Chapter IV: Part 4

Neale was astounded, agitated, intensely concerned.

“Allie!... Your father lives!” he exclaimed.

“Yes.”

“Then I must find him--take you to him.”

“Do what you think best,” she replied, sadly. “But I never saw him. I’ve no love for him. And he never knew I was born.”

“Is it possible? How strange!... If any man could see you now! Allie, do you resemble your mother?”

“Yes, we were alike.”

“Where is your father?” Neale went on, curiously.

“How should I know? It was in New Orleans that mother ran off from him. I--I never blamed her--since she said what she said.... Do you? Will this--make any difference to you?”

“My God, no! But I’m so--so thunderstruck.... This man--this Durade--tell me more of him.”

“He was a Spaniard of high degree, an adventurer, a gambler. He was mad to gamble. He forced my mother to use her beauty to lure men to his gambling-hell.... Oh, it’s terrible to remember. She said he meant to use me for that purpose. That’s why she left him. But in a way he was good to me. I can see so many things now to prove he was wicked.... And mother said he would follow her--track her to the end of the world.”

“Allie! If he should find you some day!” exclaimed Neale, hoarsely.

She put her arms up round his neck. And that, following a terrible pang of dread in Neale’s breast, was too much for him. The tide burst. Love had long claimed him, but its utterance had been withheld. He had been happy in her happiness. He had trained himself to spare her.

“But some day--I’ll be--your wife,” she whispered.

“Soon? Soon?” he returned, trembling.

The scarlet fired her temples, her brow, darkening the skin under her bright hair.

“That’s for you to say.”

She held up her lips, tremulous and sweet.

Neale realized the moment had come. There had never been but the one kiss between them--that of the meeting upon his return in September.

“Allie, I love you!” He spoke thickly.

“And I love you,” she replied, with sweet courage.

“This news you’ve told--this man Durade,” he went on, hoarsely, “I’m suddenly alive--stinging--wild!... If I lost you!”

“Dear, you will never lose me--never in this world or any other,” she replied, tenderly.

“My work, my hope, my life, they all get spirit now from you... Allie! You’re sweet--oh, so sweet! You’re glorious!” he rang out, passionately.

Surprise momentarily checked the rising response of her feeling.

“Neale! You’ve never before said--such-things!... And the way you look!”

“How do I look?” he queried, seeing the joyousness of her surprise.

Then she laughed and that was new to him--a sound low, unutterably rich and full, sweet-toned like a bell, and all resonant of youth.

“Oh, you look like Durade when he was gambling away his soul... You should see him!”

“Well, how’s that?”

“So white--so terrible--so piercing!”

Neale drew her closer, slipped her arms farther up round his neck. “I’m gambling my soul away now,” he said. “If I kiss you I lose it--and I must!”

“Must what?” she whispered, with all a woman’s charm.

“I must kiss you!”

“Then hurry!”

So their lips met.

In the sweetness of that embrace, in the simplicity and answering passion of her kiss, in the overwhelming sense of her gift of herself, heart and soul, he found a strength, a restraint, a nobler fire that gave him peace.

Allie was to amaze Neale again before the sun set on that memorable day.

“I forgot to tell you about the gold!” she exclaimed, her face paling.

“Gold!” ejaculated Neale.

“Yes. He buried it--there--under the biggest of the three trees together. Near a rock! Oh, I can see him now!”

“Him! Who? Allie, what’s this wild talk?”

She pressed his hand to enjoin silence.

“Listen! Horn had gold. How much I don’t know. But it must have been a great deal. He owned the caravan with which we left California. Horn grew to like me. But he hated all the rest.... That night we ended the awful ride! The wagons stalled!... The grayness of dawn--the stillness--oh, I feel them now!... That terrible Indian yell rang out. All my life I’ll hear it!... Then Horn dug a hole. He buried his gold.... And he said whoever escaped could have it. He had no hope.”

“Allie, you’re a mine of surprises. Buried gold! What next?”

“Neale, I wonder--did the Sioux find that gold?” she asked.

“It’s not likely. There certainly wasn’t any hole left open around that place. I saw every inch of ground under those trees.... Allie, I’ll go there to-morrow and hunt for it.”

“Let me go,” she implored. “Ah! I forgot! No--no!... There must be my mother’s grave.”

“Yes, it’s there. I saw. I will mark it.... Allie, how glad I am that you can speak of her--of her past--her grave there without weakening. You are brave! But forget... Allie, if I find that gold it’ll be yours.”

“No. Yours.”

“But I wasn’t one of the caravan. He did not give it to any outsider. You escaped. Therefore it will belong to you.”

“Dearest, I am yours.”

