Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
THE U. P. TRAIL
By Zane Grey
...When I think how the railroad has been pushed through this unwatered
wilderness and haunt of savage tribes; how at each stage of the
construction roaring, impromptu cities, full of gold and lust and death,
sprang up and then died away again, and are now but wayside stations in
the desert; how in these uncouth places Chinese pirates worked side
by side with border ruffians and broken men from Europe, gambling,
drinking, quarreling, and murdering like wolves; and then when I go on
to remember that all this epical turmoil was conducted by gentlemen in
frock-coats, with a view to nothing more extraordinary than a fortune
and a subsequent visit to Paris--it seems to me as if this railway
were the one typical achievement of the age in which we live, as if it
brought together into one plot all the ends of the world and all the
degrees of social rank, and offered to some great writer the busiest,
the most extended, and the most varied subject for an enduring literary
work. If it be romance, if it be contrast, if it be heroism that we
require, what was Troy to this?
--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
In ACROSS THE PLAINS
1
In the early sixties a trail led from the broad Missouri, swirling
yellow and turgid between its green-groved borders, for miles and
miles out upon the grassy Nebraska plains, turning westward over the
undulating prairie, with its swales and billows and long, winding lines
of cottonwoods, to a slow, vast heave of rising ground--Wyoming--where
the herds of buffalo grazed and the wolf was lord and the camp-fire
of the trapper sent up its curling blue smoke from beside some lonely
stream; on and on over the barren lands of eternal monotony, all so gray
and wide and solemn and silent under the endless sky; on, ever on, up
to the bleak, black hills and into the waterless gullies and through the
rocky gorges where the deer browsed and the savage lurked; then slowly
rising to the pass between the great bold peaks, and across the windy
uplands into Utah, with its verdant valleys, green as emeralds, and its
haze-filled cañons and wonderful wind-worn cliffs and walls, and its
pale salt lakes, veiled in the shadows of stark and lofty rocks, dim,
lilac-colored, austere, and isolated; ever onward across Nevada, and
ever westward, up from desert to mountain, up into California, where the
white streams rushed and roared and the stately pines towered, and seen
from craggy heights, deep down, the little blue lakes gleamed like gems;
finally sloping to the great descent, where the mountain world ceased
and where, out beyond the golden land, asleep and peaceful, stretched
the illimitable Pacific, vague and grand beneath the setting sun.
2
Deep in the Wyoming hills lay a valley watered by a stream that ran down
from Cheyenne Pass; a band of Sioux Indians had an encampment there.
Viewed from the summit of a grassy ridge, the scene was colorful
and idle and quiet, in keeping with the lonely, beautiful valley.
Cottonwoods and willows showed a bright green; the course of the stream
was marked in dark where the water ran, and light where the sand had
bleached; brown and black dots scattered over the valley were in reality
grazing horses; lodge-pole tents gleamed white in the sun, and tiny
bits of red stood out against the white; lazy wreaths of blue smoke rose
upward.
The Wyoming hills were split by many such valleys and many such bare,
grassy ridges sloped up toward the mountains. Upon the side of one
ridge, the highest, there stood a solitary mustang, haltered with a
lasso. He was a ragged, shaggy, wild beast, and there was no saddle or
bridle on him, nothing but the halter. He was not grazing, although the
bleached white grass grew long and thick under his hoofs. He looked up
the slope, in a direction indicated by his pointing ears, and watched a
wavering movement of the long grass.
It was wild up on that ridge, bare of everything except grass, and the
strange wavering had a nameless wildness in its motion. No stealthy
animal accounted for that trembling--that forward undulating quiver. It
wavered on to the summit of the ridge.
What a wide and wonderful prospect opened up to view from this lofty
point! Ridge after ridge sloped up to the Wyoming hills, and these in
turn raised their bleak, dark heads toward the mountains, looming pale
and gray, with caps of snow, in the distance. Out beyond the ridges,
indistinct in the glare, stretched an illimitable expanse, gray and
dull--that was the prairie-land. An eagle, lord of all he surveyed,
sailed round and round in the sky.
Below this grassy summit yawned a valley, narrow and long, losing itself
by turns to distant east and west; and through it ran a faint, white,
winding line which was the old St. Vrain and Laramie Trail.
There came a moment when the wavering in the grass ceased on the extreme
edge of the slope. Then it parted to disclose the hideous visage of
a Sioux Indian in war paint. His dark, piercing, malignant glance was
fixed upon the St. Vrain and Laramie Trail. His half-naked body rested
at ease; a rifle lay under his hand.
