Union Pacific

by Zane Grey

“Miss Stanton, I appreciate your thought of such good for nothing fellows as I am,” replied Neale. “But it doesn’t follow that, if I had to face a gun, I’d be sure to go down.”

  “You can throw a gun?” questioned Hough.

  “I had a cowboy gun-thrower for a partner for years . . . out on the surveying of the road.”

  “Boy, you’re courting death!” exclaimed Stanton.

  Then the music started up again. Conversation was scarcely worthwhile during the dancing. Neale watched as before. Twice while he gazed at the whirling couples, he caught the eyes of the girl Ruby upon him. They were expressions of pique, resentment, curiosity. Neale did not look that way any more. Besides his attention was otherwise attracted. Hough yelled in his ear to watch the fun. A fight had started. A strapping fellow wearing a belt containing gun and Bowie knife had jumped upon a table just as the music stopped. He was drunk. He looked like a young workman ambitious to be a desperado.

  “Ladies an’ gennelmen!” he bawled. “I been . . . requested t’sing.”

  Yells and hoots answered him. He glared ferociously around, trying to pick out one of his insulters. Trouble was brewing. Something was thrown at him from behind and it struck him. He wheeled, unsteady upon his feet. Then several men, bare-headed and evidently attendants of the hall, made a rush for him. The table was upset. The would-be singer went down in a heap, and he was pounced upon, handled like a sack, and thrown out. The crowd roared its glee.

  “The worst of that is . . . those fellows ’most always come back, drunk and ugly,” said Stanton. “Then we all begin to run or dodge.”

  “Your men didn’t lose time with that rowdy,” remarked Neale.

  “I’ve hired all kinds of men to keep order,” she replied. “Laborers, ex-sheriffs, gunmen, badmen! The Irish are the best on the job. But they won’t stick. I’ve got eight men here now and they are a tough lot. I’m scared to death of them. I believe they rob my guests. But what can I do? Without somebody I couldn’t run the place. It’ll be the death of me!”

  Neale did not doubt that. A shadow surely hovered over these women. He was surprised at the seriousness with which she spoke. Evidently she tried to preserve order—to avert fights and bloodshed so that licentiousness could go on unrestrained. Neale believed they must go hand in hand. He did not see how it would be possible for a place like this to last long. It could not. The life of the place brought out the worst in men. It created opportunities. Neale watched them pass, seeing the truth in the red eyes, the heavy lids, the open mouths, the look and gait and gesture. A wild frenzy had fastened upon their minds. He found an added curiosity in studying the faces of Ancliffe and Hough. The Englishman had run his race. Any place would suit him for the end. Neale saw this and marveled at the man’s ease and grace and amiability. He reminded Neale of Larry Red King—the same cool, easy, careless air. Ancliffe would die game. Hough was not affected by this sort of debauched life any more than he would have been by another kind. He preyed on men. He looked on with a cold, gray, expressionless face. Possibly he, too, would find an end in Benton sooner or later.

  These reflections, passing swiftly, made Neale think of himself. What was true for others must be true for him. The presence of any of these persons—of Hough and Ancliffe, of himself, in Beauty Stanton’s gaudy resort was a grim and sad proof of a disordered and fallen life.

  Someone touched him—interrupted his thought.

  “You’ve had trouble?” asked Stanton, who had turned from the others.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Well, we’ve all had that . . . You seem young to me.”

  Hough turned to speak to Stanton. “Ruby’s going to make trouble.”

  “No!” exclaimed the woman, with eyes lighting.

  Neale then saw that the girl Ruby, with a short bold-looking fellow who packed a gun, and several companions of both sexes, had come in from the dance hall to take up a position near him. Stanton went over to them. She drew Ruby aside and talked to her. The girl showed none of the passion that had marked her manner a little while before. Presently Stanton returned.

  “Ruby’s got over her temper,” she said, with evident relief, to Neale. “She asked me to say that she apologized. It’s just what I told you. She’ll fall madly in love with you for what you did . . . She’s of good family, Neale. She has a sister she talks of . . . and a home she could go back to if she wasn’t ashamed.”

  “That so?” replied Neale thoughtfully. “Do we talk to her?”

  At some slight sign Ruby joined the group.

