Breakheart Pass
A magnificent tale of heart-stopping suspense from the highly acclaimed master of the genre.The Rocky Mountains, Winter 1873…One of the most desolate stretches of railroad in the West. Travelling along it is a crowded troop train, bound for the cholera-stricken garrison at Fort Humboldt. On board are the Governor of Nevada, the daughter of the fort’s commander and a US marshal escorting a notorious outlaw. Between them and safety are the hostile Paiute Indians – and a man who will stop at nothing, not even murder…
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ALISTAIR MACLEAN
Breakheart Pass
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.
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1974
Copyright © Devoran Trustees Ltd 1974
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780006158059
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007402632 Version: 2018–10–08
To Mary Marcelle
Contents
JOHN DEAKIN
COLONEL CLAREMONT
COLONEL FAIRCHILD
GOVERNOR FAIRCHILD
MARICA FAIRCHILD
MAJOR OȧBRIEN
NATHAN PEARCE
SEPP CALHOUN
WHITE HAND
GARRITTY
REV. THEODORE PEABODY
DOCTOR MOLYNEUX
CHRIS BANLON
CARLOS
HENRY
BELLEW
DEVLIN
RAFFERTY
FERGUSON
CARTER
SIMPSON
BENSON
CARMODY
HARRIS
CAPTAIN OAKLAND
LIEUTENANT NEWELL
A Gunman
US Cavalry
Commandant of Fort
Humboldt
The Governor of Nevada
The Governorȧs niece and
the daughter of Colonel
Fairchild
The Governorȧs Aide
US Marshal
A villain of some note
Chief of the Paiutes
A gambler
Chaplain elect for
Virginia City
US Army Doctor
Engineer
Cook
Steward
US Army Sergeant
Brakeman on train
A trooper
US Army Telegraphists
Three minor villains
Passive but relevant
The following bears very closely on the choice of 1873 as the date for this story.
| CALIFORNIAN GOLD RUSH | 1855-75 |
| COMSTOCK LODE DISCOVERED | 1859 |
| DISAFFECTED NEVADA INDIANS ACTIVE | 1860-80 |
| NEVADA BECAME STATE | 1864 |
| UNION PACIFIC RAILWAY BUILT | 1869 |
| BONANZA DISCOVERED | 1873 |
| CHOLERA IN ROCKIES | 1873 |
| DEVELOPMENT OF FIRST WINCHESTER REPEATERS | 1873 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA (ELKO) ESTABLISHED | 1873 |
| DISASTROUS FIRE IN LAKEȧS CROSSING (WHICH BECAME RENO IN 1879) | 1873 |
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.
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 droop-moustached 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 hand-towel 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.
