Kitabı oku: «Breakheart Pass»

ONE

The saloon bar of Reese City’s grandiosely named Imperial Hotel had about it an air of defeat, of uncaring dilapidation, of the hauntingly sad nostalgia for the half-forgotten glories of days long gone by, of days that would never come again. The occasionally plastered walls were cracked and dirty and liberally behung with faded pictures of what appeared to be an assortment of droop-moustached desperadoes: the lack of ‘Wanted’ notices below the pictures struck an almost jarring note. The splintered planks that passed for a floor were incredibly warped and of a hue that made the walls appear relatively freshly painted: much missed-at spittoons were much in evidence, while there were few square inches without their cigar butts: those lay about in their hundreds, the vast majority bearing beneath them charred evidence to the fact that their owners hadn’t bothered to stub them out either before or after dropping them to the floor. The shades of the oil-lamps,like the murky roof above, were blackened by soot, the full-length mirror behind the bar was fly-blown and filthy. For the weary traveller seeking a haven of rest, the saloon bar offered nothing but a total lack of hygiene, an advanced degree of decadence and an almost stultifying sense of depression and despair.

Neither did the majority of the customers. They were remarkably in keeping with the general ambience of the saloon. Most of them were disproportionately elderly, markedly dispirited, unshaven and shabby, all but a lonely few contemplating the future, clearly a bleak and hopeless one, through the bottoms of their whisky glasses. The solitary barman, a myopic individual with a chest-high apron which, presumably to cope with laundry problems, he’d prudently had dyed black in the distant past, appeared to share in the general malaise: wielding a venerable hand-towel in which some faint traces of near-white could with difficulty be distinguished, he was gloomily attempting the impossible task of polishing a sadly cracked and chipped glass, his ultra-slow movements those of an arthritic zombie. Between the Imperial Hotel and, also of that precise day and age, the Dickensian concept of a roistering, hospitable and heart-warming coaching inn of Victorian England lay a gulf of unbridgeable immensity.

In all the saloon there was only one isolated oasis of conversational life. Six people were seated round a table close by the door, three of them in a high-backed bench against the wall: the central figure of those three was unquestionably the dominant one at the table. Tall and lean, deeply tanned and with the heavily crow-footed eyes of a man who has spent too long in the sun, he was dressed in the uniform of a colonel of the United States Cavalry, was aged about fifty, was -unusually for that time - clean-shaven and had an aquiline and intelligent face crowned by a mass of brushed-back silver hair. He wore, at that moment, an expression that could hardly be described as encouraging.

The expression was directed at a man standing opposite him on the other side of the table, a tall and powerfully built individual with a darkly saturnine expression and a black hairline moustache. He was dressed entirely in black. His badge of office, that of a US Marshal, glittered on his chest. He said: ‘But surely. Colonel Claremont, in circumstances such as those -’

‘Regulations are regulations.’ Claremont’s voice, though civil enough, was sharp and incisive, an accurate reflection of the man’s appearance. ‘Army business is army business. Civilian business is civilian business. I’m sorry, Marshal - ah -’

‘Pearce. Nathan Pearce.’

‘Of course. Of course. My apologies. I should have known.’ Claremont shook his head regretfully, but there was no trace of regret in his voice.‘Ours is an army troop train. No civilians aboard - except by special permission from Washington.’

Pearce said mildly: ‘But couldn’t we all be regarded as working for the Federal government?’

‘By army definitions, no.’

‘I see.’ Pearce clearly didn’t see at all. He looked slowly thoughtfully around the other five - one of them a young woman: none wore uniform. Pearce centred his gaze on a small, thin, frock-coated individual with a preacher’s collar, a high domed forehead chasing a rapidly receding hairline and an expression of permanently apprehensive anxiety. He shifted uneasily under the Marshal’s penetrating stare and his prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as if he were swallowing with considerable speed and frequency.

Claremont said drily: ‘The Reverend Theodore Peabody has got both special permission and qualifications.’ It was clear that Claremont’s regard for the preacher was somewhat less than unlimited. ‘His cousin is private secretary to the President. The Reverend Peabody is going to be a chaplain in Virginia City’

‘He’s going to be what?’ Pearce looked at a now positively cringing preacher, then unbelievingly at Claremont. ‘He’s mad! He’d last a damn sight longer among the Paiute Indians.’

Peabody’s tongue licked his lips as he resumed his swallowing performance. ‘But - but they say the Paiutes kill every white man on sight.’

‘Not on sight. They tend to take their time about it.’ Pearce moved his eyes again. Seated beyond the by now plainly scared pastor was a massively rotund figure in a loudly checked suit. He had the jowls to match his build, an expansive smile and a booming voice.

‘Dr Edward Molyneux, at your service, Marshal.’

‘I suppose you’re going to Virginia City too. Plenty work for you there, Doctor - filling out death certificates. Precious few from natural causes, I’m afraid.’

Molyneux said comfortably: ‘Not for me, those dens of iniquity. You see before you the newly appointed resident surgeon for Fort Humboldt. They haven’t been able to find a uniform to fit me yet.’