There he watched while the hours passed. The sun moved on in its course
until it tipped the peaks with rose. Far down the valley black and white
objects appeared, crawling round the bend. The Indian gave an almost
imperceptible start, but there was no change in his expression. He
watched as before.
These moving objects grew to be oxen and prairie-schooners--a small
caravan traveling east. It wound down the trail and halted in a circle
on the bank of a stream.
The Indian scout slid backward, and the parted grass, slowly closing,
hid from his dark gaze the camp scene below. He wormed his way back well
out of sight; then rising, he ran over the summit of the ridge to leap
upon his mustang and ride wildly down the slope.
3
Bill Horn, leader of that caravan, had a large amount of gold which he
was taking back East. No one in his party, except a girl, knew that he
had the fortune.
Horn had gone West at the beginning of the gold strikes, but it was not
until ‘53 that any success attended his labors. Later he struck it rich,
and in 1865, as soon as the snow melted on the mountain passes, he got
together a party of men and several women and left Sacramento. He was a
burly miner, bearded and uncouth, of rough speech and taciturn nature,
and absolutely fearless.
At Ogden, Utah, he had been advised not to attempt to cross the Wyoming
hills with so small a party, for the Sioux Indians had gone on the
war-path.
Horn was leading his own caravan and finding for himself the trail
that wound slowly eastward. He did not have a scout or hunter with him.
Eastward-traveling caravans were wont to be small and poorly outfitted,
for only the homesick, the failures, the wanderers, and the lawless
turned their faces from the Golden State. At the start Horn had eleven
men, three women, and the girl. On the way he had killed one of the
men; and another, together with his wife, had yielded to persuasion of
friends at Ogden and had left the party. So when Horn halted for camp
one afternoon in a beautiful valley in the Wyoming hills there were only
nine men with him.
On a long journey through wild country strangers grow close together or
far apart. Bill Horn did not think much of the men who had accepted the
chance he offered them, and daily he grew more aloof. They were not a
responsible crowd, and the best he could get out of them was the driving
of oxen and camp chores indifferently done. He had to kill the meat
and find the water and keep the watch. Upon entering the Wyoming hills
region Horn showed a restlessness and hurry and anxiety. This in no wise
affected the others. They continued to be aimless and careless as men
who had little to look forward to.
This beautiful valley offered everything desirable for a camp site
except natural cover or protection in case of attack. But Horn had to
take the risk. The oxen were tired, the wagons had to be greased, and it
was needful to kill meat. Here was an abundance of grass, a clear brook,
wood for camp-fires, and sign of game on all sides.
“Haul round--make a circle!” Horn ordered the drivers of the oxen.
This was the first time he had given this particular order, and the men
guffawed or grinned as they hauled the great, clumsy prairie-schooners
into a circle. The oxen were unhitched; the camp duffle piled out; the
ring of axes broke the stillness; fires were started.
Horn took his rifle and strode away up the brook to disappear in the
green brush of a ravine.
It was early in the evening, with the sun not yet out of sight behind
a lofty ridge that topped the valley slope. High grass, bleached white,
shone brightly on the summit. Soon several columns of blue smoke curled
lazily aloft until, catching the wind high up, they were swept away.
Meanwhile the men talked at their tasks.
“Say, pard, did you come along this here Laramie Trail goin’ West?”
asked one.
“Nope. I hit the Santa Fe Trail,” was the reply.
“How about you, Jones?”
“Same fer me.”
“Wal,” said another, “I went round to California by ship, an’ I’d hev
been lucky to drown.”
“An’ now we’re all goin’ back poorer than when we started,” remarked a
third.
“Pard, you’ve said somethin’.”
“Wal, I seen a heap of gold, if I didn’t find any.”
“Jones, has this here Bill Horn any gold with him?”
“He acts like it,” answered Jones. “An’ I heerd he struck it rich out
thar.”
The men appeared divided in their opinions of Bill Horn. From him they
drifted to talk of possible Indian raids and scouted the idea; then they
wondered if the famous Pony Express had been over this Laramie Trail;
finally they got on the subject of a rumored railroad to be built from
East to West.
“No railroad can’t be built over this trail,” said Jones, bluntly.
“Sure not. But couldn’t more level ground be dug?” asked another.
“Dug? Across them Utah deserts an’ up them mountains? Hell! Men sure hev
more sense than thet,” exclaimed the third.
And so they talked and argued at their tasks.
The women, however, had little to say. One, the wife of the loquacious
Jones, lived among past associations of happy years that would not come
again--a sober-faced, middle-aged woman. The other woman was younger,
and her sad face showed traces of a former comeliness. They called her
Mrs. Durade. The girl was her daughter Allie. She appeared about fifteen
years old, and was slight of form. Her face did not seem to tan. It was
pale. She looked tired, and was shy and silent, almost ashamed. She had
long, rich, chestnut-colored hair which she wore in a braid. Her eyes
were singularly large and dark, and violet in color.
