Breakheart Pass by Alistair MacLean Page A

towel and swung the door of the fire-box shut. The immediate effect was to reduce the footplate to a state of semi-darkness.
    Banlon abandoned the cab window and moved towards the controls. Suddenly there came a loud, metallic and very ominous rattle. Banlon addressed a series of unprintable epithets towards the source of the sound.
    Jackson's voice was sharp. 'What's wrong?'
    Banlon didn't answer at once. He reached swiftly towards the brake. There was a moment's silence, followed by a screeching, banging clamour as the train, with a concertina collisioning of bumpers, began to slow towards a stop. Throughout the train all the minority who were awake – with the exception of the bound Deakin – and most of the majority who had just been violently woken grabbed for the nearest support as the train ground to its jolting, shuddering, emergency stop. Not a few of the heavier sleepers were dumped unceremoniously on the floor.
    'That damned steam regulator again!' Banlon said. 'I think the retaining nut has come off. Give Devlin the bell – brakes hard on.' He unhooked a feeble oil-lamp and peered at the offending regulator. 'And open the fire-box door – I've seen better glow-worms than this goddamned lamp.'
    Jackson did what he was asked, then leaned out and peered back down the track. 'Quite a few folk coming this way,' he announced. 'They don't seem all that happy to me.'
    'What do you expect?' Banlon said sourly. 'A deputation coming to thank us for saving their lives?' He peered out on his own side. 'There's another lot of satisfied customers coming up this way, too.'
    But there was one traveller who was not running forward. A vague and palish blur in the darkness, he jumped down from the train, looked swiftly around him, stooped, scuttled swiftly to the track-side and dropped down the embankment to the riverside below. He pulled a peculiar peaked coonskin cap low over his forehead and started running towards the rear of the train.
    Colonel Claremont, despite his pronounced and very recently acquired limp – he had been one of the heavier sleepers and the contact his right hip had made with the floor had been nothing if not violent – was the first to reach the driving cab. With some difficulty he pulled himself up to the footplate.
    'What the devil do you mean, Banlon, by scaring us all out of our wits like that?'
    'Sorry, sir.' Banlon was very stiff, very proper, very correct. 'Company's emergency regulations. Control failure. The retaining nut–'
    'Never mind that.' Claremont tenderly rubbed his aching hip. 'How long will it take to fix? All damned night, I suppose.'
    Banlon permitted himself the faint smile of the expert. 'Five minutes, no more.'
    While Banlon was bringing his expertise to bear, the running figure with the coonskin cap stopped abruptly at the base of a telegraph pole. He looked back the way he had come : the rear of the train was at least sixty yards away. Apparently satisfied, the man produced a long belt, passed it around himself and the pole and swiftly began to climb. Arrived at the top, he produced from his pocket a pair of wire-cutters with which he rapidly snipped through the telegraph wires on the side of the insulators remote from the train. The wires dropped away into the gloom and, almost as quickly, the man slid down to the ground.
    On the footplate Banlon straightened, spanner still in hand. Claremont said: 'Fixed?'
    Banlon raised a grimy hand to cover a prodigious yawn. 'Fixed.'
    Claremont spared some of the concern for his aching hip. He said : 'You sure you're fit to drive for the rest of the night?'
    'Hot coffee. That's all we need – and we have all the means and the makings right here in the cab. But if you could have Jackson and me spelled tomorrow–'
    'I'll see to that.' Claremont spoke curtly, not from any animosity he held towards Banlon, it was merely that the pain in his hip was clamouring for his attention again. He climbed stiffly down to the