Next day, without acquainting Slingerland or Larry with his purpose, Neale rode down the valley trail.

He expected the road to cross the old St. Vrain and Laramie Trail, but if it did cross he could not find the place. It was easy to lose bearings in these hills. Neale had to abandon the hunt for that day, and turning back, with some annoyance at his failure, he decided that it would be best to take Larry and Slingerland into his confidence.

Allie was waiting for him at the brook ford.

“Oh, it was gone!” she cried.

“Allie, I couldn’t find the place. Come, ride back and let me walk beside you.... We’ll have fun telling Larry and Slingerland.”

“Neale, let me tell them,” she begged.

“Go ahead. Make a strong story. Larry always had leanings toward gold-strikes.”

And that night, after supper, when the log fire had begun to blaze, and all were comfortable before it, Allie glanced demurely at Larry and said:

“Reddy, if you had known that I was heiress to great wealth, would you have proposed to me?”

Slingerland roared. Larry seemed utterly stricken.

“Wealth!” he echoed, feebly.

“Yes. Gold! Lots of gold!”

Slingerland’s merry face suddenly grew curious and earnest.

Larry struggled with his discomfiture.

“I reckon I’d done thet anyhow--without knowin’ you was rich--if it hadn’t been fer this heah U. P. surveyor fellar.”

And then the joke was on Allie, as her blushes proved. Neale came to her rescue and told the story of Horn’s buried gold, and of his own search that day for the place.

“Shore I’ll find it,” declared Larry. “We’ll go to-morrow....”

Slingerland stroked his beard thoughtfully.

“If thar’s gold been buried thar it’s sure an’ certain thar yet,” he said. “But I’m afraid we won’t git thar tomorrow.”

“Why not? Surely you or Larry can find the place?”

“Listen.”

Neale listened while he was watching Allie’s parted lips and speaking eyes. A low, whining wind swept through the trees and over the roof of the cabin.

“Thet wind says snow,” declared the trapper.

Neale went outside. The wind struck him cold and keen, with a sharp edge to it. The stars showed pale and dim through hazy atmosphere. Assuredly there was a storm brewing. Neale returned to the fire, shivering and holding his palms to the heat.

“Cold, you bet, with the wind rising,” he said. “But, Slingerland, suppose it does snow. Can’t we go, anyhow?”

“It ain’t likely. You see, it snows up hyar. Mebbe we’ll be snowed in fer a spell. An’ thet valley is open down thar. In deep snow what could we find? We’ll wait an’ see.”

On the morrow a storm raged and all was dim through a ghostly, whirling pall. The season of drifting snow had come, and Neale’s winter work had begun.

Five miles by short cut over the ridges curved the long survey over which Neale must keep watch; and the going and coming were Neale’s hardest toil. It was laborsome to trudge up and down in soft snow.

That first snow of winter, however, did not last long, except in the sheltered places. Fortunately for Neale, almost all of his section of the survey ran over open ground. But this fact augured seriously for his task when the dry and powdery snow of midwinter began to fall and sweep before the wind and drift over the lee side of the ridge.

During the first week of tramping he thoroughly learned the lay of the land, the topography of his particular stretch of Sherman Pass. And one day, taking an early start from camp, he set forth to make his first call upon his nearest associate in this work, the engineer Service. Once high up on the pass he found the snow had not all melted, and still higher it lay white and unbroken as far as he could see. The air was keener up there. Neale gathered that Service would have a colder job than his own, if it was not so long and hard.

He found Service at home in his dugout, warm and comfortable and in excellent spirits. They compared notes, and even in this early work they decided it would be a wise plan for the engineering staff to study the problem of drifting snow.

Neale enjoyed a meal with Service, and then, early in the afternoon, he started back on his long tramp homeward. He gathered from his visit that Service did not mind the lonesomeness, but that he did suffer from the cold more than he had expected. Service was not an active, full-blooded man, and Neale had some misgivings. Judging from the trapper’s remarks, winter high up in the Wyoming hills was something to dread.

November brought the real storms--the gray banks of rolling cloud, the rain and sleet and snow and ice, and the wind. Neale concluded he had never before faced a real wind, and when, one day on a ridge-top, he was blown off his feet he was sure of it. Some days he could not go out at all. Other days it was not imperative, for it was only during and after snow-storms that he could make observations. He learned to travel on snow-shoes, and ten miles of such traveling up and down the steep slopes was the most killing hard toil he had ever attempted. After such trips he would reach the cabin utterly fagged out, too tired to eat, too weary, to talk, almost too dead to hear the solicitations of his friends or to appreciate Allie’s tender, anxious care. If he had not been strong and robust and in good training to begin with, he would have failed under the burden. Gradually he grew used to the strenuous toil, and became hardened, tough, and enduring.