“It’s a long, long way we are from home yet,” sighed Mrs. Jones.
“You call East home!” replied Mrs. Durade, bitterly.
“For land’s sake! Yes, I do,” exclaimed the other. “If there was a home
in that California, I never saw it. Tents and log cabins and mud-holes!
Such places for a woman to live. Oh, I hated that California! A lot of
wild men, all crazy for gold. Gold that only a few could find and none
could keep!... I pray every night to live to get back home.”
Mrs. Durade had no reply; she gazed away over the ridges toward the east
with a haunting shadow in her eyes.
Just then a rifle-shot sounded from up in the ravine. The men paused in
their tasks and looked at one another. Then reassured by this exchange
of glances, they fell to work again. But the women cast apprehensive
eyes around. There was no life in sight except the grazing oxen.
Presently Horn appeared carrying a deer slung over his shoulders.
Allie ran to meet him. She and Horn were great friends. To her alone was
he gentle and kind. She saw him pause at the brook, then drop the deer
carcass and bend over the ground, as if to search for something. When
Allie reached his side he was on his knees examining a moccasin print in
the sand.
“An Indian track!” exclaimed Allie.
“Allie, it sure ain’t anythin’ else,” he replied. “Thet is what I’ve
been lookin’ fer.... A day old--mebbe more.”
“Uncle Bill, is there any danger?” she asked, fearfully gazing up the
slope.
“Lass, we’re in the Wyoming hills, an’ I wish to the Lord we was out,”
he answered.
Then he picked up the deer carcass, a heavy burden, and slung it, hoofs
in front, over his shoulders.
“Let me carry your gun,” said Allie.
They started toward camp.
“Lass, listen,” began Horn, earnestly. “Mebbe there’s no need to fear.
But I don’t like Injun tracks. Not these days. Now I’m goin’ to scare
this lazy outfit. Mebbe thet’ll make them rustle. But don’t you be
scared.”
In camp the advent of fresh venison was hailed with satisfaction.
“Wal, I’ll gamble the shot thet killed this meat was heerd by Injuns,”
blurted out Horn, as he deposited his burden on the grass and whipped
out his hunting-knife. Then he glared at the outfit of men he had come
to despise.
“Horn, I reckon you ‘pear more set up about Injuns than usual,” remarked
Jones.
“Fresh Sioux track right out thar along the brook.”
“No!”
“Sioux!” exclaimed another.
“Go an’ look fer yourself.”
Not a man of them moved a step. Horn snorted his disdain and without
more talk began to dress the deer.
Meanwhile the sun set behind the ridge and the day seemed far spent. The
evening meal of the travelers was interrupted when Horn suddenly leaped
up and reached for his rifle.
“Thet’s no Injun, but I don’t like the looks of how he’s comin’.”
All gazed in the direction in which Horn pointed. A horse and rider
were swiftly approaching down the trail from the west. Before any of
the startled campers recovered from their surprise the horse reached the
camp. The rider hauled up short, but did not dismount.
“Hello!” he called. The man was not young. He had piercing gray eyes
and long hair. He wore fringed gray buckskin, and carried a long, heavy,
muzzle-loading rifle.
“I’m Slingerland--trapper in these hyar parts,” he went on, with glance
swiftly taking in the group. “Who’s boss of this caravan?”
“I am--Bill Horn,” replied the leader, stepping out.
“Thar’s a band of Sioux redskins on your trail.”
Horn lifted his arms high. The other men uttered exclamations of amaze
and dread. The women were silent.
“Did you see them?” asked Horn.
“Yes, from a ridge back hyar ten miles. I saw them sneakin’ along the
trail an’ I knowed they meant mischief. I rode along the ridges or I’d
been hyar sooner.”
“How many Injuns?”
“I counted fifteen. They were goin’ along slow. Like as not they’ve sent
word fer more. There’s a big Sioux camp over hyar in another valley.”
“Are these Sioux on the war-path?”
“I saw dead an’ scalped white men a few days back,” replied Slingerland.
Horn grew as black as a thundercloud, and he cursed the group of
pale-faced men who had elected to journey eastward with him.
“You’ll hev to fight,” he ended, brutally, “an’ thet’ll be some
satisfaction to me.”
“Horn, there’s soldiers over hyar in camp,” went on Slingerland. “Do you
want me to ride after them?”
“Soldiers!” ejaculated Horn.