  “Ruby, you’ve already introduced yourself to this gentleman, but not so nicely as you might have,” said Stanton.

  “I’m sorry,” replied Ruby. A certain wistfulness changed her.

  “Maybe I was rude,” said Neale. “I didn’t intend to be. I couldn’t dance with anyone here . . . or anywhere . . .” Then he spoke to her in an aside. “But I’ll tell you what I will do. I won a thousand dollars tonight. I’ll give you half of it if you’ll go home.”

  The girl shrank as if she had received a stab. Then she stiffened. “Why don’t you go home?” she retorted. “We’re all going to hell out here. And the gamest get there soonest!” She glared at Neale an instant, white-faced and hard, and then, rejoining her companions, she led them away.

  Beauty Stanton seemed to have received something of the check that had changed the girl Ruby. Presently she leaned toward Neale and whispered to him. “Boy, you’re courting death. Someone . . . something has hurt you. But you’re young . . . Go home!” Then she bade him good night and left the group.

  He looked on in silence after that. When Ancliffe departed, he was glad to follow Hough out into the street. There the same confusion held. A loud throng hurried by, as if bent on cramming into a few hours the life that would not last long.

  Neale was interested to inquire more about Ancliffe. And the gambler replied that the Englishman had come from no one knew where—that he did not go to extremes in drinking or betting—that he evidently had become attached to Beauty Stanton—that he surely must be a ruined man of class who had left all behind him and had become like so many men out there—a leaf in the storm.

  “Stanton took to you,” went on Hough. “I saw that . . . And poor Ruby! I’ll tell you, Neale, I’m sorry for some of these women.”

  “Who wouldn’t be?”

  “Women of this class are strange to you, Neale. But I’ve mixed with them for years. Of course, Benton sets a pace no man ever saw before. Still, the hardest and vilest of these scullions sometimes shows an amazing streak of good. And women like Ruby and Beauty Stanton, whose early surroundings must have been refined . . . they are beyond understanding. They will cut your heart out for a slight, and sacrifice their lives for a courteous word. It was your manner that cost Ruby and won Beauty Stanton. They meet with neither coldness nor courtesy out here. It must be bitter as gall for a woman like Stanton to be treated as you treated her . . . with respect. Yet see how it got her!”

  “I didn’t see anything in particular,” replied Neale.

  “You were too excited and disgusted with the whole scene,” said Hough as they reached the roaring lights of the gambling hell. “Will you go in and play again? There are always open games.”

  “No, I guess not . . . unless you think . . .”

  “Boy, I think nothing except that I liked your company and that I owe you a service. Good night.”

  Neale walked to his lodgings, tired and thoughtful and moody. Behind him the roar lulled and swelled. It was 3:00 in the morning. He wondered when these night hawks slept. As for himself, he found slumber not easily gained. Dawn was lighting the east when he at last fell asleep.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Neale slept until late the next day and awoke with the pang a new day always gave him now. He arose slowly, gloomily, with the hateful consciousness that he had nothing to do. He had wanted to be alone, and now loneliness was bad for him. Almost he regretted that he had refused to let Larry Red King co
me with him. He had begun to acquire the habits of the vicious.

  “If I were half a man I’d have done with it all . . . quick,” he muttered in scorn, and he thought of the broken Englishman, serene and at ease, settled with himself. And he thought of the girl Ruby who had flung the taunt at him that the “gamest get there soonest.” Not for long should he forget that. He was a kind of a coward. Certainly that abandoned girl was not one. She was lost, but she was magnificent.

  “I guess I’ll leave Benton,” he soliloquized. But the place . . . the wildness fascinated him. “No. I guess I’ll stay.”

  It angered him that he could still be ashamed of himself. He was victim to many moods—and underneath every one of them was the steady ache, the dull pain, the pang in his breast, deep in the bone.

  As he left his lodgings, he heard the whistle of a train. The scene down the street was similar to the one that had greeted him the day before, only the dust was not blowing so thickly. He went into a hotel for his meal and fared better, watching the hurry and scurry of men. After he had finished he strolled toward the station.

