Murder At Deviation Junction

Chapter Thirty

I slapped the face twice, hard. I was trying to make it red again: the face red and the nose brighter red still - that was the correct order of things with Bowman.

There was a rattle at the door, which rose and fell.

The cold had become an illness with me: it was dragging me to the place where Bowman was - some great white land further north than anywhere.

And I needed water.

The rattle at the door again. Was I making that rattle or was there another person in all this? That I could not credit; I was finished with people. The door was coming towards me, and the light lifting with it. The door was opening, but caught on the stone I'd lifted.

'Who's there?' I called, in a weird voice.

'Ah've come tae dae ye.'

The light had brought Small David with it.

'Where's Marriott?' I called.

He was shaking the door, trying to get it past the upraised flag.

'Hum? Deed.'

It was his favourite word.

'Dead?'

'Aye, kulled.'

'Who killed him?'

'Husself.'

Small David was now revealed in the open doorway - the full width of the man. Small particles of snow flew about behind him, as though playing a game, and beyond them lay all the white, beautiful Highlands. The revolver was in his hand. He stepped forwards and fired, and I thought: that sound was pretty loud, and then it struck me that I was enjoying the luxury of hearing the sound die away. I was still alive, and the bullet had given life, not taken it away, for the soft mass underneath my hands was rolling again. Bowman raised himself up quickly and without a word. But Small David, over by the doorway - the snowlight was flowing in over the top of him, for he was down on the ground. The small hole I'd dug had been enough to trip him, and now it was his turn to scrabble on that stone floor as he searched for the gun he'd dropped.

I stood, still shaking, and thinking: what do you do with a man when he's down? Why, you kick him, and I knew I could give a kick for all the queer feeling in me. His big brown head was football-like, and I got him squarely on the temple. He went down further and I was across the floor, spider-like, searching for the revolver.

Bowman lurched towards the doorway.

He turned there, and said, in a dazed sort of voice, 'That's the second time today I've come within an ace of dying.'

I couldn't find the gun; I gave it up. Small David was breathing heavily on the stone floor like a man sleeping off drink.

'Is it the same day, though?' I said to Bowman, as once more we half-walked, half-fell down the hillside towards river and railway line. The light was changing: a mysterious smokiness was brewing over the white-covered fields, but whether it was increasing or decreasing, I could not have said. Small particles of snow flew about us - just the odd one or two, racing each other or circling in a dance.

We walked as before, moving forward and down with each stride, looking back fearfully to the house that had held us. But there was no sign of Small David.

'I might have put his lights out for good,' I said.

'Let me get alongside you,' said Bowman. 'I can't see my way.'

The walking had warmed me somewhat, and I kept scooping up snow from the heather tops as we walked, drinking the stuff. That stopped me thinking of water while giving no satisfaction. I took Bowman's arm. He was shaking very violently with cold, and I thought his face was becoming the same colour as his eyes: a pale blue. I fumbled the gloves back to him as we pressed on.

'Wear these, and you'll be able to pick up snow,' I said.

'What time is it?' I asked, and he held up his watch for me to see.

It was coming up to five o'clock, which was, perhaps, no more surprising than any other time. It must be five in the evening; we had passed the entire day - a full twelve hours - in the deer shack. I looked down and saw a railway signal, with a small gangers' hut nearby.

'We've struck the line,' I said.

But the track was invisible under the snow, so that the signal, which was giving the all-clear to nothing, looked a very ridiculous article. In both directions, the line curved away into rolling whiteness.

Bowman stood at my side, breathing steam; and then I saw to my left, beyond him, what seemed to be snow whirling upwards - snow making a ghost of itself, and rising for a haunting.

Instead, it was an engine.

'See that, Steve?' I said, but the engine was in earshot now.

It was doing its beautiful work in a world of whiteness: white steam, white snow. It ran over tracks only dusted with snow, and was now, as we watched, running at the thicker stuff. The soft crash of the snow plough was almost silent, and then the plough ran on, through the snow, looking for a marvellously exciting few seconds like a boat moving through rough water. But then the snow checked it, and it began to reverse, ready for the next go.

We were stumbling down towards it now.

'It's the first time I've seen a proper snow plough at work,' I said to Bowman, who gasped out, 'I'm thrilled for you, Jim.'

I had before only seen the small wooden ploughs attached to the buffer bars of ordinary engines. This engine - of some Highland make unknown to me - pushed a snow plough vehicle: a hollow steel wedge on wheels, a great metal arrowhead - and there was a man inside, I saw now, for he was leaning out of it and waving, calling on the engine driver and fireman for another try. That man was part lookout, part team captain, for what he gave was encouragement.

I was moving ahead of Bowman now.

'Push on!' I called back to him. 'I want to be up there for the next run. If they break through, we'll be clear away from that Scots bastard!'

The driver and fireman first noticed our approach; then the caller-on who rode in the plough spied us.

'We need to come up!' I called, wading on through the snowy heather.

We approached the beating warmth of the engine, and driver and fireman stepped away for us to climb up, and just gawped at us for a while. The man in the plough was hanging out of his cab, monkey-like, watching us. Bowman warmed himself by the open fire door, and then he turned about, and said, 'I need to sit down.'

The driver pointed to the sandbox, where Bowman perched. He still looked very seedy.

'There's a lunatic on our tail,' I said to the driven while glancing over his shoulder to the darkening hill beyond.

But he didn't seem to take what I said.

'Where are you for?' he asked, just as though we were ordinary passengers

'We want to connect for Inverness,' I said. 'Do you reckon that's on? Tonight, I mean?'

'Don't ask me,' he said. 'Our job's to break through to Helmsdale.'