“Yes. They’re with a party of engineers surveyin’ a line fer a railroad.
Reckon I could git them all hyar in time to save you--IF them Sioux keep
comin’ slow.... I’ll go or stay hyar with you.”
“Friend, you go--an’ ride thet hoss!”
“All right. You hitch up an’ break camp. Keep goin’ hard down the trail,
an’ I’ll fetch the troops an’ head off the redskins.”
“Any use to take to the hills?” queried Horn, sharply.
“I reckon not. You’ve no hosses. You’d be tracked down. Hurry along.
Thet’s best.... An’ say, I see you’ve a young girl hyar. I can take her
up behind me.”
“Allie, climb up behind him,” said Horn, motioning to the girl.
“I’ll stay with mother,” she replied.
“Go child--go!” entreated Mrs. Durade.
Others urged her, but she shook her head. Horn’s big hand trembled as he
held it out, and for once there was no trace of hardness about his face.
“Allie, I never had no lass of my own.... I wish you’d go with him.
You’d be safe--an’ you could take my--”
“No!” interrupted the girl.
Slingerland gave her a strange, admiring glance, then turned his quick
gray eyes upon Horn. “Anythin’ I can take?”
Horn hesitated. “No. It was jest somethin’ I wanted the girl to hev.”
Slingerland touched his shaggy horse and called over his shoulder:
“Rustle out of hyar!” Then he galloped down the trail, leaving the
travelers standing aghast.
“Break camp!” thundered Horn.
A scene of confusion followed. In a very short while the
prairie-schooners were lumbering down the valley. Twilight came just as
the flight got under way. The tired oxen were beaten to make them run.
But they were awkward and the loads were heavy. Night fell, and the road
was difficult to follow. The wagons rolled and bumped and swayed from
side to side; camp utensils and blankets dropped from them. One
wagon broke down. The occupants, frantically gathering together their
possessions, ran ahead to pile into the one in front.
Horn drove on and on at a gait cruel to both men and beasts. The women
were roughly shaken. Hours passed and miles were gained. That valley led
into another with an upgrade, rocky and treacherous. Horn led on foot
and ordered the men to do likewise. The night grew darker. By and by
further progress became impossible, for the oxen failed and a wild
barrier of trees and rocks stopped the way.
Then the fugitives sat and shivered and waited for dawn. No one slept.
All listened intently to the sounds of the lonely night, magnified now
by their fears. Horn strode to and fro with his rifle--a grim, dark,
silent form. Whenever a wolf mourned, or a cat squalled, or a night bird
voiced the solitude, or a stone rattled off the cliff, the fugitives
started up quiveringly alert, expecting every second to hear the
screeching yell of the Sioux. They whispered to keep up a flickering
courage. And the burly Horn strode to and fro, thoughtful, as though he
were planning something, and always listening. Allie sat in one of the
wagons close to her mother. She was wide awake and not so badly scared.
All through this dreadful journey her mother had not seemed natural to
Allie, and the farther they traveled eastward the stranger she grew.
During the ride that night she had moaned and shuddered, and had clasped
Allie close; but when the flight had come to a forced end she grew
silent.
Allie was young and hopeful. She kept whispering to her mother that the
soldiers would come in time.
“That brave fellow in buckskin--he’ll save us,” said Allie.
“Child, I feel I’ll never see home again,” finally whispered Mrs.
Durade.
“Mother!”
“Allie, I must tell you--I must!” cried Mrs. Durade, very low and
fiercely. She clung to her daughter.
“Tell me what?” whispered Allie.
“The truth--the truth! Oh, I’ve deceived you all your life!”
“Deceived me! Oh, mother! Then tell me--now.”
“Child--you’ll forgive me--and never--hate me?” cried the mother,
brokenly.
“Mother, how can you talk so! I love you.” And Allie clasped the shaking
form closer. Then followed a silence during which Mrs. Durade recovered
her composure.
“Allie, I ran off with Durade before you were born,” began the mother,
swiftly, as if she must hurry out her secret. “Durade is not your
father.... Your name is Lee. Your father is Allison Lee. I’ve heard he’s
a rich man now.... Oh, I want to get back--to give you to him--to beg
his forgiveness.... We were married in New Orleans in 1847. My father
made me marry him. I never loved Allison Lee. He was not a kind man--not
the sort I admired.... I met Durade. He was a Spaniard--a blue-blooded
adventurer. I ran off with him. We joined the gold-seekers traveling to
California. You were born out there in 1850.... It has been a hard
life. But I taught you--I did all I could for you. I kept my secret from
you--and his!... Lately I could endure it no longer. I’ve run off from
Durade.”
