Neale and King traveled light, without pack-animals, and at sunrise they reached the main trail.
It bore evidence of considerable use and was no longer a trail, but a highroad. Fresh tracks of horses and oxen, wagon-wheel ruts, dead camp-fires, and scattered brush that had been used for wind-breaks—all these things attested to the growing impetus of that movement; soon it was to become extraordinary.
All this was Indian country. Neale and his companion had no idea whether or not the Sioux had left their winter quarters for the war-path. But it was a vast region, and the Indians could not be everywhere. Neale and King took chances, as had all these travelers, though perhaps the risk was not so great, because they rode fleet horses. They discovered no signs of Indians, and it appeared as if they were alone in a wilderness.
They covered sixty miles from early dawn to dark, with a short rest at noon, and reached Fort Fetterman safely without incident or accident. Troops were there, but none of the U. P. engineering staff. Neale did not meet any soldiers with whom he was acquainted. Orders were there for him, however, to report to North Platte as soon as it was possible to reach there. Troops were to be moving soon, so Neale learned, and the long journey could be made in comparative safety.
Here Neale received the tidings that forty miles of railroad had been built during the last summer, and trains had been run that distance west from Omaha. His heart swelled. Not for many a week had he heard anything favorable to the great U. P. project, and here was news of rails laid, trains run. Already this spring the graders were breaking ground far ahead of the rail-layers. Report and rumor at the fort had it that lively times had attended the construction. But the one absorbing topic was the Sioux Indians, who were expected to swarm out of the hills that summer and give the troops hot work.
In due time Neale and Larry arrived at North Platte, which was little more than a camp. The construction gangs were not expected to reach there until late in the fall. Baxter was at North Platte, with a lame surveyor, and no other helpers; consequently he hailed Neale and Larry with open arms. A summer’s work on the hot monotonous plains stared Neale in the face, but he must resign himself to the inevitable. He worked, as always, with that ability and energy which had made him invaluable to his superiors. Here, however, the labor was a dull, hot grind, without any thrills. Neale filled the long days with duty and seldom let his mind-wander. In leisure hours, however, he dreamed of Allie and the future. He found no trouble in passing time that way. Also he watched eagerly for arrivals from the west, whom he questioned about Indians in the Wyoming hills; and from troops or travelers coming from the east he heard all the news of the advancing railroad construction. It was absorbingly interesting, yet Neale could credit so few of the tales.
The summer and early fall passed.
Neale was ordered to Omaha. The news stunned him. He had built all his hopes on another winter out in the Wyoming hills, and this disappointment was crushing. It made him ill for a day. He almost threw up his work. It did not seem possible to live that interminable stretch without seeing Allie Lee. The nature of his commission, however, brought once again to mind the opportunity that knocked at his door. Neale had run all the different surveys for bridges in the Wyoming hills and now he was needed in the office of the staff, where plans and drawings were being made. Again he bowed to the inevitable. But he determined to demand in the spring that he be sent ahead to the forefront of the construction work.
Another disappointment seemed in order. Larry King refused to go any farther back east. Neale was exceedingly surprised.
“Do you throw up your job?” he asked.
“Shore not. I can work heah,” replied Larry.
“There won’t be any outside work on these bleak plains in winter.”
“Wal, I reckon I’ll loaf, then,” he drawled.
Neale could not change him. Larry vowed he would take his old place with Neale next spring, if it should be open to him.
“But why? Red, I can’t figure you,” protested Neale.
“Pard, I reckon I’m fur enough back east right heah,” said Larry, significantly.
A light dawned upon Neale. “Red! You’ve done something bad!” exclaimed Neale, in genuine dismay.
“Wal, I don’t know jest how bad it was, but it shore was hell,” replied Larry, with a grin.
“Red, you aren’t afraid,” asserted Neale, positively.
The cowboy flushed and looked insulted. “If any one but you said thet to me he’d hev to eat it.”
“I beg your pardon, old man. But I’m surprised. It doesn’t seem like you.... And then—Lord! I’ll miss you.”
“No more ‘n I’ll miss you, pard,” replied Larry.
Suddenly Neale had a happy thought. “Red, you go back to Slingerland’s and help take care of Allie. I’d feel she was safer.”
“Wal, she might be safer, but I wouldn’t be,” declared the cowboy, bluntly.
“You red-head! What do you mean?” demanded Neale.
“I mean this heah. If I stayed around another winter near Allie Lee—with her alone, fer thet trapper never set up before thet fire—I’d—why, Neale, I’d ambush you like an Injun when you come back!”
“You wouldn’t,” rejoined Neale. He wanted to laugh but had no mirth.
Larry did not mean that, but neither did he mean to be funny. “I’ll be hangin’ round heah, waitin’ fer you. It’s only a few months. Go on to your work, pard. You’ll be a big man on the road some day.”
Neale left North Platte with a wagon-train.
After a long, slow journey the point was reached where the graders had left off work for that year. Here had been a huge construction camp; and the bare and squalid place looked as if it once had been a town of crudest make, suddenly wrecked by a cyclone and burned by prairie fire. Fifty miles farther on, representing two more long, tedious, and unendurable days, and Neale heard the whistle of a locomotive. It came from far off. But it was a whistle. He yelled, and the men journeying with him joined in.
Smoke showed on the horizon, together with a wide, low, uneven line of shacks and tents.
Neale was all eyes when he rode into that construction camp. The place was a bedlam. A motley horde of men appeared to be doing everything under the sun but work, and most of them seemed particularly eager to board a long train of box-cars and little old passenger-coaches. Neale made a dive for the train, and his sojourn in that camp was a short and exciting one of ten minutes.
He felt unutterably proud. He had helped survey the line along which the train was now rattling and creaking and swaying. All that swiftly passed under his keen eyes was recorded in his memory—the uncouth crowd of laborers, the hardest lot he had ever seen; the talk, noise, smoke; the rickety old clattering coaches; the wayside dumps and heaps and wreckage. But they all seemed parts of a beautiful romance to him. Neale saw through the eyes of golden ambition and illimitable dreams.
And not for a moment of that endless ride, with interminable stops, did he weary of the two hundred and sixty miles of rails laid that year, and of the forty miles of the preceding year. Then came Omaha, a beehive—the making of a Western metropolis!
