Breakheart Pass

Colonel Claremont left. Pearce said: 'Well, he doesn't pay the piper, the US tax-payer does that, but I suppose he calls the tune all the same. And half an hour?' He took O'Brien's arm and began to lead him towards the bar. 'Little enough time to make up for ten years.'

Governor Fairchild said: 'One moment, please, gentlemen.' He delved into a briefcase and held up a sealed package. 'Forgotten something, haven't we. Major?'

'Those old comrades' reunions.' He took the package and handed it across to Pearce. 'The Marshal at Ogden asked us to pass this on to you.'

Pearce nodded his thanks and the two men headed towards the bar. As they went, O'Brien looked casually around him: the smiling Irish eyes missed nothing. Nothing had changed in the past five minutes, no movement appeared to have been made: the ancients at the bar and tables might have been figures frozen for eternity into a waxen tableau. It was just at that moment that the outer door opened and five men entered and made for a distant table. They sat down and one of them produced a pack of cards. None of them spoke.

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.'