“Oh, mother, I knew we were running off from him!” cried Allie,
breathlessly. “And I know he will follow us.”
“Indeed, I fear he will,” replied the mother. “But Lord spare me his
revenge!”
“Mother! Oh, it is terrible!... He is not my father. I never loved him.
I couldn’t.... But, mother, you must have loved him!”
“Child, I was Durade’s slave,” she replied, sadly.
“Then why did you run away? He was kind--good to us.”
“Allie, listen. Durade was a gambler--a man crazy to stake all on the
fall of a card. He did not love gold. But he loved games of chance. It
was a terrible passion with him. Once he meant to gamble my honor away.
But that other gambler was too much of a man. There are gamblers who
are men!... I think I began to hate Durade from that time.... He was a
dishonest gambler. He made me share in his guilt. My face lured miners
to his dens.... My face--for I was beautiful once!... Oh, I sunk so low!
But he forced me.... Thank God I left him--before it was too late--too
late for you.”
“Mother, he will follow us!” cried Allie.
“But he shall never have you. I’ll kill him before I let him get you,”
replied the mother.
“He’d never harm me, mother, whatever he is,” murmured Allie.
“Child, he would use you exactly as he used me. He wanted me to let him
have you--already. He wanted to train you--he said you’d be beautiful
some day.”
“Mother!” gasped Allie, “is THAT what he meant?”
“Forget him, child. And forget your mother’s guilt!... I’ve suffered.
I’ve repented.... All I ask of God is to take you safely home to Allison
Lee--the father whom you have never known.”
The night hour before dawn grew colder and blacker. A great silence
seemed wedged down between the ebony hills. The stars were wan. No cry
of wolf or moan of wind disturbed the stillness. And the stars grew
warmer. The black east changed and paled. Dawn was at hand. An opaque
and obscure grayness filled the world; all had changed, except that
strange, oppressive, and vast silence of the wild.
That silence was broken by the screeching, blood-curdling yell of the
Sioux.
At times these bloody savages attacked without warning and in the
silence of the grave; again they sent out their war-cries, chilling the
hearts of the bravest. Perhaps that warning yell was given only when
doom was certain.
Horn realized the dread omen and accepted it. He called the fugitives
to him and, choosing the best-protected spot among the rocks and wagons,
put the women in the center.
“Now, men--if it’s the last for us--let it be fight! Mebbe we can hold
out till the troops come.”
Then in the gray gloom of dawn he took a shovel; prying up a piece of
sod, he laid it aside and began to dig. And while he dug he listened
for another war-screech and gazed often and intently into the gloom. But
there was no sound and nothing to see. When he had dug a hole several
feet deep he carried an armful of heavy leather bags and deposited
them in it. Then he went back to the wagon for another armful. The men,
gray-faced as the gloom, watched him fill up the hole, carefully replace
the sod, and stamp it down.
He stood for an instant gazing down, as if he had buried the best of his
life. Then he laughed grim and hard.
“There’s my gold! If any man wins through this he can have it!”
Bill Horn divined that he would never live to touch his treasure again.
He who had slaved for gold and had risked all for it cared no more
what might become of it. Gripping his rifle, he turned to await the
inevitable.
Moments of awful suspense passed. Nothing but the fitful beating of
hearts came to the ears of the fugitives--ears that strained to the
stealthy approach of the red foe--ears that throbbed prayerfully for
the tramp of the troopers’ horses. But only silence ensued, a horrible
silence, more nerve-racking than the clash of swift, sure death.
Then out of the gray gloom burst jets of red flame; rifles cracked, and
the air suddenly filled with hideous clamor. The men began to shoot at
gliding shadows, grayer than the gloom. And every shot brought a volley
in return. Smoke mingled with the gloom. In the slight intervals between
rifleshots there were swift, rustling sounds and sharp thuds from
arrows. Then the shrill strife of sound became continuous; it came from
all around and closed in upon the doomed caravan. It swelled and rolled
away and again there was silence.
4
In 1865, just after the war, a party of engineers was at work in the
Wyoming hills on a survey as hazardous as it was problematical. They had
charge of the laying out of the Union Pacific Railroad.
This party, escorted by a company of United States troops under Colonel
Dillon, had encountered difficulties almost insurmountable. And now,
having penetrated the wild hills to the eastern slope of the Rockies
they were halted by a seemingly impassable barrier--a gorge too deep to
fill, too wide to bridge.
General Lodge, chief engineer of the corps, gave an order to one of
his assistants. “Put young Neale on the job. If we ever survey a line
through this awful place we’ll owe it to him.”
