by Grey, Zane
"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 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.
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 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 th
em. 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.
Chapter 12
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.
"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.