Breakheart Pass

Alistair MacLean

Alistair MacLean, the son of a Scots minister, was brought up in the Scottish Highlands. In 1941, at the age of eighteen, he joined the Royal Navy. After the war he read English at Glasgow University and became a school-master. The two and a half years he spent aboard a wartime cruiser were to give him the background for HMS
Ulysses
, his remarkably successful first novel, published in 1955. He is now recognized as one of the outstanding popular writers of the 20th century, the author of twenty-nine worldwide bestsellers, many of which have been filmed, including
The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Fear is the Key
and
Ice Station Zebra.
In 1983, he was awarded a D.Litt. from Glasgow University. Alistair MacLean died in 1987.

By Alistair MacLean

HMS
Ulysses
The Guns of Navarone
South by Java Head
The Last Frontier
Night Without End
Fear is the Key
The Dark Crusader
The Golden Rendezvous
The Satan Bug
Ice Station Zebra
When Eight Bells Toll
Where Eagles Dare
Force 10 from Navarone
Puppet on a Chain
Caravan to Vaccares
Bear Island
The Way to Dusty Death
Breakheart Pass
Circus
The Golden Gate
Seawitch
Goodbye California
Athabasca
River of Death
Partisans
Floodgate
San Andreas
The Lonely Sea (stories)
Santorini

ALISTAIR MACLEAN

Breakheart Pass

STERLING and the distinctive Sterling logo are registered trademarks of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

First Sterling edition 2012

Previously published in paperback by Fontana 1976
First published in Great Britain by
Collins 1974 Copyright © Devoran Trustees Ltd 1974

Alistair MacLean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4027-9350-9

For information about custom editions, special sales, and premium and corporate purchases, please contact Sterling Special Sales at 800-805-5489 or [email protected].

2  4  6  8  10  9  7  5  3  1

www.sterlingpublishing.com

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

To Mary Marcelle

THE CHARACTERS

The following bears very closely on the choice of 1873 as the date for this story.

NB. It might appear odd that a US Army relief mission should be sent to attend a cholera outbreak, but this is not so: the State of Nevada Health Service was not established until 1893.

CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ONE

The saloon bar of Reese City's grandiosely named Imperial Hotel had about it an air of defeat, of uncaring dilapidation, of the hauntingly sad nostalgia for the half-forgotten glories of days long gone by, of days that would never come again. The occasionally plastered walls were cracked and dirty and liberally behung with faded pictures of what appeared to be an assortment of droopmoustached desperadoes: the lack of 'Wanted' notices below the pictures struck an almost jarring note. The splintered planks that passed for a floor were incredibly warped and of a hue that made the walls appear relatively freshly painted: much missed-at spittoons were much in evidence, while there were few square inches without their cigar butts: those lay about in their hundreds, the vast majority bearing beneath them charred evidence to the fact that their owners hadn't bothered to stub them out either before or after dropping them to the floor. The shades of the oil-lamps. like the murky roof above, were blackened by soot, the full-length mirror behind the bar was fly-blown and filthy. For the weary traveller seeking a haven of rest, the saloon bar offered nothing but a total lack of hygiene, an advanced degree of decadence and an almost stultifying sense of depression and despair.

Neither did the majority of the customers. They were remarkably in keeping with the general ambience of the saloon. Most of them were disproportionately elderly, markedly dispirited, unshaven and shabby, all but a lonely few contemplating the future, clearly a bleak and hopeless one, through the bottoms of their whisky glasses. The solitary barman, a myopic individual with a chest-high apron which, presumably to cope with laundry problems, he'd prudently had dyed black in the distant past, appeared to share in the general malaise: wielding a venerable handtowel in which some faint traces of near-white could with difficulty be distinguished, he was gloomily attempting the impossible task of polishing a sadly cracked and chipped glass, his ultra-slow movements those of an arthritic zombie. Between the Imperial Hotel and, also of that precise day and age, the Dickensian concept of a roistering, hospitable and heart-warming coaching inn of Victorian England lay a gulf of unbridgeable immensity.

In all the saloon there was only one isolated oasis of conversational life. Six people were seated round a table close by the door, three of them in a high-backed bench against the wall: the central figure of those three was unquestionably the dominant one at the table. Tall and lean, deeply tanned and with the heavily crow-footed eyes of a man who has spent too long in the sun, he was dressed in the uniform of a colonel of the United States Cavalry, was aged about fifty, was – unusually for that time – clean-shaven and had an aquiline and intelligent face crowned by a mass of brushed-back silver hair. He wore, at that moment, an expression that could hardly be described as encouraging.

The expression was directed at a man standing opposite him on the other side of the table, a tall and powerfully built individual with a darkly saturnine expression and a black hairline moustache. He was dressed entirely in black. His badge of office, that of a US Marshal, glittered on his chest. He said: 'But surely. Colonel Claremont, in circumstances such as those–'

'Regulations are regulations.' Claremont's voice, though civil enough, was sharp and incisive, an accurate reflection of the man's appearance. 'Army business is army business. Civilian business is civilian business. I'm sorry. Marshal – ah–'

'Pearce. Nathan Pearce.'

'Of course. Of course. My apologies. I should have known.' Claremont shook his head regretfully, but there was no trace of regret in his voice. 'Ours is an army troop train. No civilians aboard – except by special permission from Washington.'

Pearce said mildly: 'But couldn't we all be regarded as working for the Federal government?'

'By army definitions, no.'

'I see.' Pearce clearly didn't see at all. He looked slowly, thoughtfully, around the other five – one of them a young woman: none wore uniform. Pearce centred his gaze on a small, thin, frockcoated individual with a preacher's collar, a high domed forehead chasing a rapidly receding hair-line and an expression of permanently apprehensive anxiety. He shifted uneasily under the Marshal's penetrating stare and his prominent Adam's apple bobbed up and down as if he were swallowing with considerable speed and frequency.