Neale plunged into the bewildering turmoil of plans, tasks, schemes, land-grants, politics, charters, inducements, liens and loans, Government and army and State and national interests, grafts and deals and bosses—all that mass of selfish and unselfish motives, all that wealth of cunning and noble aims, all that congested assemblage of humanity which went to make up the building of the Union Pacific.
Neale was a dreamer, like the few men whose minds had first given birth to the wonderful idea of a railroad from East to West. Neale found himself confronted by a singularly disturbing fact. However grand this project, its political and mercenary features could not be beautiful to him. Why could not all men be right-minded about a noble cause and work unselfishly for the development of the West and the future generations? It was a melancholy thing to learn that men of sincere and generous purpose had spent their all trying to raise the money to build the Union Pacific; on the other hand, it was a satisfaction to hear that many capitalists with greedy claws had ruined themselves in like efforts.
The President of the United States and Congress had their own troubles at the close of the war, and the Government could do but little money-raising with land-grants and loans. But they offered a great bonus to the men who would build the railroad.
The first construction company subscribed over a million and a half dollars, and paid in one-quarter of that. The money went so swiftly that it opened the company’s eyes to the insatiable gulf beneath that enterprise, and they quit.
Thereupon what was called the Credit Mobilier was inaugurated, and it became both famous and infamous.
It was a type of the construction company by which it was the custom to build railroads at that time. The directors, believing that whatever money was to be made out of the Union Pacific must be collected during the construction period, organized a clever system for just this purpose.
An extravagant sum was to be paid to the Credit Mobilier for the construction work, thus securing for stockholders of the Union Pacific, who now controlled the Credit Mobilier, the bonds loaned by the United States Government.
The operations of the Credit Mobilier finally gave rise to one of the most serious political scandals in the history of the United States Congress.
The cost of all material was high, and it rose with leaps and bounds until it was prodigious. Omaha had no railroad entering it from the east, and so all the supplies, materials, engines, cars, machinery, and laborers had to be transported from St. Louis up the swift Missouri on boats. This in itself was a work calling for the limit of practical management and energy. Out on the prairie-land, for hundreds of miles, were to be found no trees, no wood, scarcely any brush. The prairie-land was beautiful ground for buffalo, but it was a most barren desert for the exigencies of railroad men. Moreover, not only did wood and fuel and railroad-ties have to be brought from afar, but also stone for bridges and abutments. Then thousands of men had to be employed, and those who hired out for reasonable money soon learned that others were getting more; having the company at their mercy, they demanded exorbitant wages in their turn.
One of the peculiar features of the construction, a feature over which Neale grew impotently furious, was the law that when a certain section of so many miles had been laid and equipped the Government of the United States would send out expert commissioners, who would go over the line and pass judgment upon the finished work. No two groups of commissioners seemed to agree. These experts, who had their part to play in the bewildering and labyrinthine maze of men’s contrary plans and plots, reported that certain sections would have to be done over again.
The particular fault found with one of these sections was the alleged steepness of the grade, and as Neale had been the surveyor in charge, he soon heard of his poor work. He went over his figures and notes with the result that he called on Henney and absolutely swore that the grade was right. Henney swore too, in a different and more forcible way, but he agreed with Neale and advised him to call upon the expert commissioners.
Neale did so, and found them, with one exception, open to conviction. The exception was a man named Allison Lee. The name Lee gave Neale a little shock. He was a gray-looking man, with lined face, and that concentrated air which Neale had learned to associate with those who were high in the affairs of the U. P.
Neale stated that his business was to show that his work had been done right, and he had the figures to prove it. Mr. Lee replied that the survey was poor and would have to be done over.
“Are you a surveyor?” queried Neale, sharply, with the blood beating in his temples.
“I have some knowledge of civil engineering,” replied the commissioner.
“Well, it can’t be very much,” declared Neale, whose temper was up.
“Young man, be careful what you say,” replied the other.
“But Mr.—Mr. Lee—listen to me, will you?” burst out Neale. “It’s all here in my notes. You’ve hurried over the line and you just slipped up a foot or so in your observations of that section.”
Mr. Lee refused to look at the notes and waved Neale aside.
“It’ll hurt my chances for a big job,” Neale said, stubbornly.
“You probably will lose your job, judging from the way you address your superiors.”
That finished Neale. He grew perfectly white.
“All this expert-commissioner business is rot,” he flung at Lee. “Rot! Lodge knows it. Henney knows it. We all do. And so do you. It’s a lot of damn red tape! Every last man who can pull a stroke with the Government runs in here to annoy good efficient engineers who are building the road. It’s an outrage. It’s more. It’s not honest... That section has forty miles in it. Five miles you claim must be resurveyed—regraded—relaid. Forty-six thousand dollars a mile!... That’s the secret—two hundred and thirty thousand dollars more for a construction company!”
Neale left the office and, returning to Henney, repeated the interview to him word for word. Henney complimented Neale’s spirit, but deplored the incident. It could do no good and might do harm. Many of these commissioners were politicians, working in close touch with the directors, and not averse to bleeding the Credit Mobilier.
All the engineers, including the chief, though he was noncommittal, were bitter about this expert-commissioner law. If a good road-bed had been surveyed, the engineers knew more about it than any one else. They were the pioneers of the work. It was exceedingly annoying and exasperating to have a number of men travel leisurely in trains over the line and criticize the labors of engineers who had toiled in heat and cold and wet, with brain and heart in the task. But it was so.
In May, 1866, a wagon-train escorted by troops rolled into the growing camp of North Platte, and the first man to alight was Warren Neale, strong, active, eager-eyed as ever, but older and with face pale from his indoor work and hope long deferred.
The first man to greet him was Larry King, in whom time did not make changes.
They met as long-separated brothers.
“Red how’re your horses?” was Neale’s query, following the greeting.
“Wintered well, but cost me all I had. I’m shore busted,” replied Larry.
“I’ve plenty of money,” said Neale, “and what’s mine is yours. Come on, Red. We’ll get light packs and hit the trail for the Wyoming hills.”
“Wal, I reckoned so... Neale, it’s shore goin’ to be risky. The Injuns are on the rampage already. You see how this heah camp has growed. Men ridin’ in all since winter broke. An’ them from west tell some hard stories.”
