shifting heavy baulks of timber at high speed is no light work and Deakin had already transferred at least half of the remaining contents of the tender from the right to the left. He straightened wearily, rubbed an obviously aching back, turned away, moved into the cab and examined the steam-gauge. The needle, during his exertions, had fallen below the blue line. Hurriedly, Deakin opened the fire-box door, raked through the bed, threw some more cordwood into the hungry heart of the fire-box, closed the door and, without even glancing at the steam-gauge, returned to his back-breaking task in the tender.
He had removed no more than twenty baulks when he stopped work abruptly and brought the oil-lamp to examine the remaining pile of cordwood more closely. He set the oil-lamp to one side and threw the next dozen baulks to the left before reaching for the lamp again. He sank slowly to his knees, the normal lack of expression on his face replaced by a hard and bitter anger.
The two men lying huddled together were unmistakably dead, literally frozen stiff. Deakin had removed sufficient cordwood to reveal their upper bodies and faces. Both men had ghastly head wounds, both men wore the uniforms of officers of the United States Cavalry, one a Captain, the other a Lieutenant. Beyond a doubt Claremont's two missing officers, Oakland and Newell.
The anger had left Deakin's face: for a man who lived the life he did, anger, he had long discovered, was an emotion he couldn't afford. He stood and swiftly began to replace the cordwood, stacking it in the neat precise form in which he had found it until it had all been returned to its original position. Understandably, because of this necessity for precision and because of his rapidly increasing tiredness which was now but one stage removed from exhaustion, it took him twice as long to restack the pile as it had taken him to dismantle it.
Finished, he again checked the steam-gauge to find that the needle had now fallen well below the blue line, then again opened the fire-box door to reveal a red glow inside which was now very dull indeed. Wearily, Deakin resumed the stoking and thrust into the box every last baulk of timber it would accommodate. Again he closed the door, again he did not examine the gauge. He pulled his collar high, his hat low and swung down on the track-side into the icy breath-catching driving whiteness of what was now a near-blizzard.
Not bothering too much to conceal his presence – the visibility was now as close to zero as made no difference – Deakin walked back along the track-side, passing first the day-cum-dining coach, then the coach containing the galley and officers' night quarters. As he reached the end of this he stopped abruptly and cocked his head. He could distinctly hear a peculiar glug-glugging sound – peculiar in those circumstances but readily identifiable in more normal circumstances. Deakin eased forward in ghostlike silence and hitched a wary eye round the rear corner of the second coach.
On the leading platform of the third coach – the supply wagon – a man was sitting on the rail, his head tilted back as he drank deeply from the neck of a bottle. Because of the now almost horizontally driving snow and the fart that it was blowing directly from the front to the back of the train, the man was sitting in an almost completely snow-sheltered oasis; Deakin had no difficulty at all in recognizing the man as Henry.
Deakin pressed back against the coach, drew a deep breath of relief, pulled his sleeve across his forehead in another gesture of relief, silently retraced his steps for several paces, then moved directly out from the train and came curving back in a semicircle which took him to a point just to the rear of the supply wagon. This time his approach was a great deal more cautious. He dropped to his hands and knees, crawled cautiously forward and glanced upward. A second man was on guard at the rear of the supply wagon; there was no mistaking the black moonface of Carlos even although the gleaming smile was in noticeable and understandable abeyance.
Deakin repeated the circling tactic and brought up at the rear end of the first horse wagon. He mounted the platform, effected a prudently stealthy entrance and closed the door behind him. As he moved towards the front of the wagon a horse whinnied nervously. Deakin immediately moved towards the horse, stroked its neck and murmured reassuring words; the horse nuzzled his face and fell quiet. If Carlos had heard the sound he paid no attention; apart from the fact that it was a sound that one would naturally expect to hear from a horse wagon, it wasn't much of a night for paying attention.
