the U P Trail (1940)

by Grey, Zane

  "No, you won't," replied Hough, and he pulled her toward his companion, a tall woman with golden hair. "Stanton, shut her up."

  The woman addressed spoke a few words in Ruby's ear. Then the girl flounced away. But she spoke with withering scorn to Neale.

  "What in hell did you come in here for, you big handsome stiff?"

  With that she was lost amid her mirthful companions.

  Hough turned to Neale. "The girl's a favorite. You ruffled her vanity ... you see. That's Benton. If you had happened to be alone you would have had gunplay.

  Be careful after this."

  "But I didn't flirt with her," protested Neale. "I only looked at her; curiously, of course. And I said I wouldn't dance."

  Hough laughed. "You're young in Benton. Neale, let me introduce to you the lady who saved you from some inconvenience .... Miss Stanton; Mr. Neale."

  And that was how Neale met Beauty Stanton. It seemed she had done him a service.

  He thanked her. Neale's manner with women was courteous and deferential. It showed strangely here by contrast. The Stanton woman was superb, not more than thirty years old, with a face that must have been lovely once and held the haunting ghost of beauty still. Her hair was dead gold; her eyes were large and blue, with dark circles under them; and her features had a clear-cut classic regularity.

  "Where's Ancliffe?" asked Hough, addressing Stanton. She pointed, and Hough left them.

  "Neale, you're new here," affirmed the woman, rather curiously.

  "Didn't I look like it? I can't forget what that girl said," replied Neale.

  "Tell me."

  "She asked me what in the hell I came here for. And she called me; "

  "Oh, I heard what Ruby called you. It's a wonder it wasn't worse. She can swear like a trooper. The men are mad over Ruby. It'd be just like her to fall in love with you for snubbing her."

  "I hope she doesn't," replied Neale, constrainedly.

  "May I ask; what did you come here for?"

  "You mean here to your dance-hall? Why, Hough brought me. I met him. We played cards and; "

  "No. I mean what brought you to Benton?"

  "I just drifted here .... I'm looking for a; a lost friend," said Neale.

  "No work? But you're no spiker or capper or boss. I know that sort. And I can spot a gambler a mile. The whole world meets out here in Benton. But not many young men like you wander into my place."

  "Like me? How so?"

  "The men here are wolves on the scent for flesh; like bandits on the trail of gold.... But you; you're like my friend Ancliffe."

  "Who is he?" asked Neale, politely.

  "WHO is he? God only knows. But he's an Englishman and a gentleman. It's a pity men like Ancliffe and you drift out here."

  She spoke seriously. She had the accent and manner of breeding.

  "Why, Miss Stanton?" inquired Neale. He was finding another woman here and it was interesting to him.

  "Because it means wasted life. You don't work. You're not crooked. You can't do any good. And only a knife in the back or a bullet from some drunken bully's gun awaits you."

  "That isn't a very hopeful outlook, I'll admit," replied Neale, thoughtfully.

  At this point Hough returned with a pale, slender man whose clothes and gait were not American. He introduced him as Ancliffe. Neale felt another accession of interest. Benton might be hell, but he was meeting new types of men and women. Ancliffe was fair; he had a handsome face that held a story, arid tired blue eyes that looked out upon the world wearily and mildly, without curiosity and without hope. An Englishman of broken fortunes.

  "Just arrived, eh?" he said to Neale. "Rather jolly here, don't you think?"

  "A fellow's not going to stagnate in Benton," replied Neale.

  "Not while he's alive," interposed Stanton.

  "Miss Stanton, that idea seems to persist with you; the brevity of life," said

  Neale, smiling. "What are the average days for a mortal in this bloody Benton?"

  "Days! You mean hours. I call the night blessed that some one is not dragged out of my place. And I don't sell drinks.... I've saved Ancliffe's life nine times I know of. Either he hasn't any sense or he wants to get killed."

  "I assure you it's the former," said the Englishman.

  "But, my friends, I'm serious," she returned, earnestly. "This awful place is getting on my nerves.... Mr. Neale here, he would have had to face a gun already but for me."

