Free Breakheart Pass by Alistair MacLean Page B

privilege.'
    Pearce hesitated, nodded and moved off after Deakin, O'Brien following close behind. Deakin reached the locomotive, walked a couple of paces past the cab and looked up. The snow in the vicinity of the engineer's window and on the after part of the boiler casing had been rubbed off. Deakin swung up to the cab and, watched by Pearce, O'Brien and Banlon, who had now joined them, looked first around him and then behind him. The tender was now two-thirds empty, with the bulk of the cordwood stacked to the rear. On the right-hand side the cords lay in disarray on the floor, as if a heap of them had fallen forward.
    Deakin's eyes had become very still and watchful. His nose wrinkled and after a few moments his eyes shifted sideways and downwards. Deakin stooped, reached behind some tangled pieces of cordwood, straightened and held out a bottle.
    'Tequila. He was reeking of the stuff, had some of it spilled on his clothes.' He looked incredulously at Banlon. 'And you knew nothing – nothing of this?'
    'Just what I was going to ask.' Pearce looked and sounded grim.
    'God's my witness, Marshal.' If Banlon kept shrinking at his present rate his eventual disappearance was only a matter of time. 'I've no sense of smell – ask anybody. I didn't know Jackson until he joined us at Ogden – and I never even knew that he drank that stuff.'
    'You know now.' Claremont had made his appearance in the cab. 'We all know now. Poor devil. As for you, Banlon, I'm putting you under military law. Any more drinking and you'll end up in a cell in Fort Humboldt and I'll have you dismissed the Union Pacific'
    Banlon tried to look aggrieved but his heart wasn't in it. 'I never drink on duty, sir.'
    'You were drinking yesterday afternoon at the Reese City depot.'
    'I mean when I'm driving the train–'
    'That'll do. No more questions. Marshal?'
    'Nothing more to ask. Colonel. It's open and shut to me.'
    'Right.' Claremont turned back to Banlon. 'I'll have Bellew detail a trooper as fireman.' He made a gesture of dismissal and made to turn away.
    Banlon said hurriedly: 'Two things, Colonel.' Claremont turned. 'You can see we're running low on fuel and there's a depot about a mile and a half up the valley–'
    'Yes, yes. I'll detail a loading party. And –?'
    'I'm pretty well bushed, sir. And this business of Jackson … If Devlin – that's the brakeman – could relieve me in a couple of hours–'
    'That shall be arranged.'
    A soldier in a peaked cavalryman's cap peered out from the side of the locomotive through the now heavily falling snow. He said to Banlon: 'I think this must be the fuel dump coming up.'
    Banlon joined them, nodded, returned to the controls and brought the train to a gentle stop, so positioning it that it brought up with locomotive and tender precisely opposite the fuel dump, an open-faced, three-sided shack piled high with cordwood. Banlon said: 'Fetch the loading detail, would you?'
    The loading detail, about a dozen men in all, were on the scene in only a matter of seconds and a remarkably unhappy band of troopers they appeared to be. One had the impression that, given the option, they'd have taken on twice their number of hostile Indians rather than the chore on hand and their reluctance for the appointed task was wholly understandable: although it was now approaching noon, the sky was so dark and the now wind-whipped snow so heavy that the light was no better than that of late dusk and visibility no more than a few feet; and the cold was deepening with the passing of every moment. The soldiers, shivering with cold and stamping their feet, lined up with their backs to the developing blizzard and passed the cordwood arm to arm between the fuel store and the tender. And they moved very quickly indeed: no one had to tell them that the sooner they had finished, the sooner they were back in the comparative warmth of their coaches.
    Some way back on the other side of the train. an indistinct