The assistant, Baxter, told an Irishman standing by and smoking a short,
black pipe to find Neale and give him the chief’s orders. The Irishman,
Casey by name, was raw-boned, red-faced, and hard-featured, a man inured
to exposure and rough life. His expression was one of extreme and fixed
good humor, as if his face had been set, mask-like, during a grin. He
removed the pipe from his lips.
“Gineral, the flag I’ve been holdin’ fer thot dom’ young surveyor is the
wrong color. I want a green flag.”
Baxter waved the Irishman to his errand, but General Lodge looked up
from the maps and plans before him with a faint smile. He had a dark,
stern face and the bearing of a soldier.
“Casey, you can have any color you like,” he said. “Maybe green would
change our luck.”
“Gineral, we’ll niver git no railroad built, an’ if we do it’ll be the
Irish thot builds it,” responded Casey, and went his way.
Truly only one hope remained--that the agile and daring Neale, with his
eye of a mountaineer and his genius for estimating distance and grade,
might run a line around the gorge.
While waiting for Neale the engineers went over the maps and drawings
again and again, with the earnestness of men who could not be beaten.
Lodge had been a major-general in the Civil War just ended, and before
that he had traveled through this part of the West many times, and
always with the mighty project of a railroad looming in his mind. It had
taken years to evolve the plan of a continental railroad, and it came
to fruition at last through many men and devious ways, through plots and
counterplots. The wonderful idea of uniting East and West by a railroad
originated in one man’s brain; he lived for it, and finally he died
for it. But the seeds he had sown were fruitful. One by one other men
divined and believed, despite doubt and fear, until the day arrived when
Congress put the Government of the United States, the army, a group of
frock-coated directors, and unlimited gold back of General Lodge, and
bade him build the road.
In all the length and breadth of the land no men but the chief engineer
and his assistants knew the difficulty, the peril of that undertaking.
The outside world was interested, the nation waited, mostly in doubt.
But Lodge and his engineers had been seized by the spirit of some great
thing to be, in the making of which were adventure, fortune, fame,
and that strange call of life which foreordained a heritage for future
generations. They were grim; they were indomitable.
Warren Neale came hurrying up. He was a New Englander of poor family,
self-educated, wild for adventure, keen for achievement, eager, ardent,
bronze-faced, and keen-eyed, under six feet in height, built like a
wedge, but not heavy--a young man of twenty-three with strong latent
possibilities of character.
General Lodge himself explained the difficulties of the situation and
what the young surveyor was expected to do. Neale flushed with pride;
his eyes flashed; his jaw set. But he said little while the engineers
led him out to the scene of the latest barrier. It was a rugged gorge,
old and yellow and crumbled, cedar-fringed at the top, bare and white at
the bottom. The approach to it was through a break in the walls, so that
the gorge really extended both above and below this vantage-point.
“This is the only pass through these foot-hills,” said Engineer Henney,
the eldest of Lodge’s corps.
The passage ended where the break in the walls fronted abruptly upon the
gorge. It was a wild scene. Only inspired and dauntless men could have
entertained any hope of building a railroad through such a place. The
mouth of the break was narrow; a rugged slope led up to the left; to the
right a huge buttress of stone wall bulged over the gorge; across stood
out the seamed and cracked cliffs, and below yawned the abyss. The
nearer side of the gorge could only be guessed at.
Neale crawled to the extreme edge of the precipice, and, lying flat, he
tried to discover what lay beneath. Evidently he did not see much, for
upon getting up he shook his head. Then he gazed at the bulging wall.
“The side of that can be blown off,” he muttered.
“But what’s around the corner? If it’s straight stone wall for miles and
miles we are done,” said Boone, another of the engineers.
“The opposite wall is just that,” added Henney. “A straight stone wall.”
General Lodge gazed at the baffling gorge. His face became grimmer,
harder. “It seems impossible to go on, but we must go on!” he said.
A short silence ensued. The engineers faced one another like men
confronted by a last and crowning hindrance. Then Neale laughed. He
appeared cool and confident.
“It only looks bad,” he said. “We’ll climb to the top and I’ll go down
over the wall on a rope.”
Neale had been let down over many precipices in those stony hills. He
had been the luckiest, the most daring and successful of all the men
picked out and put to perilous tasks. No one spoke of the accidents that
had happened, or even the fatal fall of a lineman who a few weeks
before had ventured once too often. Every rod of road surveyed made the
engineers sterner at their task, just as it made them keener to attain
final success.
The climb to the top of the bluff was long and arduous. The whole corps
went, and also some of the troopers.
“I’ll need a long rope,” Neale had said to King, his lineman.