  Benton had two trains each day now. This one, just in, was long and loaded to its utmost capacity. Neale noticed an Indian arrow sticking fast over a window of one of the coaches. There were flat cars loaded with sections of houses and boxcars full of furniture. Benton was growing every day. At least a thousand persons got off that train, adding to the dusty jostling melee.

  Suddenly Neale came face to face with Larry Red King.

  “Red!” he yelled, and actually made at the cowboy.

  “I’m sure glad to see you,” drawled King. “What in hell busted loose ’round heah?”

  Neale drew him out of the crowd. The cowboy had not changed. He carried a small pack done up in a canvas. “Red, your face looks like home to a man in a strange land,” declared Neale. “But I forbid you to follow me.”

  “Who followed you?” blustered King.

  “How about your job?”

  “Wal, thet man Lee come along . . . seen me . . . had a little palaver with my boss.”

  “Lee!” exclaimed Neale. “Oh, I remember. So he had you fired?”

  “Mebbe. Anyway, I give it to thet boss . . . good an’ hard.”

  “Where are your horses?”

  King looked less at his ease.

  “Wal, I sold them.”

  “Sold them? Those great horses? Oh, Red, you didn’t.”

  “Hell! It costs money to ride on this heah U.P.R. thet we built, an’ I had no money.”

  “But what did you come for? Red, I told you to cut loose from me. I’m on the downgrade. And you had a good job . . . I . . . I cared for those horses.”

  “Will you shut up aboot my horses?”

  Neale had never before seen the tinge of gray in that red-bronze face. “But I told you not to follow me.”

  “Wal, who followed you?” retorted King.

  “You did. Now, didn’t you? Don’t lie.”

  “If you put it that way, yes, I did. Now what’re you-all goin’ to do aboot it?”

  “I’ll lick you good,” declared Neale hotly. He was angry at King, but angrier at himself that he had been the cause of the cowboy’s loss of work and of his splendid horses.

  “Lick me?” ejaculated King. “You mean beat me up?”

  “Yes. You deserve it.”

  King took him in earnest and seemed very much concerned. Neale could almost have laughed at the cowboy’s serious predicament.

  “Wal, I reckon I ain’t much of a fighter with my fists,” said King soberly. “So come on an’ get it over.”

  “Oh, damn you, Red! I wouldn’t lay a hand on you. And I am sick. I’m glad to see you. But why . . . why did you follow me?” Neale’s voice grew full and trembling.

  King became confused and his red face grew redder and the keen blue flash of his eyes softened. “Wal, you see . . . I heard what a tough place this heah Benton was . . . an’ I reckoned as how you’d be gettin’ wilder an’ wilder . . . so I jest throwed up an’ come.” King ended this long speech lamely, but the way he hitched at his belt was conclusive.

  Neale felt too deeply touched to reply. He had to accept King’s loyalty whether he ought to or not, and he was half ashamed of his gladness. A warmth stirred in his heart.

  “Wal, by Gawd! Look who’s heah!” exclaimed the cowboy.

  Neale wheeled with a start. He saw a scout—in buckskin—a tall form with the stride of a mountaineer, strangely familiar. “Slingerland!” he cried.

  The trapper bounded at them, his tanned face glowing, his gray eyes glad.

  “Boys, it’s come at last! I knowed I’d run into you someday,” he said, and he gripped them with horny hands.

  Neale tried to speak, but a terrible cramp in his throat choked him. He appealed with his hands to Slingerland. The trapper lost his smile and the iron set returned to his features.

  King choked over his utterance. “Al-lie . . . What aboot . . . her?”

  “Boys, it’s broke me down,” replied Slingerland hoarsely. “I swear to you I never left Allie alone fer a year . . . an’ then . . . the fust time . . . when she made me go . . . I come back an’ finds the cabin burnt . . . She’s gone! Gone! No redskin job. Them damned riff-raff out of Californy! I tracked ’em. Then a hell of a storm comes up. No tracks left . . . All’s lost! An’ I goes back to my traps in the mountains.”

  “What . . . become . . . of . . . her?” whispered Neale.

  Slingerland looked away from him. “Son . . . you remember Allie . . . She’d die . . . quick . . . wouldn’t she, Red?”

  “Shore. Thet girl . . . couldn’t . . . hev lived a day,” replied King thickly.

