by Zane Grey
“Don’t ride so close!” yelled Larry. “They’re spreadin’!”
Neale gathered that the Indians were riding farther apart because they soon expected to be in range of bullets; and Larry wanted Neale to ride farther from him for the identical reason.
Neale saw the first white puff of smoke from a rifle of the leader. The bullet hit far behind. More shots kept raising the dust, the last time still a few yards short.
“Gawd! Look!” yelled Larry. “The devils hit Pat’s hoss!”
Neale saw the Irishman go down with his horse, plunge in the dust, and then roll over and lie still.
“They got him!” he yelled at Larry.
“Ride thet hoss!” came back grimly and appealingly from the cowboy.
Neale rode as he had never before ridden. Fortunately his horse was fresh and fast, and that balanced the driving the cowboy was giving his mount. For a long distance they held their own with the Sioux. They had now gained a straight-away course for the work-train, so that with the Sioux behind they had only to hold out for a few miles. Brush appeared as well off as they were. Slingerland led by perhaps a hundred feet, far over to the left, and he was wholly out of range.
It took a very short time at that pace to cover a couple of miles. And then the Indians began to creep up closer and closer. Again they were shooting. Neale heard the reports and each one made him flinch in expectation of feeling the burn of a bullet. Brush was now turning to fire his rifle.
Neale bethought himself of his own Winchester, which he was carrying in his hand. Dropping the rein over the horn of his saddle, he turned half round. How close, how red, how fierce these Sioux were! He felt his hair rise stiff under his hat. And at the same instant a hot wrath rushed over him, madness to fight, to give back blow for blow. Just then several of the Indians fired. He heard the sharp cracks, then the spats of bullets striking the ground; he saw the little streaks of dust in front of him. Then the whistle of lead. That made him shoot in return. His horse lunged forward, almost throwing him, and ran the faster for his fright. Neale heard Larry begin to shoot. It became a running duel now, with the Indians scattering wide, riding low, yelling like demons, and keeping up a continuous volley. They were well armed with white men’s guns. Neale worked the lever of his rifle while he looked ahead for an instant to see where his horse was running; then he wheeled quickly and took a snap shot at the nearest Indian, no more than three hundred yards distant now. He saw where his bullet, going wide, struck up the dust. It was desperately hard to shoot from the back of a scared horse. Neale did not notice that Larry’s shots were any more effective than his own. He grew certain that the Sioux were gaining faster now. But the work-train was not far away. He saw the workmen on top of the cars waving their arms. Rougher ground, though, on this last stretch.
Larry was drawing ahead. He had used all the shells in his rifle and now with hand and spur was goading his horse.
Suddenly Neale heard the soft thud of lead striking flesh. His horse leaped with a piercing snort of terror, and Neale thought he was going down. But he recovered, and went plunging on, still swift and game, though with uneven gait. Larry yelled. His red face flashed back over his shoulder. He saw something was wrong with Neale’s horse and he pulled his own.
“Save your own life!” yelled Neale, fiercely. It enraged him to see the cowboy holding back to let him come up. But he could not prevent it.
“He’s hit!” shouted Larry.
“Yes, but not badly,” shouted Neale, in reply. “Spread out!”
The cowboy never swerved a foot. He watched Neale’s horse with keen, sure eyes.
“He’s breakin’! Mebbe he can’t last!”
Bullets whistled all around Neale now. He heard them strike the stones on the ground and sing away; he saw them streak through the scant grass; he felt the tug at his shoulder where one cut through his coat, stinging the skin. That touch, light as it was, drove the panic out of him. The strange darkness before his eyes, hard to see through, passed away. He wheeled to shoot again, and with deliberation he aimed as best he could. Yet he might as well have tried to hit flying birds. He emptied the Winchester.
Then, hunching low in the saddle, Neale hung on. Slingerland was close to the train; Brush on his side appeared to be about out of danger; the pursuit had narrowed down to Neale and Larry. The anger and the grimness faded from Neale. He did not want to go plunging down in front of those lean wild mustangs, to be ridden over and trampled and mutilated. The thought sickened him. The roar of pursuing hoofs grew distinct, but Neale did not look back.