Though Neale hated the cold and the wind, there were moments when an exceedingly keen exhilaration uplifted him. These experiences visited him while on the heights, looking far over the snowy ridges to, the white, monotonous plain or up toward the shining peaks. All seemed barren and cold. He never saw a living creature or a track upon those slopes. When the sun shone all was so dazzlingly, glaringly white that his eyes were struck by temporary blindness.

Upon one of the milder days, which were getting rarer in mid-December, Neale again visited his comrade on the summit. He found Service in bad shape. In falling down a slippery ledge he had injured or broken his lame leg. Neale, with great concern, tried to ascertain the nature and extent of the harm done, but he was unable to do so. Service was practically helpless, although not suffering any great pain. The two of them decided, at length, that he had not broken any bones, but that it was necessary to move him to where he could be waited upon and treated, or else some one must be brought in to take care of him. Neale deliberated a moment.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said, finally. “You can be moved down to Slingerland’s cabin without pain to you. I’ll get Slingerland and his sled. You’ll be more comfortable there. It’ll be better all around.”

So that was decided upon. And Neale, after doing all he could for Service, and assuring him that he would return in less than twenty-four hours, turned his steps for the valley.

The sunset that night struck him as singularly dull, pale, menacing. He understood its meaning later, when Slingerland said they were in for another storm. Before dark the wind began to moan through the trees like lost spirits. The trapper shook his shaggy head ominously.

“Reckon thet sounds bad to me,” he said. And from moan it rose to wail, and from wail to roar.

That alarmed Neale. He went outside and Slingerland followed. Snow was sweeping down-light, dry, powdery. The wind was piercingly cold. Slingerland yelled something, but Neale could not distinguish what. When they got back inside the trapper said:

“Blizzard!”

Neale grew distressed.

“Wal, no use to worry about Service,” argued the trapper. “If it is a blizzard we can’t git up thar, thet’s all. Mebbe this’ll not be so bad. But I ain’t bettin’ on thet.”

Even Allie couldn’t cheer Neale that night. Long after she and the others had retired he kept up the fire and listened to the roar of the wind. When the fire died down a little the cabin grew uncomfortably cold, and this fact attested to a continually dropping temperature. But he hoped against hope and finally sought his blankets.

Morning came, but the cabin was almost as dark as by night. A blinding, swirling snow-storm obscured the sun.

A blizzard raged for forty-eight hours. When the snow finally ceased falling the cold increased until Neale guessed the temperature might be forty degrees below zero. The trapper claimed sixty. It was necessary to stay indoors till the weather moderated.

On the fifth morning Slingerland was persuaded to attempt the trip to aid Service. Larry wanted to accompany them, but Slingerland said he had better stay with Allie. So, muffled up, the two men set out on snow-shoes, dragging a sled. A crust had frozen on the snow, otherwise traveling would have been impossible. Once up on the slope the north wind hit them square in the face. Heavily clad as he was, Neale thought the very marrow in his bones would freeze. That wind blew straight through him. There were places where it took both men to hold the sled to keep it from getting away. They were blown back one step for every two steps they made. On the exposed heights they could not walk upright. At last, after hours of desperate effort, they got over the ridge to a sheltered side along which they labored up to Service’s dugout.

Up there the snow had blown away in places, leaving bare spots, bleak, icy, barren, stark. No smoke appeared to rise above the dugout. The rude habitation looked as though no man had been there that winter. Neale glanced in swift dismay at Slingerland.

“Son, look fer the wust,” he said. “An’ we hain’t got time to waste.”

They pushed open the canvas framework of a door and, stooping low, passed inside. Neale’s glance saw first the fireplace, where no fire had burned for days. Snow had sifted into the dugout and lay in little drifts everywhere. The blankets on the bunk covered Service, hiding his face. Both men knew before they uncovered him what his fate had been.

“Frozen to death!” gasped Neale.

Service lay white, rigid, like stone, with no sign of suffering upon his face.

“He jest went to sleep--an’ never woke up,” declared Slingerland.

“Thank God for that!” exclaimed Neale. “Oh, why did I not stay with him?”

“Too late, son. An’ many a good man will go to his death before thet damn railroad is done.”

Neale searched for Service’s notes and letters and valuables which could be turned over to the engineering staff.

Slingerland found a pick and shovel, which Neale remembered to have used in building the dugout; and with these the two men toiled at the frozen sand and gravel to open up a grave; It was like digging in stone. At length they succeeded. Then, rolling Service in the blankets and tarpaulin, they lowered him into the cold ground and hurriedly filled up his grave.