“I’ve got to go,” replied Neale, with emotion. “It’s nearly a year since I saw Allie. Not a word between us in all that time!... Red, I can’t stand it longer.”
“Shore, I know,” replied King, hastily. “You ain’t reckonin’ I wanted to crawfish? I’ll go. We’ll pack light, hit the trail at night, an’ hide up in the daytime.”
Neale had arrived in North Platte before noon, and before sunset he and King were far out on the swelling slopes of plainland, riding toward the west.
Traveling by night, camping by day, they soon left behind them the monotonous plains of Nebraska. The Sioux had been active for two summers along the southern trails of Wyoming. The Texan’s long training on the ranges stood them in good stead here. His keen eye for tracks and smoke and distant objects, his care in hiding trails and selecting camps, and his skill and judgment in all pertaining to the horses—these things made the journey possible. For they saw Indian signs more than once before the Wyoming hills loomed up in the distance. More than one flickering camp-fire they avoided by a wide detour.
Slingerland’s valley showed all the signs of early summer. The familiar trail, however, bore no tracks of horses or man or beast. A heavy rain had fallen recently and it would have obliterated tracks.
Neale’s suspense sustained the added burden of dread. In the oppressive silence of the valley he read some nameless reason for fear. The trail seemed the same, the brook flowed and murmured as of old, the trees shone soft and green, but Neale sensed a difference. He dared not look at Larry for confirmation of his fears. The valley had not of late been lived in!
Neale rode hard up the trail under the pines. A blackened heap lay where once the cabin had stood. Neale’s heart gave a terrible leap and then seemed to cease beating. He could not breathe nor speak nor move. His eyes were fixed on the black remains of Slingerland’s cabin.
“Gawd Almighty!” gasped Larry, and he put out a shaking hand to clutch Neale. “The Injuns! I always feared this—spite of Slingerland’s talk.”
The feel of Larry’s fierce fingers, like hot, stinging arrows in his flesh, pierced Neale’s mind and made him realize what his stunned faculties had failed to grasp. It seemed to loosen the vise-like hold upon his muscles, to liberate his tongue.
He fell off his horse.
“Red! Look—look around!”
Allie was gone! The disappointment at not seeing her was crushing, and the fear of utter loss was terrible. Neale lay on the ground, blind, sick, full of agony, with his fingers tearing at the grass. The evil presentiments that had haunted him for months had not been groundless fancies. Perhaps Allie had called to him again, in another hour of calamity, and this time he had not responded. She was gone! That idea struck him cold. It meant the most dreadful of all happenings. For a while he lay there, prostrate under the shock. He was dimly aware of Larry’s coming and sitting down beside him.
“No sign of any one,” he said, huskily. “Not even a track!... Thet fire must hev been about two weeks ago. Mebbe more, but not much. There’s been a big rain an’ the ground’s all washed clean an’ smooth ... Not a track!”
It was the cowboy’s habit to calculate the past movements of people and horses by the nature of the tracks they left.
Then Neale awoke to violence. He sprang up and rushed to the ruins of the cabin, frantically tore and dug around the burnt embers, and did not leave off until he had overhauled the whole pile. There was nothing but ashes and embers. Whereupon he ran to the empty corrals, to the sheds, to the wood-pile, to the spring, and all around the space once so habitable. There was nothing to reward his fierce energy—nothing to scrutinize. Already grass was springing in the trails and upon spots that had once been bare.
Neale halted, sweating, hot, wild, before his friend. Larry avoided his gaze.
“She’s gone!... She’s gone!” Neale panted.
“Wal, mebbe Slingerland moved camp an’ burned this place,” suggested Larry. “He was sore after them four road-agents rustled in heah.”
“No—no. He’d have left the cabin. In case he moved—Allie was to write me a note—telling me how to find them. I remember—we picked out the place to hide the note... Oh! she’s gone! She’s gone!”
“Wal, then, mebbe Slingerland got away an’ the cabin was burned after.”
“I can’t hope that... I tell you—it means hell’s opened up before me.”
“Wal, it’s tough, I know, Neale, but mebbe—”
Neale wheeled fiercely upon him. “You’re only saying those things! You don’t believe them! Tell me what you do really think.”
“Lord, pard, it couldn’t be no wuss,” replied Larry, his lean face working. “I figger only one way. This heah. Slingerland had left Allie alone... Then—she was made away with an’ the cabin burned.”
“Indians?”
“Mebbe. But I lean more to the idee of an outfit like thet one what was heah.”
Neale groaned in his torture. “Not that, Reddy—not that!... The Indians would kill her—scalp her—or take her captive into their tribe... But a gang of cutthroat ruffians like these... My God! if I KNEW that had happened it’d kill me.”
Larry swore at his friend. “It can’t do no good to go to pieces,” he expostulated. “Let’s do somethin’.”
“What—in Heaven’s name!” cried Neale, in despair.
“Wal, we can rustle up every trail in these heah Black Hills. Mebbe wecan find Slingerland.”Then began a search—frantic, desperate, and forlorn on the part ofNeale; faithful and dogged and keen on the part of King. Neale was likea wild man. He heeded no advice or caution. Only the cowboy’s iron armsaved Neale and his horse. It was imperative to find water and grass,and to eat, necessary things which Neale seemed to have forgotten. Heseldom slept or rested or ate. They risked meeting the Sioux in everyvalley and on every ridge. Neale would have welcomed the sight ofIndians; he would have rushed into peril in the madness of his grief.Still, there was hope! He lived all the hours in utter agony of mind,but his heart did not give up.
They coursed far and near, always keeping to the stream beds, for if Slingerland had made another camp it would be near water. More than one trail led nowhere; more than one horse track roused hopes that were futile. The Wyoming hills country was surely a lonely and a wild one, singularly baffling to the searchers, for in two weeks of wide travel it did not yield a sign or track of man. Neale and King used up all their scant supply of food, threw away all their outfit except a bag of salt, and went on, living on the meat they shot.
Then one day, unexpectedly, they came upon two trappers by a beaver-dam. Neale was overcome by his emotion; he sensed that from these men he would learn something. The first look from them told him that his errand was known.
“Howdy!” greeted Larry. “It shore is good to see you men—the fust we’ve come on in an awful hunt through these heah hills.”
“Thar ain’t any doubt thet you look it, friend,” replied one of the trappers.