Another roar broke on his ear—the clamor of the Irish soldier-laborers as they yelled and fired.
“Pull him! Pull him!” came the piercing cry from Larry.
Neale was about to ride his frantic horse straight into the work-train. Desperately he hauled the horse up and leaped off. Larry was down, waiting, and his mount went plunging away. Bullets were pattering against the sides of the cars, from which puffed streaks of flame and smoke.
“Up wid yez, lads!” sang out a cheery voice. Casey’s grin and black pipe appeared over the rim of the car, and his big hands reached down.
One quick and straining effort and Neale was up, over the side, to fall on the floor in a pile of sand and gravel. All whirled dim round him for a second. His heart labored. He was wet and hot and shaking.
“Shure yez ain’t hit now!” exclaimed Casey.
Larry’s nervous hands began to slide and press over Neale’s quivering body.
“No—I’m—all—safe!” panted Neale.
The engine whistled shrilly, as if in defiance of the Indians, and with a jerk and rattle the train started.
Neale recovered to find himself in a novel and thrilling situation. The car was of a gondola type, being merely a flat-car, with sides about four feet high, made of such thick oak planking that bullets did not penetrate it. Besides himself and Larry there were half a dozen soldiers, all kneeling at little port-holes. Neale peeped over the rim. In a long thinned-out line the Sioux were circling round the train, hiding on the off sides of their mustangs, and shooting from these difficult positions. They were going at full speed, working in closer. A bullet, striking the rim of the car and showering splinters in Neale’s face, attested to the fact that the Sioux were still to be feared, even from a moving fort. Neale dropped back and, reloading his rifle, found a hole from which to shoot. He emptied his magazine before he realized it. But what with his trembling hands, the jerking of the train, and the swift motion of the Indians, he did not do any harm to the foe.
Suddenly, with a jolt, the train halted.
“Blocked ag’in, b’gorra,” said Casey, calmly. “Me pipe’s out. Sandy, gimme a motch.”
The engine whistled two shrill blasts.
“What’s that for?” asked Neale, quickly.
“Them’s for the men in the foist car to pile over the engine an’ remove obstruchtions from the track,” replied Casey.
Neale dared to risk a peep over the top of the car. The Sioux were circling closer to the front of the train. All along a half-dozen cars ahead of Neale puffs of smoke and jets of flame shot out. Heavy volleys were being fired. The attack of the savages seemed to be concentrating forward, evidently to derail the engine or kill the engineer.
Casey pulled Neale down. “Risky fer yez,” he said. “Use a port-hole an’ foight.”
“My shells are gone,” replied Neale.
He lay well down in the car then, and listened to the uproar, and watched the Irish trio. When the volleys and the fiendish yells mingled he could not hear anything else. There were intervals, however, when the uproar lulled for a moment.
Casey got his black pipe well lit, puffed a cloud of smoke, and picked up his rifle.
“Drill, ye terriers, drill!” he sang, and shoved his weapon through a port-hole. He squinted, over the breech.
“Mac, it’s the same bunch as attacked us day before yisteddy,” he observed.
“It shure ain’t,”
replied McDermott. “There’s a million of thim today.”
He aimed his rifle as if following a moving object, and fired.
“Mac, you git excited in a foight. Now I niver do. An’ I’ve seen thot pinto hoss an’ thot dom’ redskin a lot of times. I’ll kill him yit.”
Casey kept squinting and aiming, and then, just as he pressed the trigger, the train started with a sudden lurch.
“Sp’iled me aim! Thot engineer’s savin’ of the Sooz tribe!… Drill, ye terriers, drill! Drill, ye terriers, drill!… Shane, I don’t hear yez shootin’.”
“How’n hell can I shoot whin me eye is full of blood?” demanded Shane.
Neale then saw blood on Shane’s face. He crawled quietly to the Irishman.
“Man, are you shot? Let me see.”
“Jist a bullet hit me, loike,” replied Shane.
Neale found that a bullet, perhaps glancing from the wood, had cut a gash over Shane’s eye, from which the blood poured. Shane’s hands and face and shirt were crimson. Neale bound a scarf tightly over the wound.