Pearce nodded, passed up several obvious comments and shifted his eyes again. A degree of irritation creeping into his voice, Claremont said: ‘I may as well save you the labour of individual interrogation. Not that you have the right to know. A matter of courtesy, only.’ Whether rebuke was either intended or accepted was impossible to say. Claremont gestured to the man seated on his right, a splendidly patriarchal figure with flowing white hair, moustache and beard who could have moved in and taken his place in the US Senate without having an eyelid batted in his general direction. Beard apart, the overall resemblance to Mark Twain was quite startling. Claremont said : ‘Governor Fairchild of Nevada you will know.’ Pearce inclined his head, then looked with a slight trace of interest at the young woman seated to Claremont’s left. Perhaps in her mid-twenties, she had a pale face, strangely dark smoky eyes and her tightly drawn hair - or what little could be seen of it under a grey and wide-brimmed felt hat - was as dark as night. She sat huddled under a matching grey coat: the proprietor of the Imperial Hotel did not regard his profit margin as being of such an order as to justify any extravagant drain on the fuel supply for his corded wood stove. Claremont said: ‘Miss Marica Fairchild, the Governor’s niece.’

‘Ah!’ Pearce looked from her to the Colonel. ‘The new quarter-master sergeant?’

Claremont said shortly: ‘She’s joining her father, the Commanding Officer at Fort Humboldt. Senior officers do have that privilege.’ He gestured to his left. ‘The Governor’s aide and liaison officer to the Army, Major Bernard O’Brien. Major O’Brien -’

He broke off and looked curiously at Pearce. Pearce, in turn, was staring at O’Brien, a burly, sun-tanned, cheerfully plump-faced man. O’Brien returned the look with growing interest, then, with the almost immediate coming of recognition, jumped to his feet. Suddenly, both men, smiling widely, moved quickly towards each other and shook hands - four-handed - like long-lost brothers, before pounding each other on the back. The ancient regulars of the Imperial Hotel gazed upon the scene with wonderment: none of those present could ever recall Marshal Nathan Pearce displaying even a slight degree of emotion before.

Delight was in O’Brien’s face. ‘Sergeant Pearce! Why did it never ring a bell? The Nathan Pearce! I’d never have recognized you. Why man, at Chattanooga your beard was -’

‘Was nearly as long as your own. Lieutenant.’

‘Major.’ O’Brien spoke in mock severity, then added sadly: ‘Promotion comes slowly, but it comes. Nathan Pearce, eh? The greatest army scout, the finest Indian fighter, the best gun -’

Pearce’s voice was dry. ‘Except for yourself, Major, except for yourself. Remember that day …’ Arms around each other’s shoulders and apparently quite oblivious of the rest of the company, the two men moved purposefully towards the bar, so profoundly an architectural monstrosity in design as to be deserving of a certain grudging admiration for its shoddy magnificence. It consisted of three enormous, and presumably enormously heavy, railway sleepers resting unsecured on a pair of trestles that seemed incapable of bearing a fraction of the weight they were being called upon to do. Originally, the classic simplicity of this design had been obscured by green linoleum on top and a floor-length drapery of velvet that had surrounded three sides. But time had had its inevitable way with both linoleum and velvet and the secrets of the designer were there for all to see. But despite the fragility of its construction, Pearce did not hesitate to lean his elbows on the bar and make appropriate signals to the glass-polisher. The two men fell into a low-voiced conversation.

The five who still remained at the table by the door remained silent for some time, then Marica Fairchild said in some puzzlement: ‘What did the Marshal mean by “except for yourself”? I mean, they were talking about scouting and fighting Indians and shooting and, well, all the Major can do is fill in forms, sing Irish songs, tell those awful stories of his and - and -’

‘And kill people more efficiently than any man I ever knew. Agreed, Governor?’

‘Agreed.’ The Governor laid his hand on his niece’s forearm. ‘O’Brien, my dear, was one of the most highly decorated Union Army officers in the War between the States. His - ah - expertise with either a rifle or hand gun has to be seen to be believed. Major O’Brien is my aide, agreed, but an aide of a very special kind. Up in those mountain states politics - and, after all, I am a politician - tend to assume a rather - what shall we say? - physical aspect. But as long as Major O’Brien is around the prospects of violence leave me unconcerned.’

‘People would harm you? You mean that you have enemies?’

‘Enemies!’ The Governor didn’t exactly snort but he came pretty close to it. ‘Show me a Governor west of the Mississippi who says he hasn’t and I’ll show you an out-and-out liar.’

Marica looked at him uncertainly then at the broad back of O’Brien at the bar, the disbelief in her face deepening. She made to speak, then changed her mind as O’Brien and Pearce, glasses in their hands, turned away from the bar and made their way back to their table. They were talking earnestly now, Pearce obviously in some exasperation: O’Brien was trying to be conciliatory.

Pearce said: ‘But damn it, O’Brien, you know what this man Sepp Calhoun is like. He’s killed, robbed both stage companies and the railroad, fomented range wars, sold guns and whisky to the Indians -’

‘We all know what he’s like.’ O’Brien was being very pacific. ‘If ever a man deserved to hang, it’s Calhoun. And hang he will.’

‘Not until a lawman gets his hands on him. And I’m the lawman, not you and your lot. And he’s up there now! In custody. In Fort Humboldt. All I want to do is to fetch him back. Up with your train, back with the next.’

‘You heard what the Colonel said, Nathan.’ Awkward and ill at ease, O’Brien turned to Claremont. ‘Do you think we could have this criminal sent back to Reese City under armed escort, sir?’

Claremont didn’t hesitate. ‘That can be arranged.’

Pearce looked at him and said coldly: ‘I thought you said this wasn’t army business.’

‘It isn’t. I’m doing you a favour. That way or no way, Marshal.’ He pulled out his pocket watch and glanced irritably at it. ‘Haven’t those damned horses been watered and provisioned yet? God, if you want anything done in today’s army you’ve got to see to it yourself.’ He pushed back his chair and rose. ‘Excuse me, Governor, but we’re due to leave in half an hour. Back in a moment.’

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.’

‘AH 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 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, 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.