“We’re huntin’ fer Slingerland. Do you happen to know him?”
“Knowed Al fer years. He went through hyar a week ago—jest after the big rain, wasn’t it, Bill?”
“Wal, to be exact it was eight days ago,” replied the comrade Bill.
“Was—he—alone?” asked Larry, thickly.
“Sure, an’ lookin’ sick. He lost his girl not long since, he said, an’ it broke him bad.”
“Lost her! How?”
“Wal, he was sure it wasn’t redskins,” rejoined the trapper, reflectively. “Slingerland stood in with the Sioux—traded with ‘em. He—”
“Tell me quick!” hoarsely interrupted Neale. “What happened to Allie Lee?”
“Fellars, my pard heah is hurt deep,” said Larry. “The girl you spoke of was his sweetheart.”
“Young man, we only know what Al told us,” replied the trapper. “Hesaid the only time he ever left the lass alone was the very day she wastaken. Al come home to find the cabin red-hot ashes. Everythin’ gone. Nosign of the lass. No sign of murder. She was jest carried off. There wastracks—hoss tracks an’ boot tracks, to the number of three or four menan’ hosses. Al trailed ‘em. But thet very night he had to hold up tokeep from bein’ drowned, as we had to hyar. Wal, next day he couldn’tfind any tracks. But he kept on huntin’ fer a few days, an’ then giveup. He said she’d be dead by then—said she wasn’t the kind thet couldhave lived more ‘n a day with men like them. Some hard customers aredriftin’ by from the gold-fields. An’ Bill an’ I, hyar, ain’t in lovewith this railroad idee. It ‘ll ruin the country fer trappin’ an’livin’.”Some weeks later a gaunt and ragged cowboy limped into NorthPlatte, walking beside a broken horse, upon the back of which swayed andreeled a rider tied in the saddle.
It was not a sight to interest any except the lazy or the curious, for in that day such things were common in North Platte. The horse had bullet creases on his neck; the rider wore a bloody shirt; the gaunt pedestrian had a bandaged arm.
Neale lay ill of a deeper wound while the bullet-hole healed in his side. Day and night Larry tended him or sat by him or slept near him in a shack on the outskirts of the camp. Shock, grief, starvation, exhaustion, loss of blood and sleep—all these brought Warren Neale close to death. He did not care to live. It was the patient, loyal friend who fought fever and heartbreak and the ebbing tide of life.
Baxter and Henney visited North Platte and called to see him, and later the chief came and ordered Larry to take Neale to the tents of the corps. Every one was kind, solicitous, earnest. He had been missed. The members of his corps knew the strange story of Allie Lee; they guessed the romance and grieved over the tragedy. They did all they could do, and the troop doctor added his attention; but it was the nursing, the presence, and the spirit of Larry King that saved Neale.
He got well and went back to work with the cowboy for his helper.
In that camp of toil and disorder none but the few with whom Neale was brought in close touch noted anything singular about him. The engineers, however, observed that he did not work so well, nor so energetically, nor so accurately. His enthusiasm was lacking. The cowboy, always with him, was the one who saw the sudden spells of somber abstraction and the poignant, hopeless, sleepless pain, the eternal regret. And as Neale slackened in his duty Larry King grew more faithful.
Neale began to drink and gamble. For long the cowboy fought, argued, appealed against this order of things, and then, failing to change or persuade Neale, he went to gambling and drinking with him. But then it was noted that Neale never got under the influence of liquor or lost materially at cards. The cowboy spilled the contents of Neale’s glass and played the game into his hands.
Both of them shrank instinctively from the women of the camp. The sightof anything feminine hurt.North Platte stirred with the quickening stimulus of the approachof the rails and the trains, and the army of soldiers whose duty was toprotect the horde of toilers, and the army of tradesmen and parasiteswho lived off them.
The construction camp of the graders moved on westward, keeping ahead of the camps of the layers.
The first train that reached North Platte brought directors of the U. P. R.—among them Warburton and Rudd and Rogers; also Commissioners Lee and Dunn and a host of followers on a tour of inspection.
The five miles of Neale’s section of road that the commissioners had judged at fault had been torn up, resurveyed, and relaid.
Neale rode back over the line with Baxter and surveyed the renewed part. Then, returning to North Platte, he precipitated consternation among directors and commissioners and engineers, as they sat in council, by throwing on the table figures of the new survey identical with his old data.
“Gentlemen, the five miles of track torn up and rebuilt had precisely the same grade, to an inch!” he declared, with ringing scorn.
Baxter corroborated his statement. The commissioners roared and the directors demanded explanations.
“I’ll explain it,” shouted Neale. “Forty-six thousand dollars a mile! Five miles—two hundred and thirty thousand dollars! Spent twice! Taken twice by the same construction company!”
Warburton, a tall, white-haired man in a frock-coat, got up and pounded the table with his fist. “Who is this young engineer?” he thundered. “He has the nerve to back his work instead of sneaking to get a bribe. And he tells the truth. We’re building twice—spending twice when once is enough!”
An uproar ensued. Neale had cast a bomb into the council. Every man there and all the thousands in camp knew that railroad ties cost several dollars each; that wages were abnormally high, often demanded in advance, and often paid twice; that parallel with the great spirit of the work ran a greedy and cunning graft. It seemed to be inevitable, considering the nature and proportions of the enterprise. An absurd law sent out the commissioners, the politicians appointed them, and both had fat pickings. The directors likewise played both ends against the middle; they received the money from the stock sales and loans; they paid it out to the construction companies; and as they employed and owned these companies the money returned to their own pockets. But more than one director was fired by the spirit of the project—the good to be done—the splendid achievement—the trade to come from across the Pacific. The building of the road meant more to some of them than a mere fortune.
Warburton was the lion of this group, and he roared down the dissension. Then with a whirl he grasped Neale round the shoulders and shoved him face to face with the others.
“Here’s the kind of man we want on this job!” he shouted, with red face and bulging jaw. “His name’s Neale. I’ve heard of some of his surveys. You’ve all seen him face this council. That only, gentlemen, is the spirit which can build the U. P. R. Let’s push him up. Let’s send him to Washington with those figures. Let’s break this damned idiotic law for appointing commissioners to undo the work of efficient men.”
Opportunity was again knocking at Neale’s door.