It was this order that made King take so much time in ascending the
bluff. Besides, he was a cowboy, used to riding, and could not climb
well.
“Wal--I--shore--rustled--all the line--aboot heah,” he drawled,
pantingly, as he threw lassoes and coils of rope at Neale’s feet.
Neale picked up some of the worn pieces. He looked dubious. “Is this all
you could get?” he asked.
“Shore is. An’ thet includes what Casey rustled from the soldiers.”
“Help me knot these,” went on Neale.
“Wal, I reckon this heah time I’ll go down before you,” drawled King.
Neale laughed and looked curiously at his lineman. Back somewhere in
Nebraska this cowboy from Texas had attached himself to Neale. They
worked together; they had become friends. Larry Red King made no bones
of the fact that Texas had grown too hot for him. He had been born
with an itch to shoot. To Neale it seemed that King made too much of a
service Neale had rendered--the mere matter of a helping hand. Still,
there had been danger.
“Go down before me!” exclaimed Neale.
“I reckon,” replied King.
“You will not,” rejoined the other, bluntly. “I may not need you at all.
What’s the sense of useless risk?”
“Wal, I’m goin’--else I throw up my job.”
“Oh, hell!” burst out Neale as he strained hard on a knot. Again he
looked at his lineman, this time with something warmer than curiosity in
his glance.
Larry Red King was tall, slim, hard as iron, and yet undeniably graceful
in outline--a singularly handsome and picturesque cowboy with flaming
hair and smooth, red face and eyes of flashing blue. From his belt swung
a sheath holding a heavy gun.
“Wal, go ahaid,” added Neale, mimicking his comrade. “An’ I shore hope
thet this heah time you-all get aboot enough of your job.”
One by one the engineers returned from different points along the wall,
and they joined the group around Neale and King.
“Test that rope,” ordered General Lodge.
The long rope appeared to be amply strong. When King fastened one end
round his body under his arms the question arose among the engineers,
just as it had arisen for Neale, whether or not it was needful to let
the lineman down before the surveyor. Henney, who superintended this
sort of work, decided it was not necessary.
“I reckon I’ll go ahaid,” said King. Like all Texans of his type,
Larry King was slow, easy, cool, careless. Moreover, he gave a singular
impression of latent nerve, wildness, violence.
There seemed every assurance of a deadlock when General Lodge stepped
forward and addressed his inquiry to Neale.
“Larry thinks the rope will break. So he wants to go first,” replied
Neale.
There were broad smiles forthcoming, yet no one laughed. This was one
of the thousands of strange human incidents that must be enacted in the
building of the railroad. It might have been humorous, but it was big.
It fixed the spirit and it foreshadowed events.
General Lodge’s stern face relaxed, but he spoke firmly. “Obey orders,”
he admonished Larry King.
The loop was taken from Larry’s waist and transferred to Neale’s. Then
all was made ready to let the daring surveyor with his instrument down
over the wall.
Neale took one more look at the rugged front of the cliff. When he
straightened up the ruddy bronze had left his face.
“There’s a bulge of rock. I can’t see what’s below it,” he said. “No
use for signals. I’ll go down the length of the rope and trust to find a
footing. I can’t be hauled up.”
They all conceded this silently.
Then Neale sat down, let his legs dangle over the wall, firmly grasped
his instrument, and said to the troopers who held the rope, “All right!”
They lowered him foot by foot.
It was windy and the dust blew up from under the wall. Black cañon
swifts, like swallows, darted out with rustling wings, uttering
frightened twitterings. The engineers leaned over, watching Neale’s
progress. Larry King did not look over the precipice. He watched the
slowly slipping rope as knot by knot it passed over. It fascinated him.
“He’s reached the bulge of rock,” called Baxter, craning his neck.
“There, he’s down--out of sight!” exclaimed Henney.
Casey, the flagman, leaned farther out than any other. “Phwat a dom’
sthrange way to build a railroad, I sez,” he remarked.
The gorge lay asleep in the westering sun, silent, full of blue haze.
Seen from this height, far above the break where the engineers had first
halted, it had the dignity and dimensions of a cañon. Its walls had
begun to change color in the sunset light.
Foot by foot the soldiers let the rope slip, until probably two hundred
had been let out, and there were scarcely a hundred feet left. By this
time all that part of the cable which had been made of lassoes had
passed over; the remainder consisted of pieces of worn and knotted and
frayed rope, at which the engineers began to gaze fearfully.
“I don’t like this,” said Henney, nervously. “Neale surely ought to have
found a ledge or bench or slope by now.”
Instinctively the soldiers held back, reluctantly yielding inches where
before they had slacked away feet. But intent as was their gaze, it
could not rival that of the cowboy.