It was a grim, gruesome task. Another nameless grave! Neale had already seen nine graves. This one was up the slope not a hundred feet from the line of survey.

“Slingerland,” exclaimed Neale, “the railroad will run along there! Trains will pass this spot. In years to come travelers will look out of the train windows along here. Boys riding away to seek their fortunes! Bride and groom on their honeymoon! Thousands of people--going, coming, busy, happy at their own affairs, full of their own lives--will pass by poor Service’s grave and never know it’s there!”

“Wal, son, if people must hev railroads, they must kill men to build them,” replied the trapper.

Neale conceived the idea that Slingerland did, not welcome the coming of the steel rails. The thought shocked him. But then, he reflected, a trapper would not profit by the advance of civilization.

With the wind in their backs Neale and Slingerland were practically blown home. They made it up between them to keep knowledge of the tragedy from Allie. So ended the coldest and hardest and grimmest day Neale had ever known.

The winter passed, the snows melted, the winds quieted, and spring came.

Long since Neale had decided to leave Allie with Slingerland that summer. She would be happy there, and she wished to stay until Neale could take her with him. That seemed out of the question for the present. A construction camp full of troopers and laborers was no place for Allie. Neale dreaded the idea of taking her to Omaha. Always in his mind were haunting fears of this Spaniard, Durade, who had ruined Allie’s mother, and of the father whom Allie had never seen. Neale instinctively felt that these men were to crop up somewhere in his life, and before they did appear he wanted to marry Allie. She was now little more than sixteen years old.

Neale’s plans for the summer could not be wholly known until he had reported to the general staff, which might be at Fort Fetterman or North Platte or all the way back in Omaha. But it was probable that he would be set to work with the advancing troops and trains and laborers. Engineers had to accompany both the grading gangs and the rail gangs.

Neale, in his talks with Larry and Slingerland, had dwelt long and conjecturingly upon what life was going to be in the construction camps.

To Larry what might happen was of little moment. He lived in the present. But Neale was different. He had to be anticipating events; he lived in the future, his mind was centered on future work, achievement, and what he might go through in attaining his end. Slingerland was his appreciative listener.

“Wal,” he would say, shaking his grizzled head, “I reckon I don’t believe all your General Lodge says is goin’ to happen.”

“But, man, can’t you imagine what it will be?” protested Neale. “Take thousands of soldiers--the riffraff of the war--and thousands of laborers of all classes, niggers, greasers, pigtail chinks, and Irish. Take thousands of men who want to earn an honest dollar, but not honestly. All the gamblers, outlaws, robbers, murderers, criminals, adventurers in the States, and perhaps many from abroad, will be on the trail. Think, man, of the money--the gold! Millions spilled out in these wilds!... And last and worst--the bad women!”

Slingerland showed his amazement at the pictures drawn by Neale, especially at the final one.

“Wal, I reckon thet’s all guff too,” he said. “A lot of bad women out in these wilds ain’t to be feared. Supposin’ thar was a lot of them which ain’t likely--how’d they ever git out to the camps?”

“Slingerland, the trains--the trains will follow the laying of the rails!”

“Oho! An’ you mean thar’ll be towns grow up overnightall full of bad people who ain’t workin’ on the railroad, but jest followin’ the gold?”

“Exactly. Now listen. Remember all these mixed gangs--the gold--and the bad women--out here in the wild country--no law--no restraint--no fear, except of death--drinking-hells--gambling-hells--dancing-hells! What’s going to happen?”

The trapper meditated a while, stroking his beard, and then he said: “Wal, thar ain’t enough gold to build thet railroad--an’ if thar was it couldn’t never be done!”

“Ah!” cried Neale, raising his head sharply. “It’s a matter of gold first. Streams of gold! And then--can it be done?”

One day, as the time for Neale’s departure grew closer, Slingerland’s quiet and peaceful valley was violated by a visit from four rough-looking men.

They rode in without packs. It was significant to Neale that Larry swore at sight of them, and then in his cool, easy way sauntered between them and the cabin door, where Allie stood with astonishment fixed on her beautiful face. The Texan always packed his heavy gun, and certainly no Western men would mistake his quality. These visitors were civil enough, asked for a little tobacco, and showed no sign of evil intent.

“Way off the beaten track up hyar,” said one.

“Yes. I’m a trapper,” replied Slingerland. “Whar do you hail from?”

“Ogden. We’re packin’ east.”

“Much travel on the trail?”

“Right smart fer wild country. An’ all goin’ east. We hain’t met an outfit headin’ west. Hev you heerd any talk of a railroad buildin’ out of Omaha?”

Here Larry put a word in.

“Shore. We’ve had soldiers campin’ around aboot all heah.”