'Is it drifted all the way?'

He shook his head.

'We're at the worst of it now. Couple more goes and we should be through.'

He was a small, pale bloke, and he seemed to speak without force, and then the reason came to me: he was not Scots. He spoke with an English accent of no particular sort. Also, he seemed in a baddish temper. At first I thought this must be on account of our arrival, but he now turned and addressed his fireman, saying, 'Front damper's closed now, is it?'

If you left the front damper open while charging at snow - why, you'd put the bloody fire out. The fireman was not up to snuff, and the driver was out with him.

The snow plough man was calling to us from up front. He was Scots all right, to the point where I couldn't make out a word he said, but his meaning was clear enough. We were to get on with it.

The driver put on full back gear, and we reversed a little further; the fireman was labouring away all the time, swinging with his shovel between tender and fire door like a clock mechanism. A good thick layer of coal was needed, for each charge would suck a great hole in the fire. By the paraffin lamp that hung behind the gauge glass, I saw that we had our 220 lbs of steam pressure. The light was going fast, and it was already too gloomy to make out the height of the snow wall a hundred yards off that we were about to charge at.

The driver held on to the cabside; I gripped the mighty wheel of the hand brake, and motioned Bowman to do the same. The driver gave a tug on the regulator and we began to steal away, then there came a shout from the front man; the driver pulled harder, and we began to fly. We swayed backwards with the force of the speed. I tried to predict the moment of impact, but the smash came a couple of seconds later than I bargained for.

We were all thrown forwards, and we all checked the movement of our bodies, but the fireman flew on, and smacked into the fire- hole door; which he had (luckily for him or he'd have been clean through it) closed before the charge. He was down on the cab floor. I tried to give him a hand up, but he wouldn't have it. He sat bolt upright in the filthy cold dust and said, 'I've cracked my arm.'

I knew it was true, for he was dead white. The driver sat him on the sandbox that Bowman had lately occupied.

'Want me to take a look?' said the driver. He was not overly sympathetic.

The fireman shook his head. 'I can feel the bone - it's out. I don't want to see it.'

All the horror was under the sleeve, and that's where he wanted to leave it for the present. He just sat tight holding his right arm with his left.

'I can fire an engine,' I said to the driver.

He looked from me to Bowman, who said, 'And I can write about it, if that's any use.'

He gave a little grin, and tried to push his specs up his nose, only they weren't there. He'd had a couple of secret swigs from the driver's tea bottle, I'd noticed, and some of his high colour was now returned.

What the driver made of the pair of us, I couldn't have guessed, but I tried to put his mind at rest by taking up the shovel and opening the firehole door. The fire was thin at the middle, and the top left.

I turned and put the shovel into the coal, and took a long breath.

Then I was into it: the clockwork motion at twice the rate of the other fellow. The coal was flying off in a flat line straight to the points needed.

I heard the driver say something that might have been: 'All right then.'

At any rate, the whole man-machine started working around me. The driver looked ahead to the plough man; he then put on full reverse and took us backwards as I carried on shovelling.

I said, 'Shall we take a longer run this time, mate?' and he didn't answer but kept us rolling back fifty yards beyond the last distance.

As we came to rest prior to the charge, I was at the injector, operating the two valves to bring water into the boiler. I just wanted to be 'doing', but the driver said, 'Don't carry the water so high,' so I checked the flow. Being a little rusty, I had to think for a while about why he'd said that, but it came to me after a couple of seconds that each run at the snow made a rolling wave of water in the boiler. If the water slopped too high, it would carry over into the cylinders, the engine would prime and we'd be done for.

Beyond the driver's shoulder, the snow was increasing; the shadows were moving and the Highland ghosts were walking again. I looked at the fire, which was good and even, then back at the heather, where a black shape was flowing over the hillside. Could it be deer? The driver was leaning out, signalling to the bloke in the plough. The shadow on the hillside was not flowing as I had thought; it was moving in a rocking motion - on two legs only.

The driver was engaging forward gear.

'All set?' he said.

He was looking hard at the crocked fireman, who was now braced on the sandbox with his one good hand grasping the cab- side hard. It was a sight too late, but he'd learnt his lesson.

I stepped two paces from the fire to look out of the cab as the driver laid his hand on the regulator. Instead of looking forwards at the plough, I looked backwards. Small David was on the snow- dusted track, thirty yards behind. He walked with arm outstretched, as if that arm was a battering ram to clear a way through the snow-filled air. I pulled myself in and the first shot came as our acceleration began. Whether anyone besides myself noticed that first one over the roar of the engine noise ... well, I do not believe they did. As we gathered speed, I moved again to the cabside.

'Keep still, would you?' said the driver.

Another shot came, followed directly by what sounded like a third. Or was it the first bullet striking the engine? When would we hit the snow? I pulled myself in. Had we made such an easy job of cutting through it that I had failed to even -

The smash came, and the great backward bounce - which just kept on. The wave of snow was made on both sides. We were enclosed in white walls, and I did not dare breathe as those walls held. We were slowing all the while, but still the snow was going up.

After ten seconds, the walls did begin to droop, though, and we were about at a stand as I looked out again through the low rolling snow and watched Small David running through the gloaming with arm still outstretched, just as though that gun of his was something we had dropped, and that he meant to return to us.

I pulled myself in and looked at Bowman. He was rocking forwards as the engine slowed.

'We're not in the clear yet,' I said.

But as I looked at Bowman he began to rock the other way.

'What?' I believe I said. Or maybe I just gave a gasp, for it seemed to me that our engine was now fairly floating - all thirty- odd tons of it.

'We're through?' I said to the driver.

He nodded, as much to himself as to me.