  "Miss Stanton, I appreciate your kindness," 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. He's the friend I mentioned."

  "Boy, you're courting death!" exclaimed Stanton.

  Then the music started up again. Conversation was scarcely worth while during the dancing. Neale watched as before. Twice as he gazed at the whirling couples he caught the eyes of the girl Ruby bent upon him. They were expressive of pique, resentment, curiosity. Neale did not look that way any more. Besides, his attention was drawn elsewhere. 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, bareheaded 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 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, bad men. 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 some aid

  I couldn't run the place. It'll be the death of me."

  Neale did not doubt that. A shadow surely hovered over this strange woman, but 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 any other kind. He preyed on men. He looked on with 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 sad proof of a disordered life.

  Some one 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 m
e."

  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 and had taken 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 much of, and a home she could go back to if she wasn't ashamed."

  "That so?" replied Neale, thoughtfully. "Let me talk to her."

  At a slight sign from Stanton, Ruby joined the group.

  "Ruby, you've already introduced yourself to this gentleman, but not so nicely as you might have done," said Beauty.

  "I'm sorry," replied Ruby. A certain wistfulness showed in her low tones.

  "Maybe I was rude," said Neale. "I didn't intend to be. I couldn't dance with any one here; or anywhere...." Then he spoke to her in a lower tone. "But I'll tell you what I will do. I won a thousand dollars to-night. 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 will 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.

  "Gentlemen, you are my only friends in Benton. But these are business hours."

  Presently she leaned toward Neale and whispered to him: "Boy, you're courting death. Some one; 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. And presently, when Ancliffe departed, he was glad to follow Hough 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 evidently he had become attached to Beauty

  Stanton; that surely he must be a ruined man of class who had left all behind him, and had become like so many 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, even 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 sake of a courteous word. It was your manner that cut 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 owed you a service. Good night."

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

  Chapter 16

  Neale slept until late the next day and awoke with the pang that 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.

  "If I were half a man I'd get out of here, 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. Not for a long time would he forget that. Certainly this abandoned girl was not a coward. 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 was ashamed of himself. He was a victim of 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 which 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 box-cars 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 King.

  "Red!" he yelled, and made at the cowboy.

  "I'm shore glad to see you," drawled Larry. "What 'n hell busted loose round heah?"

  Neale drew Larry out of the crowd. He carried a small pack done up in a canvas covering.

  "Red, your face looks like home to a man in a strange land," declared Neale.

  "Where are your horses?"

  Larry 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 sell them for? I; I cared for those horses."

  "Will you keep quiet aboot my hosses?"

  Neale had never before seen the tinge of gray in that red-bronze face.

  "But I told you to straighten up!"

  "Wal, who hasn't?" retorted Larry.

  "You haven't! Don't lie."

  "If you put it thet way, all right. Now what're you-all goin' to do aboot it?"

  "I'll lick you good," declared Neale, hotly. He was angry with Larry, but angrier with himself that he had been the cause of the cowboy's loss of work and of his splendid horses.

  "Lick me!" ejaculated Larry. "You mean beat me up?"

  "Yes. You deserve it."

  Larry 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 Larry, soberly.

  "So come an' get it over."

  "Oh, damn you, Red! ... I wouldn't lay a hand on you. And I am sick, I'm so glad to see you! ... I thought you got here ahead of me."

  Neale's voice grew full and trembling.

  Larry became confused, his red face grew redder, and the keen blue flash of his eyes softened.

  "Wal, I heerd what a tough place this heah Benton was; so I jest come."

  Larry ended this speech lamely, but the way he hitched at his belt was conclusive.

  "Wal, by Gawd! Look who's heah!" he suddenly exclaimed.

  Neale wheeled with a start. He saw a scout, in buckski
n, 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 some day," 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.

  Larry 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.

  That damned riffraff 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; became; of; her?" whispered Neale.

  Slingerland looked away from him.

  "Son! You remember Allie. She'd die, quick! ... Wouldn't she, Larry?"

  "Shore. Thet girl; couldn't; hev lived a day," replied Larry, 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 Larry 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 in 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.