“Soldiers!” ejaculated one of the gang.

“Shore, the road’s bein’ built by soldiers.”

The men made no further comment and turned away without any good-bys. Slingerland called out to them to have an eye open for Indians on the war-path.

“Wal, I don’t like the looks of them fellars,” he declared.

Neale likewise took an unfavorable view of the visit, but Larry scouted the idea of there being any danger in a gang like that.

“Shore they’d be afraid of a man,” he declared.

“Red, can you look at men and tell whether or not there’s danger in them?” inquired Neale.

“I shore can. One man could bluff thet outfit.... But I reckon I’d hate to have them find Allie aboot heah alone.”

“I can take care of myself,” spoke up Allie, spiritedly.

Neale and Slingerland, for all their respect for the cowboy’s judgment, regarded the advent of these visitors as a forerunner of an evil time for lonely trappers.

“I’ll hev to move back deeper in the mountains, away from the railroad,” said Slingerland.

This incident also put a different light upon the intention Neale had of hunting for the buried gold. Just now he certainly did not want to risk being seen digging gold or packing it away; and Slingerland was just as loath to have it concealed in or near his cabin.

“Wal, seein’ we’re not sure it’s really there, let’s wait till you come back in summer or fall,” he suggested. “If it’s thar it’ll stay thar.”

All too soon the dawn came for Neale’s departure with Larry. Allie was braver than he. At the last he was white and shaken. She kissed Larry.

“Reddy, you’ll take care of yourself--and him,” she said.

“Allie, I shore will. Good-by.” Larry rode down the trail in the dim gray dawn.

“Watch sharp for Indians,” she breathed, and her face whitened momentarily. Then the color returned. Her eyes welled full of sweet, soft light.

“Allie, I can’t go,” said Neale, hoarsely. The clasp of her arms unnerved him.

“You must. It’s your work. Remember the big job!... Dearest! Dearest! Hurry--and--go!”

Neale could no longer see her face clearly. He did not know what he was saying.

“You’ll always--love me?” he implored.

“Do you need to ask? All my life!... I promise.”

“Kiss me, then,” he whispered, hoarsely, blindly leaning down. “It’s hell--to leave you!... Wonderful girl--treasure--precious--Allie!... Kiss me--enough!... I--”

She held him with strong and passionate clasp and kissed him again and again.

“Good-by!” Her last word was low, choked, poignant, and had in it a mournful reminder of her old tragic woe.

Then he was alone. Mounting clumsily, with blurred eyes, he rode into the winding trail.

10

Neale and King traveled light, without pack-animals, and at sunrise they reached the main trail.

It bore evidence of considerable use and was no longer a trail, but a highroad. Fresh tracks of horses and oxen, wagon-wheel ruts, dead camp-fires, and scattered brush that had been used for wind-breaks--all these things attested to the growing impetus of that movement; soon it was to become extraordinary.

All this was Indian country. Neale and his companion had no idea whether or not the Sioux had left their winter quarters for the war-path. But it was a vast region, and the Indians could not be everywhere. Neale and King took chances, as had all these travelers, though perhaps the risk was not so great, because they rode fleet horses. They discovered no signs of Indians, and it appeared as if they were alone in a wilderness.

They covered sixty miles from early dawn to dark, with a short rest at noon, and reached Fort Fetterman safely without incident or accident. Troops were there, but none of the U. P. engineering staff. Neale did not meet any soldiers with whom he was acquainted. Orders were there for him, however, to report to North Platte as soon as it was possible to reach there. Troops were to be moving soon, so Neale learned, and the long journey could be made in comparative safety.

Here Neale received the tidings that forty miles of railroad had been built during the last summer, and trains had been run that distance west from Omaha. His heart swelled. Not for many a week had he heard anything favorable to the great U. P. project, and here was news of rails laid, trains run. Already this spring the graders were breaking ground far ahead of the rail-layers. Report and rumor at the fort had it that lively times had attended the construction. But the one absorbing topic was the Sioux Indians, who were expected to swarm out of the hills that summer and give the troops hot work.

In due time Neale and Larry arrived at North Platte, which was little more than a camp. The construction gangs were not expected to reach there until late in the fall. Baxter was at North Platte, with a lame surveyor, and no other helpers; consequently he hailed Neale and Larry with open arms. A summer’s work on the hot monotonous plains stared Neale in the face, but he must resign himself to the inevitable. He worked, as always, with that ability and energy which had made him invaluable to his superiors. Here, however, the labor was a dull, hot grind, without any thrills. Neale filled the long days with duty and seldom let his mind-wander. In leisure hours, however, he dreamed of Allie and the future. He found no trouble in passing time that way. Also he watched eagerly for arrivals from the west, whom he questioned about Indians in the Wyoming hills; and from troops or travelers coming from the east he heard all the news of the advancing railroad construction. It was absorbingly interesting, yet Neale could credit so few of the tales.