“Let me take the rifle now,” he said.
“Thanks, lad. I ain’t hurted. An’ hev Casey make me loife miserable foriver? Not much. He’s a harrd mon, thot Casey.”
Shane crouched back to his port-hole, with his bloody bandaged face and his bloody hands. And just then the train stopped with a rattling crash.
“Whin we git beyond thim ties as was scattered along here mebbe we’ll go on in,” remarked McDermott.
“Mac, yez looks on the gloomy side,” replied Casey. Then quickly he aimed the shot. “I loike it better whin we ain’t movin’,” he soliloquized, with satisfaction. “Thot red-skin won’t niver scalp a soldier of the U. P. R.… Drill, ye terriers! Drill, ye terriers, drill!”
The engine whistle shrieked out and once more the din of conflict headed to the front. Neale lay there, seeing the reality of what he had so often dreamed. These old soldiers, these toilers with rail and sledge and shovel, these Irishmen with the rifles, they were the builders of the great U. P. R. Glory might never be theirs, but they were the battle-scarred heroes. They were as used to fighting as to working. They dropped their sledges or shovels to run for their guns.
Again the train started up and had scarcely gotten under way when with jerk and bump it stopped once more. The conflict grew fiercer as the Indians became more desperate. But evidently they were kept from closing in, for during the thick of the heaviest volleying the engine again began to puff and the wheels to grind. Slowly the train moved on. Like hail the bullets pattered against the car. Smoke drifted away on the wind.
Neale lay there, watching these cool men who fought off the savages. No doubt Casey and Shane and McDermott were merely three of many thousands engaged in building and defending the U. P. R. This trio liked the fighting, perhaps better than the toiling. Casey puffed his old black pipe, grinned and aimed, shot and reloaded, sang his quaint song, and joked with his comrades, all in the same cool, quiet way. If he knew that the shadow of death hung over the train, he did not show it. He was not a thinker. Casey was a man of action. Only once he yelled, and that was when he killed the Indian on the pinto mustang.
Shane grew less loquacious and he dropped and fumbled over his rifle, but he kept on shooting. Neale saw him feel the hot muzzle of his gun and shake his bandaged head. The blood trickled down his cheek.
McDermott plied his weapon, and ever and anon he would utter some pessimistic word, or presage dire disaster, or remind Casey that his scalp was destined to dry in a Sioux’s lodge, or call on Shane to hit something to save his life, or declare the engine was off the track. He rambled on. But it was all talk. The man had gray hairs and he was a born fighter.
This time the train gained more headway, and evidently had passed the point where the Indians could find obstructions to place on the track. Neale saw through a port-hole that the Sioux were dropping back from the front of the train and were no longer circling. Their firing had become desultory. Medicine Bow was in sight. The engine gathered headway.
“We’ll git the rest of the day off,” remarked Casey, complacently. “Shane, yez are dom’ quiet betoimes. An’ Mac, I shure showed yez up today.”
“Ye did not,” retorted McDermott. “I kilt jist twinty-nine Sooz!”
“Jist thorty wus moine. An’, Mac, as they wus only about fifthy of thim, yez must be a liar.”
The train drew on toward Medicine Bow. Firing ceased. Neale stood up to see the Sioux riding away. Their ranks did not seem noticeably depleted.
“Drill, ye terriers, drill!” sang Casey, as he wiped his sweaty and begrimed rifle. “Mac, how many Sooz did Shane kill?”
“B’gorra, he ain’t said yit,” replied McDermott. “Say, Shane.… Casey!”
Neale whirled at the sharp change of tone.
Shane lay face down on the floor of the car, his bloody hands gripping his rifle. His position was inert, singularly expressive.
Neale strode toward him. But Casey reached him first. He laid a hesitating hand on Shane’s shoulder.
“Shane, old mon!” he said, but the cheer was not in his voice.
Casey dropped his pipe! Then he turned his comrade over. Shane had done his best and his last for the U. P. R.