Allison Lee arose in the flurry, and his calm, cold presence, the steel of his hard gray eyes, and the motion of his hand entitled him to a voice.
“Mr. Warburton—and gentlemen,” he said, “Iremember this young engineer Neale. When I got here to-day I inquired about him, remembering that he had taken severe exception to the judgment of the commissioners about that five miles of road-bed. I learned he is a strange, excitable young fellow, who leaves his work for long wild trips and who is a drunkard and a gambler. It seems to me somewhat absurd seriously to consider the false report with which he has excited this council.”
“It’s not false,” retorted Neale, with flashing eyes. Then he appealed to Warburton and he was white and eloquent. “You directors know better. This man. Lee is no engineer. He doesn’t know a foot-grade from a forty-five-degree slope. Not a man in that outfit had the right or the knowledge to pass judgment on our work. It’s political. It’s a damned outrage. It’s graft.”
Another commissioner bounced up with furious gestures.
“We’ll have you fired!” he shouted.
Neale looked at him and back at Allison Lee and then at Warburton.
“I quit,” he declared, with scorn. “To hell with your rotten railroad!”
Another hubbub threatened in the big tent. Some one yelled for quiet.
And suddenly there was quiet, but it did not come from that individual’s call. A cowboy had detached himself from the group of curious onlookers and had confronted the council with two big guns held low.
“Red! Hold on!” cried Neale.
It was Larry. One look at him blanched Neale’s face.
“Everybody sit still an’ let me talk,” drawled Larry, with the cool, reckless manner that now seemed so deadly.
No one moved, and the silence grew unnatural. The cowboy advanced a few strides. His eyes, with a singular piercing intentness, were bent upon Allison Lee, yet seemed to hold all the others in sight. He held one gun in direct alignment with Lee, low down, and with the other he rapped on the table. The gasp that went up from round that table proved that some one saw the guns were both cocked.
“Did I understand you to say Neale lied aboot them surveyin’ figgers?” he queried, gently.
Allison Lee turned as white as a corpse. The cowboy radiated some dominating force, but the chill in his voice was terrible. It meant that life was nothing to him—nor death. What was the U. P. R. to him, or its directors, or its commissioners, or the law? There was no law in that wild camp but the law in his hands. And he knew it.
“Did you say my pard lied?” he repeated.
Allison Lee struggled and choked over a halting, “No.”
The cowboy backed away, slowly, carefully, with soft steps, and he faced the others as he moved.
“I reckon thet’s aboot all,” he said, and, slipping into the crowd, he was gone.
After Neale and Larry left, Slingerland saw four seasons swing round, in which no visitors disturbed the loneliness of his valley.
All this while he did not leave Allie Lee alone, or at least out of hearing. When he went to tend his traps or to hunt, to chop wood or to watch the trail, Allie always accompanied him. She grew strong and supple; she could walk far and carry a rifle or a pack; she was keen of eye and ear, and she loved the wilds; she not only was of help to him, but she made the time pass swiftly.
When a year passed after the departure of Neale and Larry King it seemed to Slingerland that they would never return. There was peril on the trails these days. He grew more and more convinced of some fatality, but he did not confide his fears to Allie. She was happy and full of trust; every day, almost every hour, she looked for Neale. The long wait did not drag her down; she was as fresh and hopeful as ever and the rich bloom mantled her cheek. Slingerland had not the heart to cast a doubt into her happiness. He let her live her dreams.
There came a day that spring when it was imperative for him to visit a distant valley, where he had left traps he now needed, and as the distance was long and time short he decided to go alone. Allie laughed at the idea of being unsafe at the cabin.
“I can take care of myself,” she said. “I’m not afraid.” Slingerland scarcely doubted her. She had nerve, courage; she knew how to use a gun; and underneath her softness and tenderness was a spirit that would not flinch at anything. Still he did not feel satisfied with the idea of leaving her alone, and it was with a wrench that he did it now.
Moreover, he was longer at the journey than he had anticipated. The moment he turned his face homeward, a desire to hurry, an anxiety, a dread fastened upon him. A presentiment of evil gathered. But, encumbered as he was with heavy traps, he could not travel swiftly. It was late afternoon when he topped the last ridge between him and home.
What Slingerland saw caused him to drop his traps and gaze aghast. A heavy column of smoke rose above the valley. His first thought was of Sioux. But he doubted if the Indians would betray his friendship. The cabin had caught on fire by accident or else a band of wandering desperadoes had happened along to ruin him. He ran down the slope, stole down round to the group of pines, and under cover, cautiously, approached the spot where his cabin had stood.
It was a heap of smoking logs and probably had burned for hours. There was no sign of Allie or of any one. Then he ran into the glade. Almost at once he saw boot-tracks and hoof-tracks, while pelts and hides and furs lay scattered around, as if they had been discarded for choicer ones.
“Robbers!” muttered Slingerland. “An’ they’ve got the lass!”
He shook under the roughest blow he had ever been dealt; his conscience flayed him; his distress over Allie’s fate was so keen and unfamiliar that, used as he was to prompt decision and action, he remained stock-still, staring at the ruins of his home.
Presently he roused himself. He had no hopes. He knew the nature of men who had done this deed. But it was possible that he might overtake them. In the dust he found four sizes of boot-tracks and he took the trail down the valley.
Then he became aware that a storm was imminent and that the air had become cold and raw. Rain began to fall, and darkness came quickly. Slingerland sought the shelter of a near-by ledge, and there, hungry, cold, wet, and unhappy, he waited for sleep that would not come.
It rained hard all night and by morning the brook had become a yellow flood and the trail was under water. Toward noon the rain turned to a drizzly snow, and finally ceased. Slingerland passed on down the valley, searching for tracks. The ground everywhere had been washed clean and smooth. When he reached the old St. Vrain and Laramie Trail it looked as though a horse had not passed there in months. He spent another wretched night, and next day awoke to the necessities of life. Except for his rifle, and his horses, and a few traps back up in the hills, he had nothing to show for years of hard and successful work. But that did not matter. He had begun with as little and he could begin again. He killed meat, satisfied his hunger, and cooked more that he might carry with him. Then he spent two more days in that locality, until he had crossed every outlet from his valley. Not striking a track, he saw nothing but defeat.
That moment was bitter. “If Neale’d happen along hyar now he’d kill me—an’ sarve me right,” muttered the trapper.
