The speeding train hit the alpine curve going way too fast.
Derailment.
The forward engine car jumped the tracks, bumping roughly over them before skidding out onto the steeply sloping plain of snow beyond the curve.
The rest of the great black train followed the engine car, leaping off the rails before also sliding out onto the snow plain.
The engine car skidded down the slope, its forward grille grinding into the powder, the rest of the train snaking along behind it like a twisted accordion, the whole crashing mess turning laterally as it slid until the entire train was sliding in reverse down the slope and headed inexorably toward the bottom, where there was nothing but a bare cliff edge and a thousand-foot drop.
And circling above all this was the Hind gunship.
Inside the train, the world spun crazily.
The shocking jolt of their derailment had sent the Captain of the Guard flying sideways, slamming into the right-hand wall of the carriage. Then the inertia of the train’s lateral spin as it slid down the slope—at first forward, now backward—pressed him into it.
West and Stretch were better prepared: they’d grabbed hold of the nearest cell bars at the first bump and it still took all of their strength to stay upright during the crazy bouncing of the derailment—Stretch grabbing Tank, West clutching Wizard.
Yet still, in its own out-of-control way, this was part of West’s plan. He’d planned to crash there. To end up on this snow plain with the train buried in the deep snow.
Because he still needed something.
He still needed the Chinese to—
But then with shocking suddenness something happened that West hadn’t planned.
The train went over the edge at the base of the snow slope.
UNFORTUNATELY,the snow hadn’t quite been deep enough, its slick icy base causing the snakelike train to slide all the way down the snow plain to the very edge.
Now traveling backward, the rear engine car went over the edge first, its weight pulling first one, then two, then three carriages over with it—
West felt it coming an instant before it happened.
Felt the distinctive tug of the train’s last three cars—the engine car and the last two regular carriages—going over the precipice a moment before his own carriage lurched sickeningly and…
“Grab something!” he yelled to the others, including Wizard who was still not yet free of his ringbolts.
Their carriage went over the edge.
The world went vertical.
Anything not nailed down dropped the length of the carriage, including one of the Captain of the Guard’s men.
With a cry, the hapless fellow fell the full vertical length of the carriage, hitting the heavy iron door at the bottom with a foul cracking noise.
The Guard Captain and his remaining companion had quicker reflexes: as the carriage fell, they both discarded their guns in favor of having free hands, and rolled into a nearby cell at the top end of the now-vertical carriage.
West and Stretch grabbed the bars of the nearest cell, holding on to Wizard and Tank, before—smack—their carriage’s fall was arrested.
Somehow, the entire train had stopped its plunge down the cliff face, coming to a jarring, crunching halt.
Although they couldn’t see it, the train’s lead engine car had rammed up against a large boulder at the edge of the precipice and lodged there, holding fast, holding the entire train suspended beneath it, dangling over the thousand-foot drop!
West quickly took in their new predicament: he, Stretch, Wizard, and Tank were halfway down the vertical carriage. The Guard Captain and his buddy were up near the top, resting against the now-horizontal wall of their cell, not far from the interconnecting door that led upward to safety.
A grinding groaning sound.
With a jerk the entire train dropped three feet. Chunks of snow rained past the barred windows. The upper engine was slipping, a yard at a time.
West exchanged a look with Stretch.
Then another groan, but a different kind: the sound of a metal coupling straining under the weight of the dangling train.
“We’re gonna fall,” West said to Stretch.“Up! Now!”
“What about you?” Stretch nodded at Wizard’s ringbolt. The old man’s leg irons were still chained to it.
“Just go!” West said. “I’m not leaving him! Go! Someone has to get out of here alive!”
Stretch didn’t bother to argue. He just grabbed Tank and started hauling him up the carriage, using the bars of the cells as ladder rungs.
They climbed up the left-hand side of the carriage’s central aisle—passing the Guard Captain as he emerged
