Breakheart Pass Page 2

  O'Brien said: 'A lively bunch of citizens you have in Reese City.'

  'All the lively citizens – and by “lively” I include quite a few who had to be helped on to the saddles of their horses – left some months ago when they made the big Bonanza strike in the Comstock Lode. All that's left now are the old men – and God knows there are few enough of those around, growing old is not much of a habit in these parts – the drifters and the drunks, the shiftless and the ne'er-do-wells. Not that I'm complaining. Reese City needs a peace-keeping Marshal as much as the local cemetery does.' He sighed, held up two fingers to the barman, produced a knife, sliced open the package that O'Brien had given him, extracted a bunch of very badly illustrated 'Wanted' notices and smoothed them out on the cracked linoleum of the bar-top.

  O'Brien said: 'You don't seem very enthusiastic'

  'I'm not. Most of them arrive in Mexico six months before their pictures are circulated. Usually the wrong pictures of the wrong men, anyway.'

  The Reese City railroad station building was in approximately the same state of decrepitude as the saloon bar of the Imperial Hotel. The scorching summers and sub-zero winters of the mountains had had their way with the untreated clapboard walls and, although not yet four years old, the building looked to be in imminent danger of falling to pieces. The gilt-painted sign REESE CITY was so blistered and weather-beaten as to be practically indecipherable.

  Colonel Claremont pushed aside a sheet of canvas that had taken the place of a door long parted with its rusted-through hinges and called out for attention. There was no reply. Had the Colonel been better acquainted with the ways of life in Reese City he would have found little occasion for surprise in this, for apart from the time devoted to sleeping and eating and supervising the arrival and departure of trains – rare occasions, those, of which he was amply forewarned by friendly telegraph operators up and down the line – the station-master, the Union Pacific 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 highstacked locomotive and tender loaded with cordwood, 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 horsetrucks? 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 w
as 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. Marshal …'

  Pearce picked up what was left of the pack of cards and ruffled his way through them. Suddenly he stopped and turned up his right hand: another ace of hearts lay there. Pearce laid it face down on the table, took the ace of hearts from the stranger's hand and laid it, also face down, beside the other. Their backs were identical. Pearce said: 'Two matching decks. Who provided those?'

  'I'll give you one guess.' The overtones in Garritty's voice were, in all conscience, grim enough: the undertones were considerably worse.

  'An old trick,' the seated man said. His voice was low but, considering the highly compromising situation in which he found himself, remarkably steady. 'Somebody put it there. Somebody who knew I had the ace.'

  'What's your name?'

  'Deakin. John Deakin.'

  'Stand up, Deakin.' The man did so. Pearce moved leisurely round the table until he was face to face with Deakin. Their eyes were on a level. Pearce said: 'Gun?'

  'No gun.'

  'You surprise me. I should have thought a gun would have been essential for a man like you – for self-defence, if nothing else.'

  'I'm not a man of violence.'

  'I've got the feeling you're going to experience some whether you like it or not.' With his right hand Pearce lifted the left-hand side of Deakin's sheepskin coat while with his free hand he delved into the depth of Deakin's inside lining pocket. After a few seconds' preliminary exploration he withdrew his left hand and fanned out an interesting variety of aces and face-cards.

  'My, my,' O'Brien murmured. 'What's known as playing it close to the chest.'

  Pearce pushed the money lying in front of Deakin across to Garritty, who made no attempt to pick it up. Garritty said harshly: 'My money is not enough.'

  'I know it isn't.' Pearce was being patient. 'You should have gathered as much from what I said. You know my position, Garritty. Cheating at cards is hardly a Federal offence, so I can't interfere. But if I see violence taking place before my eyes – well, as the local peace-keeper, I'm bound to interfere. Give me your gun.'

  'My pleasure.' The ring of ominous satisfaction in Garritty's voice was there for all to hear. He handed his mammoth pistol across to Pearce, glared at Deakin and jerked his thumb in the direction of the front door. Deakin remained motionless. Garritty rounded the table and repeated the gesture. Deakin made an almost imperceptible motion of the head, but one unmistakably negative. Garritty struck him, backhanded, across the face. There was no reaction. Garritty said: 'Outside!'

  'I told you,' Deakin said. 'I'm not a man of violence.'

  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 w
as 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

  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.