The summer and early fall passed.

Neale was ordered to Omaha. The news stunned him. He had built all his hopes on another winter out in the Wyoming hills, and this disappointment was crushing. It made him ill for a day. He almost threw up his work. It did not seem possible to live that interminable stretch without seeing Allie Lee. The nature of his commission, however, brought once again to mind the opportunity that knocked at his door. Neale had run all the different surveys for bridges in the Wyoming hills and now he was needed in the office of the staff, where plans and drawings were being made. Again he bowed to the inevitable. But he determined to demand in the spring that he be sent ahead to the forefront of the construction work.

Another disappointment seemed in order. Larry King refused to go any farther back east. Neale was exceedingly surprised.

“Do you throw up your job?” he asked.

“Shore not. I can work heah,” replied Larry.

“There won’t be any outside work on these bleak plains in winter.”

“Wal, I reckon I’ll loaf, then,” he drawled.

Neale could not change him. Larry vowed he would take his old place with Neale next spring, if it should be open to him.

“But why? Red, I can’t figure you,” protested Neale.

“Pard, I reckon I’m fur enough back east right heah,” said Larry, significantly.

A light dawned upon Neale. “Red! You’ve done something bad!” exclaimed Neale, in genuine dismay.

“Wal, I don’t know jest how bad it was, but it shore was hell,” replied Larry, with a grin.

“Red, you aren’t afraid,” asserted Neale, positively.

The cowboy flushed and looked insulted. “If any one but you said thet to me he’d hev to eat it.”

“I beg your pardon, old man. But I’m surprised. It doesn’t seem like you.... And then--Lord! I’ll miss you.”

“No more ‘n I’ll miss you, pard,” replied Larry.

Suddenly Neale had a happy thought. “Red, you go back to Slingerland’s and help take care of Allie. I’d feel she was safer.”

“Wal, she might be safer, but I wouldn’t be,” declared the cowboy, bluntly.

“You red-head! What do you mean?” demanded Neale.

“I mean this heah. If I stayed around another winter near Allie Lee--with her alone, fer thet trapper never set up before thet fire--I’d--why, Neale, I’d ambush you like an Injun when you come back!”

“You wouldn’t,” rejoined Neale. He wanted to laugh but had no mirth.

Larry did not mean that, but neither did he mean to be funny. “I’ll be hangin’ round heah, waitin’ fer you. It’s only a few months. Go on to your work, pard. You’ll be a big man on the road some day.”

Neale left North Platte with a wagon-train.

After a long, slow journey the point was reached where the graders had left off work for that year. Here had been a huge construction camp; and the bare and squalid place looked as if it once had been a town of crudest make, suddenly wrecked by a cyclone and burned by prairie fire. Fifty miles farther on, representing two more long, tedious, and unendurable days, and Neale heard the whistle of a locomotive. It came from far off. But it was a whistle. He yelled, and the men journeying with him joined in.

Smoke showed on the horizon, together with a wide, low, uneven line of shacks and tents.

Neale was all eyes when he rode into that construction camp. The place was a bedlam. A motley horde of men appeared to be doing everything under the sun but work, and most of them seemed particularly eager to board a long train of box-cars and little old passenger-coaches. Neale made a dive for the train, and his sojourn in that camp was a short and exciting one of ten minutes.

He felt unutterably proud. He had helped survey the line along which the train was now rattling and creaking and swaying. All that swiftly passed under his keen eyes was recorded in his memory--the uncouth crowd of laborers, the hardest lot he had ever seen; the talk, noise, smoke; the rickety old clattering coaches; the wayside dumps and heaps and wreckage. But they all seemed parts of a beautiful romance to him. Neale saw through the eyes of golden ambition and illimitable dreams.

And not for a moment of that endless ride, with interminable stops, did he weary of the two hundred and sixty miles of rails laid that year, and of the forty miles of the preceding year. Then came Omaha, a beehive--the making of a Western metropolis!

Neale plunged into the bewildering turmoil of plans, tasks, schemes, land-grants, politics, charters, inducements, liens and loans, Government and army and State and national interests, grafts and deals and bosses--all that mass of selfish and unselfish motives, all that wealth of cunning and noble aims, all that congested assemblage of humanity which went to make up the building of the Union Pacific.

