Breakheart Pass

away another soldier sat by the telegraph. Calhoun looked at the man by his side.

'Well, Carter, let's see if Simpson really transmitted the message I gave him to translate.' Scowling, Carter passed the message across. Calhoun took it and read aloud: '“Three more cases. No more deaths. Hope epidemic has passed peak. Expected time of arrival, please.”' He looked towards the operator. 'Takes a clever man not to be too clever, eh, Simpson? Ain't either of us can afford to make a mistake, is there?'

In the day coach Colonel Claremont had just read out the same message. He laid the note down and said: 'Well, that does make good news. Our time of arrival?' He glanced at O'Brien. 'Approximately.'

'To haul this heavy load with a single loco?' O'Brien pondered briefly. 'Thirty hours, I'd say, sir. I can check with Banlon.'

'No need. Near enough.' He turned to Ferguson. 'You heard? Tell them–'

Marica said: 'My father–'

Ferguson nodded, transmitted. He listened to the reply, eased his headphones and looked up. He said: “Expect you tomorrow afternoon. Colonel Fairchild well.”

While Marica smiled her relief, Pearce said: 'Could you tell the Colonel I'm aboard, coming to take Sepp Calhoun into custody?'

In the Fort Humboldt telegraph room, Sepp Calhoun was also smiling, but not with relief. He made no attempt to conceal the wicked amusement in his eyes as he handed a slip of telegraph paper to a tall, grey-haired, grey-moustached Colonel of the United States Cavalry. 'Honestly, now. Colonel Fairchild, doesn't that beat everything! They're going to come to take poor old Sepp Calhoun into custody. Whatever in the world shall I do?'

Colonel Fairchild read the message and said nothing. His face expressed nothing. Contemptuously, he opened his fingers and let the message drop to the floor. For a moment Calhoun's eyes became still, then he relaxed and smiled again. He could afford to smile. He looked at the four men close to the doorway, two raggedly dressed white men and two equally unprepossessing Indians, all four with rifles pointed variously at Fairchild and the two soldiers, and said: The Colonel must be feeling hungry. Let him get back to his breakfast.'

Claremont said: 'Now try for the telegraph operator at the Reese City depot. Find out if he has any information for us about Captain Oakland or Lieutenant Newell.'

Ferguson said: The depot, sir? that'll be the station-master. I mean, they don't have a telegraph office in Reese City any more. They tell me the telegraphist left for the Big Bonanza some time ago.'

'Well, the station-master.'

'Yes, sir.' Ferguson hesitated. 'The word is, sir, that he's not seen at the depot very often. He appears to spend most of his life in the back room of the Imperial Hotel.'

'Try, anyway.'

Ferguson tried. He transmitted the call-sign at least a dozen times, then looked up. 'I don't seem to be able to raise them, sir.'

O'Brien said, sotto voce, to Pearce: 'Maybe they should switch the telegraph to the Imperial.' The tightening of Claremont's lips showed that the remark hadn't been quite so sotto voce as intended, but he ignored it and said to Ferguson: 'Keep trying.'

Ferguson tried and kept on trying. His earphones remained obstinately silent. He shook his head and looked towards Claremont, who forestalled him. 'No one manning the other end, eh?'

'No, sir, nothing like that.' Ferguson was genuinely puzzled. 'The line's out of action. Dead. One of the relay repeaters gone, most like.'

'I don't see how it can have gone. No snow, no high winds – and nothing the matter with any of them when we called the Fort from Reese City yesterday. Keep trying while we have some breakfast.' He paused, looked first of all unenthusiastically at Deakin, then in grieved enquiry at Pearce. 'This criminal here, this Houston. Does he have to eat with us?'

'Deakin,' Deakin said. 'Not Houston.'

'Shut up,' Pearce said. To the Colonel: 'He could starve for all I care – but, well, he can sit at my table. If the Reverend and the Doctor don't mind, that is.' He glanced around. 'I see the good Doctor isn't up and about yet.' He took Deakin none too gently by the arm. 'Come on.'

The seven people taking breakfast were seated as they had been the previous evening, except that Deakin had taken the place of Dr Molyneux, who had yet to put in an appearance. Peabody, seated next to him, spent what was clearly a most uncomfortable meal: he kept glancing furtively at Deakin and had about him the look of a divine on the qui vive for the emergence of a pair of horns and forked tail. Deakin, for his part, paid no attention: as befitted a man who had just undergone an enforced absence from the pleasures of the table, his undivided attention was devoted to the contents of the plate before him.

Claremont finished his meal, sat back, nodded to Henry to pour him some more coffee, lit a cheroot and glanced across at Pearce's table. He permitted himself one of his rare and wintry smiles.

'I'm afraid Dr Molyneux is going to find some difficulty in adjusting to army breakfast times. Henry, go and waken him.' He twisted in his seat and called down the passageway. 'Ferguson?'

'No luck, sir. Nothing. Quite dead.'

For a moment, head still averted, Claremont tapped his fingers irresolutely on the table, then made up his mind. 'Dismantle your equipment,' he called, then turned to face the company again. 'We'll leave as soon as he's ready. Major O'Brien, if you would be so kind–' He broke off in astonishment as Henry, his measured steward's gait in startling abeyance, almost rushed into the diningroom, wide eyes reflecting the shock mirrored in the long lugubrious face.

'What on earth's the matter, Henry?'

'He's dead, Colonel! He's lying there dead! Dr Molyneux.'

'Dead? Dead? The doctor? Are you – are you sure, Henry? Did you shake him?'

Henry nodded and shivered at the same moment, then gestured towards the window. 'He's like the ice in that river.' He moved to one side as O'Brien pushed by. 'Heart, I'd say, sir. Looked as if he slipped away peaceful, like.'

Claremont rose and paced up and down in the narrow confined space available to him. 'Good God! This is dreadful, dreadful.' It was clear that Claremont, apart from the natural shock at the news of Molyneux's death, was aghast at the implications it held: but it was left to the Reverend Peabody to put it into words.

'In the midst of life …' For a person built along the lines of an undernourished scarecrow Peabody was possessed of an enormously deep and sepulchral voice that seemed to resonate from the depths of the tomb. 'Dreadful for him. Colonel, dreadful to be struck down in his prime, dreadful for those sick and dying souls in the Fort who were depending upon him, and him alone, to come to their succour. Ah, the irony of it, the bitter irony of it all. Life is but a walking shadow.' What was meant by the last remark was not clear and Peabody, it was equally clear, was in no mind to elucidate: hands clasped and eyes screwed tightly shut, Peabody was deep in silent prayer.

O'Brien entered, his face grave and set. He nodded in reply to Claremont's interrogative glance.

'Died in his sleep, I'd say, sir. As Henry says, it looks like a heart attack, and a sudden and massive one at that. From his face, it seems that he never knew anything about it.'

Deakin said: 'Could I have a look?'

Seven pairs of eyes, including those of the Reverend Peabody, who had momentarily interrupted his intercession with the hereafter, immediately turned on Deakin, but none with quite the cold hostility of Colonel Claremont's.

'You? What the devil for?'

'Establish the exact cause of death, maybe.' Deakin shrugged, relaxed to the point of indifference. 'You know that I trained to be a doctor.'

'Qualified?'