Breakheart Pass by Alistair MacLean

still alive?'
    'Is my–' The unexpected question had caught her completely off-balance. 'What on earth has that to do with you?'
    'Making conversation. You know how difficult it is when two strangers meet for the first time.' He rose again and paced gingerly up and down, glass in hand. 'Well, is she?'
    Marica was curt. 'Yes.'
    'But not well?'
    'How would you know that? Besides, what business is it of yours?'
    'None. Just that I'm possessed of an incorrigible degree of curiosity.'
    'Faney words.' It was questionable whether Marica was capable of sneering but she came very close to it. 'Very fancy, Mr Deakin.'
    'I used to be a university lecturer. Very important to impress upon your students that you're smarter than they are. I used big words. So. Your mother is not well. If she were it would be much more natural for a fort commandant to be joined by his wife rather than his daughter. And I would have thought that your place would have been by your sick mother. And it strikes me as very odd indeed that you should be permitted to come out here when there's cholera in the Fort and the Indians are so restive. Don't those things strike you as odd, Miss Fairchild? Must have been a very pressing and urgent invitation from your father, though for God knows what reasons. The invitation came by letter?'
    'I don't have to answer your questions.' But it was apparent that, nonetheless, the questions intrigued her.
    'In addition to all my other faults the Marshal listed, I've more than my fair share of persistent impertinence. By letter? Of course it wasn't. It was by telegraph. All urgent messages are sent by telegraph.' Abruptly, he switched his questioning. 'Your uncle. Colonel Claremont, Major O'Brien – you know them all very well, don't you?'
    'Well, really!' Marica had renewed her lipcompressing expression. 'I think it's quite intolerable–'
    'Thank you, thank you.' Deakin drained his glass, sat and began to retie his ankles. 'That was all I wanted to know.' He stood up, handed her another piece of rope, then turned with his hands clasped behind his back. 'If you would be so kind – but not quite so tight this time.'
    Marica said slowly: 'Why all this concern, this interest in me? I should have thought that you yourself had enough worries and troubles–'
    'I have, my dear girl, I have. I'm just trying to take my mind off them.' He screwed his eyes as the rope tightened on his inflamed wrists. He said protestingly:
    'Easy, now, easy.'
    She made no reply, tightened the last knot, helped ease Deakin to first a sitting, then a lying position, then left, still without a word. Back in her own cubicle, she closed the door softly behind her, then sat on her bed for a long time indeed, her eyes unfocused but her face very thoughtful and still.
    In the redly and brightly illuminated driving cab the face of Banlon, the engineer, was equally thoughtful as he divided his time and attention between the controls and peering out the side window to examine the track ahead and the skies above. The black mass of cloud, moving rapidly to the east, now obscured more than half the sky; in a very short time indeed the darkness would be as close to total as it could ever be in uplands where mountains and pines – and increasingly the ground itself – were overlaid with a blanket of white.
    Jackson, the fireman, was as close a carbon copy to Banlon as it was possible to be – abnormally lean, dark-complexioned and with two enormous crows' feet that traversed his parchment face from the ears almost to the tip of his nose. Despite the cold, Jackson was sweating profusely: on steep gradients such as this, the continuous demand for a full head of steam gobbled up fuel almost as quickly as it could be fed into the cavernous maw of the fire-box, casting Jackson in the role of little less than a slave to a very demanding master. He heaved a last section of cordwood on to the glowing bed of coals, mopped his forehead with a filthy