Neale was a dreamer, like the few men whose minds had first given birth to the wonderful idea of a railroad from East to West. Neale found himself confronted by a singularly disturbing fact. However grand this project, its political and mercenary features could not be beautiful to him. Why could not all men be right-minded about a noble cause and work unselfishly for the development of the West and the future generations? It was a melancholy thing to learn that men of sincere and generous purpose had spent their all trying to raise the money to build the Union Pacific; on the other hand, it was a satisfaction to hear that many capitalists with greedy claws had ruined themselves in like efforts.

The President of the United States and Congress had their own troubles at the close of the war, and the Government could do but little money-raising with land-grants and loans. But they offered a great bonus to the men who would build the railroad.

The first construction company subscribed over a million and a half dollars, and paid in one-quarter of that. The money went so swiftly that it opened the company’s eyes to the insatiable gulf beneath that enterprise, and they quit.

Thereupon what was called the Credit Mobilier was inaugurated, and it became both famous and infamous.

It was a type of the construction company by which it was the custom to build railroads at that time. The directors, believing that whatever money was to be made out of the Union Pacific must be collected during the construction period, organized a clever system for just this purpose.

An extravagant sum was to be paid to the Credit Mobilier for the construction work, thus securing for stockholders of the Union Pacific, who now controlled the Credit Mobilier, the bonds loaned by the United States Government.

The operations of the Credit Mobilier finally gave rise to one of the most serious political scandals in the history of the United States Congress.

The cost of all material was high, and it rose with leaps and bounds until it was prodigious. Omaha had no railroad entering it from the east, and so all the supplies, materials, engines, cars, machinery, and laborers had to be transported from St. Louis up the swift Missouri on boats. This in itself was a work calling for the limit of practical management and energy. Out on the prairie-land, for hundreds of miles, were to be found no trees, no wood, scarcely any brush. The prairie-land was beautiful ground for buffalo, but it was a most barren desert for the exigencies of railroad men. Moreover, not only did wood and fuel and railroad-ties have to be brought from afar, but also stone for bridges and abutments. Then thousands of men had to be employed, and those who hired out for reasonable money soon learned that others were getting more; having the company at their mercy, they demanded exorbitant wages in their turn.

One of the peculiar features of the construction, a feature over which Neale grew impotently furious, was the law that when a certain section of so many miles had been laid and equipped the Government of the United States would send out expert commissioners, who would go over the line and pass judgment upon the finished work. No two groups of commissioners seemed to agree. These experts, who had their part to play in the bewildering and labyrinthine maze of men’s contrary plans and plots, reported that certain sections would have to be done over again.

The particular fault found with one of these sections was the alleged steepness of the grade, and as Neale had been the surveyor in charge, he soon heard of his poor work. He went over his figures and notes with the result that he called on Henney and absolutely swore that the grade was right. Henney swore too, in a different and more forcible way, but he agreed with Neale and advised him to call upon the expert commissioners.

Neale did so, and found them, with one exception, open to conviction. The exception was a man named Allison Lee. The name Lee gave Neale a little shock. He was a gray-looking man, with lined face, and that concentrated air which Neale had learned to associate with those who were high in the affairs of the U. P.

Neale stated that his business was to show that his work had been done right, and he had the figures to prove it. Mr. Lee replied that the survey was poor and would have to be done over.

“Are you a surveyor?” queried Neale, sharply, with the blood beating in his temples.

“I have some knowledge of civil engineering,” replied the commissioner.

“Well, it can’t be very much,” declared Neale, whose temper was up.

“Young man, be careful what you say,” replied the other.

“But Mr.--Mr. Lee--listen to me, will you?” burst out Neale. “It’s all here in my notes. You’ve hurried over the line and you just slipped up a foot or so in your observations of that section.”

Mr. Lee refused to look at the notes and waved Neale aside.

“It’ll hurt my chances for a big job,” Neale said, stubbornly.

“You probably will lose your job, judging from the way you address your superiors.”

That finished Neale. He grew perfectly white.

“All this expert-commissioner business is rot,” he flung at Lee. “Rot! Lodge knows it. Henney knows it. We all do. And so do you. It’s a lot of damn red tape! Every last man who can pull a stroke with the Government runs in here to annoy good efficient engineers who are building the road. It’s an outrage. It’s more. It’s not honest... That section has forty miles in it. Five miles you claim must be resurveyed--regraded--relaid. Forty-six thousand dollars a mile!... That’s the secret--two hundred and thirty thousand dollars more for a construction company!”

Neale left the office and, returning to Henney, repeated the interview to him word for word. Henney complimented Neale’s spirit, but deplored the incident. It could do no good and might do harm. Many of these commissioners were politicians, working in close touch with the directors, and not averse to bleeding the Credit Mobilier.

