by Zane Grey
“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 we can find Slingerland.”
* * * *
Then began a search—frantic, desperate, and forlorn on the part of Neale; faithful and dogged and keen on the part of King. Neale was like a wild man. He heeded no advice or caution. Only the cowboy’s iron arm saved Neale and his horse. It was imperative to find water and grass, and to eat, necessary things which Neale seemed to have forgotten. He seldom slept or rested or ate. They risked meeting the Sioux in every valley and on every ridge. Neale would have welcomed the sight of Indians; 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. “He said the only time he ever left the lass alone was the very day she was taken. Al come home to find the cabin red-hot ashes. Everythin’ gone. No sign of the lass. No sign of murder. She was jest carried off. There was tracks—hoss tracks an’ boot tracks, to the number of three or four men an’ hosses. Al trailed ’em. But thet very night he had to hold up to keep from bein’ drowned, as we had to hyar. Wal, next day he couldn’t find any tracks. But he kept on huntin’ fer a few days, an’ then give up. He said she’d be dead by then—said she wasn’t the kind thet could have lived more ’n a day with men like them. Some hard customers are driftin’ by from the gold-fields. An’ Bill an’ I, hyar, ain’t in love with this railroad idee. It’ll ruin the country fer trappin’ an’ livin’.”
* * * *
Some weeks later a gaunt and ragged cowboy limped into North Platte, walking beside a broken horse, upon the back of which swayed and reeled 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 sight of anything feminine hurt.
* * * *
North Platte stirred with the quickening stimulus of the approach of the rails and the trains, and the army of soldiers whose duty was to protect the horde of toilers, and the army of tradesmen and parasites who 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.
“Gen
tlemen, 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, “I remember this young engineer Neale. When I got here today 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 someone 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.
CHAPTER 11
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 anyone. 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.