  Neale plunged blindly away from his friends. Then the torture in his breast seemed to burst. The sobs came—heavy—racking. He sank upon a box and bowed his head. There King and Slingerland found him.

  The cowboy looked down with helpless pain. “Aw, pard . . . don’t take it . . . so hard,” he implored.

  But he knew and Slingerland knew that sympathy could do no good here. There was no hope, no help. Neale was stricken. They stood there, the elder man looking all the sadness and inevitableness of that wild life, and the younger—the cowboy—slowly changing to iron.

  “Slingerland, you-all said some Californy outfit got Allie?” he queried.

  “I’m sure an’ sartin,” replied the trapper. “Them days there wasn’t any travelin’ west . . . so early after winter. You recollect them four bandits as rode on us one day? They was from Californy.”

  “Wal, I’ll be lookin’ fer men with thet Californy brand,” drawled King, and in his slow, easy, cool speech there was a note deadly and terrible.

  Neale slowly ceased his sobbing. “My nerves’s gone,” he said shakily.

  “No. It jest broke you all up to see Slingerland. An’ it shore did me, too,” replied King.

  “It’s hard, but . . .” Slingerland could not finish his thought.

  “Slingerland, I’m glad to see you, even if it did cut me,” said Neale more rationally. “I’m surprised, too. Are you here with a load of pelts?”

  “No. Boys, I hed to give up trappin’. I couldn’t stand the loneliness . . . after . . . after . . . An’ now I’m killin’ buffalo meat for the soldiers an’ the construction gangs. Jes’ got in on thet train with a carload of fresh meat.”

  “Buffalo meat,” echoed Neale. His mind wandered.

  “Son, how’s your work goin’?”

  Neale shook his head.

  The cowboy, answering for him, said: “We kind of chucked the work, Slingerland.”

  “What? Are you hyar in Benton doin’ nothin’?”

  “Shore. Thet’s the size of it.”

  The trapper made a vehement gesture of disapproval and he bent more of a scrutinizing gaze upon Neale.

  “Son, you’re not gone an’ . . . an’ . . .”

  “Yes!” replied Neale, throwing out both hands. “I quit. I couldn’t work. I can’t work! I can’t res
t or stand still! Yes, I’ve gone. I’m done . . . ruined . . . dead on my feet!”

  A spasm of immense regret contracted the trapper’s face. And King, looking away over the sordid dusty passing throng, cursed under his breath. Neale was the first to recover his composure.

  “Let’s say no more. What’s done is done,” he said. “Suppose you take us on one of your buffalo hunts.”

  Slingerland grasped at straws. “Wal, now, thet ain’t a bad idee. I can use you,” he replied eagerly. “But it’s hard an’ dangerous work. We git chased by redskins often. An’ you’d hev to ride. I reckon, Neale, you’re good enough on a hoss. But our cowboy friend hyar . . . he can’t ride, as I recollect your old arguments.”

  “My job was hosses,” drawled King.

  “An’ besides, you’ve got to shoot straight, which Red hasn’t hed experience of,” went on Slingerland.

  “I seen you was packin’ a Winchester all shiny an’ new,” replied King. “Shore, I’m in fer anythin’ with ridin’ an’ shootin’.”

  “You’ll both go, then?”

  Neale and King accepted his proposition then and there.

  “You’ll need to buy rifles an’ shells, thet’s all,” said Slingerland. “I’ve hosses an’ outfit over at Medicine Bow. An’ I’ve been huntin’ east of thar. Come on, we’ll go to a store. Thet train’s goin’ back soon.”

  “Wal, I come in on thet train an’ now I’m leavin’ on it,” drawled King. “Shore is funny. Without lookin’ over this heah Benton.”

  * * * * *

  On the ride to Medicine Bow Slingerland inquired if Neale and King had ever gone back to the scene of the massacre of the caravan where Horn had buried his gold.

  Neale had absolutely forgotten the buried gold. Probably when he and King had scoured the Black Hills for trace of Allie they had passed down the valley where the treasure had been hidden. Slingerland gave the same reason for his oversight. They talked about the gold and planned, when the railroad reached the foothills, to go after it.

  Both Indians and buffalo were sighted from the train windows before the trio got to Medicine Bow.