All the engineers, including the chief, though he was noncommittal, were bitter about this expert-commissioner law. If a good road-bed had been surveyed, the engineers knew more about it than any one else. They were the pioneers of the work. It was exceedingly annoying and exasperating to have a number of men travel leisurely in trains over the line and criticize the labors of engineers who had toiled in heat and cold and wet, with brain and heart in the task. But it was so.

In May, 1866, a wagon-train escorted by troops rolled into the growing camp of North Platte, and the first man to alight was Warren Neale, strong, active, eager-eyed as ever, but older and with face pale from his indoor work and hope long deferred.

The first man to greet him was Larry King, in whom time did not make changes.

They met as long-separated brothers.

“Red how’re your horses?” was Neale’s query, following the greeting.

“Wintered well, but cost me all I had. I’m shore busted,” replied Larry.

“I’ve plenty of money,” said Neale, “and what’s mine is yours. Come on, Red. We’ll get light packs and hit the trail for the Wyoming hills.”

“Wal, I reckoned so... Neale, it’s shore goin’ to be risky. The Injuns are on the rampage already. You see how this heah camp has growed. Men ridin’ in all since winter broke. An’ them from west tell some hard stories.”

“I’ve got to go,” replied Neale, with emotion. “It’s nearly a year since I saw Allie. Not a word between us in all that time!... Red, I can’t stand it longer.”

“Shore, I know,” replied King, hastily. “You ain’t reckonin’ I wanted to crawfish? I’ll go. We’ll pack light, hit the trail at night, an’ hide up in the daytime.”

Neale had arrived in North Platte before noon, and before sunset he and King were far out on the swelling slopes of plainland, riding toward the west.

Traveling by night, camping by day, they soon left behind them the monotonous plains of Nebraska. The Sioux had been active for two summers along the southern trails of Wyoming. The Texan’s long training on the ranges stood them in good stead here. His keen eye for tracks and smoke and distant objects, his care in hiding trails and selecting camps, and his skill and judgment in all pertaining to the horses--these things made the journey possible. For they saw Indian signs more than once before the Wyoming hills loomed up in the distance. More than one flickering camp-fire they avoided by a wide detour.

Slingerland’s valley showed all the signs of early summer. The familiar trail, however, bore no tracks of horses or man or beast. A heavy rain had fallen recently and it would have obliterated tracks.

Neale’s suspense sustained the added burden of dread. In the oppressive silence of the valley he read some nameless reason for fear. The trail seemed the same, the brook flowed and murmured as of old, the trees shone soft and green, but Neale sensed a difference. He dared not look at Larry for confirmation of his fears. The valley had not of late been lived in!

Neale rode hard up the trail under the pines. A blackened heap lay where once the cabin had stood. Neale’s heart gave a terrible leap and then seemed to cease beating. He could not breathe nor speak nor move. His eyes were fixed on the black remains of Slingerland’s cabin.

“Gawd Almighty!” gasped Larry, and he put out a shaking hand to clutch Neale. “The Injuns! I always feared this--spite of Slingerland’s talk.”

The feel of Larry’s fierce fingers, like hot, stinging arrows in his flesh, pierced Neale’s mind and made him realize what his stunned faculties had failed to grasp. It seemed to loosen the vise-like hold upon his muscles, to liberate his tongue.

He fell off his horse.

“Red! Look--look around!”

Allie was gone! The disappointment at not seeing her was crushing, and the fear of utter loss was terrible. Neale lay on the ground, blind, sick, full of agony, with his fingers tearing at the grass. The evil presentiments that had haunted him for months had not been groundless fancies. Perhaps Allie had called to him again, in another hour of calamity, and this time he had not responded. She was gone! That idea struck him cold. It meant the most dreadful of all happenings. For a while he lay there, prostrate under the shock. He was dimly aware of Larry’s coming and sitting down beside him.

“No sign of any one,” he said, huskily. “Not even a track!... Thet fire must hev been about two weeks ago. Mebbe more, but not much. There’s been a big rain an’ the ground’s all washed clean an’ smooth ... Not a track!”

It was the cowboy’s habit to calculate the past movements of people and horses by the nature of the tracks they left.

Then Neale awoke to violence. He sprang up and rushed to the ruins of the cabin, frantically tore and dug around the burnt embers, and did not leave off until he had overhauled the whole pile. There was nothing but ashes and embers. Whereupon he ran to the empty corrals, to the sheds, to the wood-pile, to the spring, and all around the space once so habitable. There was nothing to reward his fierce energy--nothing to scrutinize. Already grass was springing in the trails and upon spots that had once been bare.

Neale halted, sweating, hot, wild, before his friend. Larry avoided his gaze.

“She’s gone!... She’s gone!” Neale panted.

“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.

“Gentlemen, 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!”