But he believed that Neale, too, had gone the way of so many who had braved these wilds. Slingerland saw in the fate of Neale and Allie the result of civilization marching westward. If before he had disliked the idea of the railroad entering his wild domain, he hated it now. Before that survey the Indians had been peaceful; no dangerous men rode the trails. What right had the Government to steal land from the Indians, to break treaties, to run a steam track across the plains and mountains? Slingerland foresaw the bloodiest period ever known in the West, before that work should be completed. It had struck him deep—this white-man movement across the Wyoming hills, and it was not the loss of all he had worked for that he minded. For years his life had been lonely, and then suddenly it had been full. Never again would it be either.
Slingerland turned his back to the trail made by the advancing march of the empire-builders, and sought the seclusion of the more inaccessible hills.
“Some day I’ll work out with a load of pelts,” he said, “an’ then mebbe I’ll hyar what become of Neale—an’ her.”
He found, as one of his kind knew how to find, the valleys where no white man had trod—where the game abounded and was tame—where if the red man came he was friendly—where the silent days and lonely nights slowly made more bearable his memory of Allie Lee.
Allie Lee possessed a mind at once active and contemplative. While she dreamed of Neale and their future she busied herself with many tasks, and a whole year flew by without a lagging or melancholy hour.
Neale, she believed, had been detained or sent back to Omaha, or given more important work than formerly. She divined Slingerland’s doubt, but she would not give it room in her consciousness. Her heart told her that all was well with Neale, and that sooner or later he would return to her.
In Allie love had worked magic. It had freed her from a horrible black memory. She had been alone; she had wanted to die so as to forget those awful yells and screams—the murder—the blood—the terror and the anguish; she had nothing to want to live for; she had almost hated those two kind men who tried so hard to make her forget. Then suddenly, she never quite remembered when, she had seen Neale with different eyes. A few words, a touch, a gift, and a pledge—and life had been transformed for Allie Lee. Like a flower blooming overnight, her heart had opened to love, and all the distemper in her blood and all the blackness in her mind were dispelled. The relief from pain and dread was so great that love became a beautiful and all-absorbing passion. Freed then, and strangely happy, she took to the life around her as naturally as if she had been born there, and she grew like a wild flower. Neale returned to her that autumn to make perfect the realization of her dreams. When he went away she could still be happy. She owed it to him to be perfect in joy, faith, love, and duty; and her adversity had discovered to her an inward courage and an indomitable will. She lived for Neale.
Summer, autumn, winter passed, short days full of solitude, beauty, thought, and anticipation, and always achievement, for she could not stay idle. When the first green brightened the cottonwoods and willows along the brook she knew that before their leaves had attained their full growth Neale would be on his way to her. A strange and inexplicable sense of the heart told her that he was coming.
More than once that spring had she bent over the mossy rock to peer down at her face mirrored in the crystal spring. Neale had made her aware of her beauty, and she was proud of it, since it seemed to be such a strange treasure to him.
On the May morning that Slingerland left her alone she was startled by the clip-clop of horses trotting up the trail a few hours after his departure.
Her first thought was that Neale and Larry had returned. All her being suddenly radiated with rapture. She flew to the door.
Four horsemen rode into the clearing, but Neale was not among them.
Allie’s joy was short-lived, and the reaction to disappointment was a violent, agonizing wrench. She lost all control of her muscles for a moment, and had to lean against the cabin to keep from falling.
By this time the foremost rider had pulled in his horse near the door. He was a young giant with hulking shoulders, ruddy-faced, bold-eyed, ugly-mouthed. He reminded Allie of some one she had seen in California. He stared hard at her.
“Hullo! Ain’t you Durade’s girl?” he asked, in gruff astonishment.
Then Allie knew she had seen him out in the gold-fields.
“No, I’m not,” she replied.
“A-huh! You look uncommon like her.... Anybody home round here?”
“Slingerland went over the hill,” said Allie. “He’ll be back presently.”
The fellow brushed her aside and went into the cabin. Then the other three riders arrived.
“Mornin’, miss,” said one, a grizzled veteran, who might have been miner, trapper, or bandit. The other two reined in behind him. One wore a wide-brimmed black sombrero from under which a dark, sinister face gleamed. The last man had sandy hair and light roving eyes.
“Whar’s Fresno?” he asked.
“I’m inside,” replied the man called Fresno, and he appeared at the door. He stretched out a long arm and grasped Allie before she could avoid him. When she began to struggle the huge hand closed on her wrist until she could have screamed with pain.
“Hold on, girl! It won’t do you no good to jerk, an’ if you holler I’ll choke you,” he said. “Fellers, get inside the cabin an’ rustle around lively.”
With one pull he hauled Allie toward his horse, and, taking a lasso off his saddle, he roped her arms to her sides and tied her to the nearest tree.
“Keep mum now or it ‘ll be the wuss fer you,” he ordered; then he went into the cabin.
They were a bad lot, and Slingerland’s reason for worry had at last been justified. Allie did not fully realize her predicament until she found herself bound to the tree. Then she was furious, and strained with all her might to slip free of the rope. But the efforts were useless; she only succeeded in bruising her arms for nothing. When she desisted she was ready to succumb to despair, until a flashing thought of Neale, of the agony that must be his if he lost her or if harm befell her, drew her up sharply, thrillingly. A girl’s natural and instinctive fear was vanquished by her love.
She heard the robbers knocking things about in the cabin. They threw bales of beaver pelts out of the door. Presently Fresno reappeared carrying a buckskin sack in which Slingerland kept his money and few valuables, and the others followed, quarreling over a cane-covered demijohn in which there had once been liquor.
“Nary a drop!” growled the one who got possession of it. And with rage he threw the thing back into the cabin, where it crashed into the fire.
“Sandy, you’ve scattered the fire,” protested the grizzled robber, as he glanced into the cabin. “Them furs is catchin’.”
“Let ‘em burn!” called Fresno. “We got all we want. Come on.”
“But what’s the sense burnin’ the feller’s cabin down?”
“Nuthin’ ‘ll burn,” said the dark-faced man, “an’ if it does it ‘ll look like Indians’ work. Savvy, Old Miles?”
They shuffled out together. Evidently Fresno was the leader, or at least the strongest force. He looked at the sack in his hand and then at Allie.