Arrived at the front end of the wagon, Deakin peered through a crack in the door. Carlos, only a few feet away, appeared to be gloomily contemplating what must have been his very chilly feet indeed. Deakin turned away to the slatted haybox to his left. With great care and in complete silence he removed a few of the top bars and an armful of hay, recovered the telegraph transmitter, replaced the hay and the bars as he had found them, and moved off with the transmitter to the rear of the wagon where he descended the steps, looked quickly to the front and the rear – visibility was still almost nil – stepped down silently into the snow and made his way quickly towards the rear of the train.
A convenient fifty yards from the rear of the train Deakin located a telegraph pole. He unwound the trailing lead from the transmitter and secured one end to his belt. Then he began to climb the telegraph pole.
'Began' was the operative word. He managed to get about three feet off the ground, then helplessly remained there, unable to make another inch. The effects of snow, high winds and freezing temperatures had combined to encase the pole in an impenetrable sheath of ice which offered a zero friction coefficient, an entire lack of grip which rendered further progress quite impossible. Deakin returned to earth, stood there for a moment in thought, then tore a quantity of material from his shirt and ripped it into two pieces.
He made for the nearest angled guy wire, wrapped his legs around it, and, using them and the two improvised gloves from his shirt to afford a friction grip, started to climb again. It was a fairly difficult climb and, in the light of what he had recently been through, a most exhausting one, but by no means impossible; by the time he'd reached the top and straddled the crossbar the matter that concerned him most was that his frozen hands felt as if they no longer belonged to him. At that moment frostbite was the very last thing he wanted.
Two minutes of rubbing and kneading his hands and the pain that steadily accompanied this as the circulation returned convinced him that this misfortune had not indeed befallen him. He detached the end of the trailing lead from his belt, secured it firmly to a telegraph wire and returned to earth the way he had come and so swiftly that by the time he arrived there the hands that had so lately felt frozen now felt as if they had been badly burned. He uncovered the transmitter set and bent over it, shielding it as best he could from the snow, and began to transmit.
At Fort Humboldt, where the weather was no better and no worse than it was where Deakin was crouched, Sepp Calhoun, White Hand and two other white men were sitting in the Commandant's office. Calhoun, as usual, was using his boots to make free of Colonel Fairchild's desk, while both hands were occupied in similarly making free of the Colonel's whisky and cigars. White Hand was sitting erect in a hard-backed chair, carefully not touching the glass before him. The door opened and a man entered, his face conveying as high a degree of urgency as is possible for one whose bewhiskered and bearded face is liberally covered in snow.
Calhoun and White Hand looked at each other, then moved swiftly towards the door. Even as they reached the telegraph office Carter was transcribing a message. Calhoun glanced briefly at him and Simpson, the other captive telegraph operator. nodded briefly at the two guards and took up his customary position behind the desk. White Hand remained standing. Carter ceased writing and handed a slip of paper to Calhoun, whose face immediately assumed a thunderous expression of frustrated anger.
'Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!'
White Hand said in a quiet voice: 'Trouble, Sepp Calhoun? Trouble for White Hand?'
'Trouble for White Hand. Listen. “Attempt on troop wagons failed. Heavy armed guard on all coaches. Advise.” How in God's name did the damned idiots not–'
'Such talk will not help, Calhoun.' Calhoun looked at him without expression. 'My men and I will help.'
'It's a bad night.' Calhoun went to the door, opened it and passed outside. White Hand followed, closing the door behind him. Within moments the figures of the two men whitened in the heavy driving snow.
Calhoun said: 'A very bad night, White Hand.'
'The rewards are great. Your words, Sepp Calhoun.'
'You can do it? Even on a night like this?' White Hand nodded. 'Very well. The entrance to Breakheart Pass. A cliff on one side, steep slope with plenty of rock cover for you and your men on the other. You can leave your horses half a mile–'
'White Hand knows what to do.'
'Sorry. Come on. Let's tell them to instruct Banlon to stop the train there. You'll never have an easier job. White Hand.'
