‘And your mate - Jackson, isn’t it? The stoker?’

      ‘Me and my big mouth,’ Banlon said sadly. ‘I’ll never learn. Henry asked to help. Jackson - ah -helped us after.’

      ‘After what?’

      ‘After he’d come back from town with the beer.’ The extraordinarily bright blue eyes peered anxiously at Claremont. ‘I hope the Colonel doesn’t mind?’

      Claremont was curt. ‘You’re railway employees, not soldiers. No concern of mine what you do -just so long as you don’t drink too much and drive us off one of the trestle bridges up in those damned mountains.’ He turned to go down the steps, then swung around again. ‘Seen Captain Oakland or Lieutenant Newell?’

      ‘Both of them, as a matter of fact. Stopped by here to chat to Henry and me, then went into town.’

      ‘Say where they were going?’

      ‘Sorry, sir.’

      ‘Thanks, anyway.’ He descended, looked down the train to where Bellew was saddling up his horse and called: ‘Tell the search detail that they are in town.’

      Bellew gave a sketchy salute.

      O’Brien and Pearce turned away from the bar in the hotel saloon, Pearce stuffing the ‘Wanted’ notices back into their envelope. Both men halted abruptly and turned as a shout of anger came from a distant corner of the room.

      At the card table, a very large man, dressed in moleskin trousers and jacket that looked as if they had been inherited from his grandfather, and sporting a magnificent dark red beard, had risen to his feet and was leaning across the table. His right hand held what appeared to be a small cannon, which is not an unfair description of a Peacemaker Colt, while his left pinioned to the surface of the table the left wrist of a man sitting across the table from him. The face of the seated man was shadowed and indistinct, being largely obscured by a high-turned sheepskin collar and a black stetson pulled low on his forehead.

      The man with the red beard said: That was once too often, friend.’

      Pearce brought up by the table and said mildly: ‘What was once too often, Garritty?’

      Garritty advanced the Peacemaker till the muzzle was less than six inches from the seated man’s face. ‘Slippery fingers here. Marshal. Cheating bastard’s taken a hundred and twenty dollars from me in fifteen minutes.’

      Pearce glanced briefly over his shoulder, more out of instinct than any curiosity, as the saloon bar door opened and Colonel Claremont entered. Claremont halted briefly, located the current centre of action within two seconds and made his unhesitating way towards it: to play the part of bit player or spectator was not in Claremont’s nature. Pearce returned his attention to Garritty.

      ‘Maybe he’s just a good player.’

      ‘Good?’ Garritty appeared to smile but, behind all that russet foliage, his intended expression was almost wholly a matter for conjecture. ‘He’s brilliant - too brilliant by half. I can tell. You won’t forget. Marshal, that I have been playing cards for fifty years now.’

      Pearce nodded. ‘You’ve left me the poorer for meeting you across the poker table.’

      Garritty twisted the left wrist of the seated man, who struggled hopelessly to resist, but Garritty had more than all the leverage he required. With the back of the left wrist pressed to the table, the cards in the hand were exposed: face-cards all of them, the top being the ace of hearts.

      Pearce said: ‘Looks a pretty fair hand to me.’

      ‘Fair is not the word I’d use.’ Garritty nodded to the deck on the table. ‘About the middle,