“You fellers fight over thet,” he said, and, throwing the sack on the ground, he strode toward Allie.
The three men all made a rush for the sack and Sandy got it. The other two pressed round him, not threateningly, but aggressively, sure of their rights.
“I’ll divide,” said Sandy, as he mounted his horse. “Wait till we make camp. You fellers pack the beavers.”
Fresno untied Allie from the tree, but he left the lasso round her; holding to it and her arm, he rudely dragged her to his horse.
“Git up, an’ hurry,” he ordered.
Allie mounted. The stirrups were too long.
“You fellers clear out,” called Fresno, “an ketch me one of them hosses we seen along the brook.”
While he readjusted the stirrups, Allie looked down upon him. He was an uncouth ruffian, and his touch gave her an insupportable disgust. He wore no weapons, but his saddle holster contained a revolver and the sheath a Winchester. Allie could have shot him and made a run for it, and she had the nerve to attempt it. The others, however, did not get out of sight before Fresno had the stirrups adjusted. He strode after them, leading the horse. Allie glanced back to see a thin stream of smoke coming out of the cabin door. Then she faced about, desperately resolved to take any chance to get away. She decided that she would not be safe among these men for very long. Whatever she was to do she must do that day, and she only awaited her opportunity.
At the ford Sandy caught one of Slingerland’s horses—a mustang and a favorite of Allie’s, and one she could ride. He was as swift as the wind. Once upon him, she could run away from any horse which these robbers rode. Fresno put the end of the lasso round the mustang’s neck.
“Can you ride bareback?” he asked Allie.
Allie lied. Her first thought was to lead them astray as to her skill with a horse; and then it occurred to her that if she rode Fresno’s saddle there might be an opportunity to use the gun.
Fresno leaped astride the mustang, and was promptly bucked off. The other men guffawed. Fresno swore and, picking himself up, tried again. This time the mustang behaved better, but it was plain he did not like the weight. Then Fresno started off, leading his own horse, and at a trot that showed he wanted to cover ground.
Allie heard the others quarreling over something, probably the gold Slingerland had been so many years in accumulating.
They rode on to where the valley opened into another, along which wound the old St. Vrain and Laramie Trail. They kept to this, traveling east for a few miles, and then entered an intersecting valley, where some distance up they had a camp. They had not taken the precaution to hide either packs or mules, and so far as Allie could tell they had no fear of Indians. Probably they had crossed from California, and, being dishonest and avoiding caravans and camps, they had not become fully acquainted with the perils of that region.
It was about noon when they arrived at this place. The sun was becoming blurred and a storm appeared brewing. Fresno dismounted, dropping the halter of the mustang. Then he let go his own bridle. The eyes he bent on Allie made her turn hers away as from something that could scorch and stain. He pulled her off the saddle, rudely, with coarse and meaning violence.
Allie pushed him back and faced him. In a way she had been sheltered all her life, yet she had lived among such men as this man, and she knew that resistance or pleadings were useless; they would only inflame him. She was not ready yet to court death.
“Wait,” she said.
“A-huh!” he grunted, breathing heavily. He was an animal, slow-witted and brutal.
“Fresno, I am Durade’s girl!” she went on.
“I thought I knowed you. But you’re grown to be a woman an’ a dam’ pretty one.”
Allie drew him aside, farther from the others, who had renewed a loud altercation. “Fresno, it’s gold you want,” she affirmed, rather than asked.
“Sure. But no small stake like thet’d be my choice ag’in’ you,” he leered, jerking a thumb back at his companions.
“You remember Horn?” went on Allie.
“Horn! The miner who made thet big strike out near Sacramento?”
“Yes, that’s who I mean,” replied Allie, hurriedly. “We—we left California in his caravan. He brought all his gold with him.”
Fresno showed a growing interest.
“We were attacked by Sioux.... Horn buried all that gold—on the spot. All—all the others were killed—except me.... And I know where—” Allie shuddered with what the words brought up. But no memory could weaken her.
Fresno opened his large mouth to bawl this unexpected news to his comrades.
“Don’t call them—don’t tell them,” Allie whispered. “There’s only one condition. I’ll take you where that gold’s hidden.”
“Girl, I can make you tell,” he replied, menacingly.
“No, you can’t.”
“You ain’t so smart you think I’ll let you go—jest for some gold?” he queried. “Gold’ll be cheap along this trail soon. An’ girls like you are scarce.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.... Get rid of the others—and I’ll take you where Horn buried his gold.”
Fresno stared at her. He grinned. The idea evidently surprised and flattered him; yet it was perplexing.
“But Frank—he’s my pard—thet one with the black hat,” he protested. “I couldn’t do no dirt to Frank.... What’s your game, girl? I’ll beat you into tellin’ me where thet gold is.”
“Beating won’t make me tell,” replied Allie, with intensity. “Nothing will—if I don’t want to. My game is for my life. You know I’ve no chance among four men like you.”
“Aw, I don’t know about thet,” he blustered. “I can take care of you.... But, say, if you’d stand fer Frank, mebbe I’ll take you up.... Girl, are you lyin’ about thet gold?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t the trapper dig it up? You must hev told him.”
“Because he was afraid to keep it in or near his cabin. We meant to leave it until we were ready to get out of the country.”
That appeared plausible to Fresno and he grew more thoughtful.
Meanwhile the altercation among the other three ruffians assumed proportions that augured a fight.
“I’ll divide this sack when I git good an’ ready,” declared Sandy.
“But, pard, thet’s no square deal,” protested Old Miles. “I’m a-gittin’ mad. I seen you meant to keep it all.”
The dark-faced ruffian shoved a menacing fist under Sandy’s nose. “When do I git mine?” he demanded.
Fresno wheeled and called, “Frank, you come here!”
The other approached sullenly. “Fresno, thet Sandy is whole hog or none!” he exclaimed.
“Let ‘em fight it out,” replied Fresno. “We’ve got a bigger game.... Besides, they’ll shoot each other up. Then we’ll hev it all. Come, give ‘em elbow room.”
He led Allie and his horse away a little distance.
“Fetch them packs, Frank,” he called. The mustang followed, and presently Frank came with one of the packs. Fresno slipped the saddle from his horse, and, laying it under a tree, he pulled gun and rifle from their sheaths. The gun he stuck in his belt; the rifle he leaned against a branch.
