Free Breakheart Pass by Alistair MacLean

expression didn't quite match the expressed conviction, there was a disturbing certainty about the way in which Deakin spoke. 'Preposterous!'
    'Of course it is. What really happened is that he stabbed himself to death, then cleaned up the probe and returned it to his case. Tidy to the end.'
    'This is hardly the time–'
    'You've got a murderer aboard. Why don't you go and check?'
    Claremont hesitated, then led an almost concerted movement back towards the second coach, even the Reverend Peabody pressing along anxiously if apprehensively in the rear. Deakin was left alone with Marica, who sat tensely in her chair, hands clenched in her lap and looking at him with a most peculiar expression. When she spoke it was almost in a whisper.
    'A murderer! You're a murderer. The Marshal says so. Your Wanted notice says so. That's why you had me untie and tie those ropes, so that later you could wriggle out–'
    'Heaven send me help.' Wearily, Deakin poured himself some more coffee. 'Clear-cut motive, of course – I wanted his job so I upped and did him in in the middle of the night. I killed him, faking to make it look like a natural death, then proved to everyone it wasn't. Then, of course, I re-tied my hands behind my back, using my toes to tie the knots.' He rose, moved past her, touched her lightly on the shoulder, then moved on to a steam-clouded window, which he began to clear. 'I'm tired, too. It's snowing now. The sky's getting dark, the wind's getting up and there's a blizzard lurking behind those peaks. No day for a burial service.'
    'There won't be any. They'll take him all the way back to Salt Lake.'
    'They'll do what?'
    'Doctor Molyneux. And all the men who have died in the epidemic at Fort Humboldt. It's normal peacetime practice. The relatives and friends – well, they like to be there.'
    'But it – it'll take days to–'
    Not looking at him, she said: 'There are about thirty empty coffins in the supply wagon.'
    'There are? Well, I'll be damned. A railroad hearse!'
    'More or less. We were told that those coffins were going to Elko. Now we know they're going no further than Fort Humboldt.' She shivered despite the warmth of the compartment. 'I'm glad I'm not returning on this train … Tell me, who do you think did it?'
    'Did what? Ah, the Doc. Set a murderer to catch a murderer, is that it?'
    'No.' The dark eyes looked at him levelly. 'I didn't mean that.'
    'Well, it wasn't me and it wasn't you. That only leaves the Marshal with about seventy other suspects – I don't know how many troops they have aboard. Ah! Here are some of them coming now.'
    Claremont entered, followed by Pearce and O'Brien. Deakin caught his eye. Claremont nodded heavily and, just as heavily, sat down in silence and reached for the coffee-pot.
    As the morning progressed, so did the snow steadily thicken, as Deakin had predicted. The increase of the wind had not kept pace with that of the snow so blizzard conditions were still some way off: but all the signs were there.
    The train was now fairly into the spectacular mountain country. The track no longer ran along valleys with rivers meandering through them, but through steep, almost precipitously-sided gorges, through tunnels or along permanent ways that had been blasted out of the solid rock leaving a cliff-edge drop to the foot of the ravine below.
    Marica peered through a lee-side window that was relatively free from snow and thought, not for the first time, that those mountains were no place for the faint-hearted and advanced sufferers from vertigo. At the moment, the train was rattling and swaying its way across a trellis bridge spanning an apparently bottomless gorge, the lowermost supports of the bridge being lost in the gloomy and snow-filled ravine below.
    As the locomotive came off the bridge, it curved away to the right and began to climb up the lefthand side of a steep-sided valley, towering snowclad pines to the left, the ravine to the right. The brake van had