CHAPTER 17
Neale and Larry and Slingerland planned to go into the hills late in the fall, visit Slingerland’s old camp, and then try to locate the gold buried by Horn. For the present Larry meant to return to Benton, and Neale, though vacillating as to his own movements, decided to keep an eye on the cowboy.
The trapper’s last words to Neale were interesting. “Son,” he said, “there’s a feller hyar in Medicine Bow who says as how he thought your pard Larry was a bad cowpuncher from the Pan Handle of Texas.”
“Bad?” queried Neale.
“Wal, he meant a gun-throwin’ bad man, I take it.”
“Don’t let Reddy overhear you say it,” replied Neale, “and advise your informant to be careful. I’ve always had a hunch that Reddy was really somebody.”
“Benton’ll work on the cowboy,” continued Slingerland, earnestly. “An’, son, I ain’t so all-fired sure of you.”
“I’ll take what comes,” returned Neale, shortly. “Good-bye, old friend. And if you can use us for buffalo-hunting without the ‘dom’ Sooz,’ as Casey says; why, we’ll come.”
After Slingerland departed Neale carried with him a memory of the trapper’s reluctant and wistful good-bye. It made Neale think—where were he and Larry going? Friendships in this wild West were stronger ties than he had known elsewhere.
The train arrived at Benton after dark. And the darkness seemed a windy gulf out of which roared yellow lights and excited men. The tents, with the dim lights through the canvas, gleamed pale and obscure, like so much of the life they hid. The throngs hurried, the dust blew, the band played, the barkers clamored for their trade.
Neale found the more pretentious hotels overcrowded, and he was compelled to go to his former lodgings, where he and Larry were accommodated.
“Now, we’re here, what’ll we do?” queried Neale, more to himself. He felt as if driven. And the mood he hated and feared was impinging upon his mind.
“Shore we’ll eat,” replied Larry.
“Then what?”
“Wal, I reckon we’ll see what’s goin’ on in this heah Benton.”
As a matter of fact, Neale reflected, there was nothing to do that he wanted to do.
“You-all air gettin’ the blues,” said Larry, with solicitude.
“Red, I’m never free of them.”
Larry put his hands on Neale’s shoulder. Demonstration of this kind was rare in the cowboy.
“Pard, are we goin’ to see this heah Benton, an’ then brace, an’ go back to work?”
“No. I can’t hold a job,” replied Neale, bitterly.
“You’re showin’ a yellow streak? You’re done, as you told Slingerland? Nothin’ ain’t no good?… Life’s over, fer all thet’s sweet an’ right?
Is thet your stand?”
“Yes, it must be, Reddy,” said Neale, with scorn of himself. “But you—it needn’t apply to you.”
“I reckon I’m sorry,” rejoined Larry, ignoring Neale’s last words. “I always hoped you’d get over Allie’s loss.… You had so much to live fer.”
“Reddy, I wish the bullet that hit Shane today had hit me instead.… You needn’t look like that. I mean it. Today when the Sioux chased us my hair went stiff and my heart was in my mouth. I ran for my life as if I loved it. But that was my miserable cowardice.… I’m sick of the game.”
“Are you in daid earnest?” asked Larry, huskily.
Neale nodded gloomily. He did not even regret the effect of his speech upon the cowboy. He divined that somehow the moment was as critical and fateful for Larry, but he did not care. The black spell was enfolding him. All seemed hard, cold, monstrous within his breast. He could not love anything. He was lost. He realized the magnificent loyalty of this simple Texan, who was his true friend.
“Reddy, for God’s sake don’t make me ashamed to look you in the eyes,” appealed Neale. “I want to go on. You know!”
“Wal, I reckon there ain’t anythin’ to hold me now,” drawled Larry. He had changed as he spoke. He had aged. The dry humor of the cowboy, the amiable ease, were wanting.
“Oh, forgive my utter selfishness!” burst out Neale. “I’m not the man I was. But don’t think I don’t love you.”
They went out together, and the hum of riotous Benton called them; the lights beckoned and the melancholy night engulfed them.
Next morning late, on the way to breakfast, Neale encountered a young man whose rough, bronzed face somehow seemed familiar.