“Sandy’ll plug Old Miles in jest another minnit,” remarked Fresno.
“What’s this other game?” queried Frank, curiously.
“It’s gold, Frank—gold,” replied Fresno; and in few words he told his comrade about Horn’s buried treasure. But he did not mention the condition under which the girl would reveal its hiding-place. Evidently he had no doubt that he could force her to tell.
“Let’s rustle,” cried Frank, his dark face gleaming. “We want to git out of this country quick.”
“You bet! An’ I wonder when we’ll be fetchin’ up with them railroad camps we heerd about... Camps full of gold an’ whisky an’ wimmen!”
“We’ve enough on our hands now,” replied Frank. “Let’s rustle fer thet—”
A gun-shot interrupted him. Then a hoarse curse rang out—and then two more reports from a different gun.
“Them last was Sandy’s,” observed Fresno, coolly. “An’ of course they landed... Go see if Old Miles hit Sandy.”
Frank strode off under the trees.
Allie had steeled herself to anything, and those shots warned her that now she had two less enemies to contend with, and that she must be quick to seize the first opportunity to act. She could leap upon the mustang, and if she was lucky she could get away. She could jump for the Winchester and surely shoot one of these villains, perhaps both of them. But the spirit that gave her the nerve to attempt either plan bade her wait, not too long, but longer, in the hope of a more favorable moment.
Frank returned to Fresno, and he carried the sack of gold that had caused dissension. Fresno laughed.
“Sandy’s plugged hard—low down,” said Frank. “He can’t live. An’ Old Miles is croaked.”
“A-huh! Frank, I’ll go git the other packs. An’ you see what’s in this sack,” said Fresno.
When he got out of sight, Allie slipped the lasso from her waist.
“I don’t need that hanging to me,” she said.
“Sure you don’t, sweetheart,” replied the ruffian Frank. “Thet man Fresno is rough with ladies. Now I’m gentle.... Come an’ let me spill this sack in your lap.”
“I guess not,” replied Allie.
“Wal, you’re sure a cat... Look at her eyes!... All right, don’t git mad at me.”
He spilled the contents of the sack out on the sand, and bent over it.
What had made Allie’s eyes flash was the recognition of her opportunity. She did not hesitate an instant. First she looked to see just where the mustang stood. He was near, with the rope dragging, half coiled. Allie suddenly noticed the head and ears of the mustang. He heard something. She looked up the valley slope and saw a file of Indians riding down, silhouetted against the sky. They were coming fast. For an instant Allie’s senses reeled. Then she rallied. Her situation was desperate—almost hopeless. But here was the issue of life or death, and she met it.
In one bound she had the rifle. Long before, she had ascertained that it was loaded. The man Frank heard the click of the raising hammer.
“What’re you doin’?” he demanded, fiercely.
“Don’t get up!” warned Allie. She stepped backward nearer the mustang. “Look up the slope!... Indians!”
But he paid no heed. He jumped up and strode toward her.
“Look, man!” cried Allie, piercingly. He came on. Then Fresno appeared, running, white of face.
Allie, without leveling the rifle, fired at Frank, even as his clutching hands struck the weapon.
He halted, with sudden gasp, sank to his knees, fell against the tree, and then staggered up again.
Allie had to drop the rifle to hold the frightened mustang. She mounted him, urged him away, and hauled in the dragging lasso. Once clear of brush and stones, he began to run. Allie saw a clear field ahead, but there were steep rocky slopes boxing the valley. She would be hemmed in. She got the mustang turned, and ran among the trees, keeping far over to the left. She heard beating hoofs off to the right, crashings in brush, and then yells. An opening showed the slope alive with Indians riding hard. Some were heading down, and others up the valley to cut off her escape; the majority were coming straight for the clumps of trees.
Fresno burst out of cover mounted on Sandy’s bay horse. He began to shoot. And the Indians fired in reply. All along the slopes rose white puffs of smoke, and bullets clipped dust from the ground in front of Allie. Fresno drew ahead. The bay horse was swift. Allie pulled her mustang more to the left, hoping to get over the ridge, which on that side was not high. To her dismay, Indians appeared there, too. She wheeled back to the first course and saw that she must attempt what Fresno was trying.
Then the robber Frank appeared, riding out of the cedars. The Indian riders closed rapidly in on him, shooting all the time. His horse was hit, and stumbling, it almost threw the rider. Then the horse ran wildly—could not be controlled. One Indian was speeding from among the others. He had a bow bent double, and suddenly it straightened. Allie saw dust fly from Frank’s back. He threw up his arms and slid off under the horse, the saddle slipping with him. The horse, wounded and terrorized, began to plunge, dragging man and saddle.
Ahead, far to the right, Fresno was gaining on his pursuers. He was out of range now, but the Indians kept shooting. Then Allie’s situation became so perilous that she saw only the Indians to the left, with their mustangs stretched out so as to intercept her before she got out into the wider valley.
Her mustang did not need to be goaded. The yells behind and on all sides, and the whistling bullets, drove him to his utmost. Allie had all she could do to ride him. She was nearly blinded by the stinging wind, yet she saw those lithe, half-naked savages dropping gradually back and she knew that she was gaining. Her hair became loose and streamed in the wind. She heard the yells then. No more rifles cracked. Her pursuers had discovered that she was a girl and were bent on her capture.
Fleet and strong the mustang ran, sure-footed, leaping the washes, and outdistancing the pursuers on the left. Allie thought she could turn into the big valley and go down the main trail before the Indians chasing Fresno discovered her. But vain hope! Across the width of the valley where it opened out, a string of Indians appeared, riding back to meet her.
A long dust line, dotted with bobbing objects, to the right. Behind a close-packed bunch of hard riders. In front an opening trap of yelling savages. She was lost. And suddenly she remembered the fate of her mother. Her spirit sank, her strength fled. Everything blurred around her. She lost control of the mustang. She felt him turning, slowing, the yells burst hideously in her ears. Like her mother’s—her fate. A roar of speedy hoof-beats seemed to envelop her, and her nostrils were filled with dust. They were upon her. She prayed for a swift stroke—then for her soul. All darkened—her senses were failing. Neale’s face glimmered there—in space—and again was lost. She was slipping—slipping—A rude and powerful hold fastened upon her. Then all faded.