“Hold!” he yelled, suddenly pointing to where the strained rope curved
over the edge of the wall.
The troopers held hard. The rope ceased to pay out. The strain seemed to
increase. Larry King pointed with a lean hand.
“It’s a-goin’ to break!”
His voice, hoarse and swift, checked the forward movement of the
engineers. He plunged to his knees before the rope and reached
clutchingly, as if he wanted to grasp it, yet dared not.
“Ropes was my job! Old an’ rotten! It’s breakin’!”
Even as he spoke the rope snapped. The troopers, thrown off their
balance, fell backward. Baxter groaned; Boone and Henney cried out in
horror; General Lodge stood aghast, dazed. Then they all froze rigid in
the position of intense listening.
A dull sound puffed up from the gorge, a low crash, then a slow-rising
roar and rattle of sliding earth and rock. It diminished and ceased with
the hollow cracking of stone against stone.
Casey broke the silence among the listening men with a curse. Larry Red
King rose from his knees, holding the end of the snapped rope, which
he threw from him with passionate violence. Then with action just as
violent he unbuckled his belt and pulled it tighter and buckled it
again. His eyes were blazing with blue lightning; they seemed to accuse
the agitated engineers of deliberate murder. But he turned away without
speaking and hurried along the edge of the gorge, evidently searching
for a place to go down.
General Lodge ordered the troopers to follow King and if possible
recover Neale’s body.
“That lad had a future,” said old Henney, sadly. “We’ll miss him.”
Boone’s face expressed sickness and horror.
Baxter choked. “Too bad!” he murmured, “but what’s to be done?”
The chief engineer looked away down the shadowy gorge where the sun was
burning the ramparts red. To have command of men was hard, bitter. Death
stalked with his orders. He foresaw that the building of this railroad
was to resemble the war in which he had sent so many lads and men to
bloody graves.
The engineers descended the long slope and returned to camp, a mile down
the narrow valley. Fires were blazing; columns of smoke were curling
aloft; the merry song and reckless laugh of soldiers were ringing out,
so clear in the still air; horses were neighing and stamping.
Colonel Dillon reported to General Lodge that one of the scouts had
sighted a large band of Sioux Indians encamped in a valley not far
distant. This tribe had gone on the war-path and had begun to harass the
engineers. Neale’s tragic fate was forgotten in the apprehension of
what might happen when the Sioux discovered the significance of that
surveying expedition.
“The Sioux could make the building of the U. P. impossible,” said
Henney, always nervous and pessimistic.
“No Indians--nothing can stop us!” declared his chief.
The troopers sent to follow Larry King came back to camp, saying that
they had lost him and that they could not find any place where it was
possible to get down into that gorge.
In the morning Larry King had not returned.
Detachments of troopers were sent in different directions to try again.
And the engineers went out once more to attack their problem. Success
did not attend the efforts of either party, and at sunset, when all had
wearily returned to camp, Larry King was still absent. Then he was given
up for lost.
But before dark the tall cowboy limped into camp, dusty and torn,
carrying Neale’s long tripod and surveying instrument. It looked the
worse for a fall, but apparently was not badly damaged. King did not
give the troopers any satisfaction. Limping on to the tents of the
engineers, he set down the instrument and called. Boone was the first
to come out, and his summons brought Henney, Baxter, and the younger
members of the corps. General Lodge, sitting at his campfire some rods
away, and bending over his drawings, did not see King’s arrival.
No one detected any difference in the cowboy, except that he limped.
Slow, cool, careless he was, yet somehow vital and impelling. “Wal, we
run the line around--four miles up the gorge whar the crossin’ is easy.
Only ninety-foot grade to the mile.”
The engineers looked at him as if he were crazy.
“But Neale! He fell--he’s dead!” exclaimed Henney.
“Daid? Wal, no, Neale ain’t daid,” drawled Larry.
“Where is he, then?”
“I reckon he’s comin’ along back heah.”
“Is he hurt?”
“Shore. An’ hungry, too, which is what I am,” replied Larry, as he
limped away.
Some of the engineers hurried out in the gathering dusk to meet Neale,
while others went to General Lodge with the amazing story.
The chief received the good news quietly but with intent eyes. “Bring
Neale and King here--as soon as their needs have been seen to,” he
ordered. Then he called after Baxter, “Ninety feet to the mile, you
said?”
“Ninety-foot grade, so King reported.”
“By all that’s lucky!” breathed the chief, as if his load had been
immeasurably lightened. “Send those boys to me.”
Some of the soldiers had found Neale down along the trail and were
helping him into camp. He was crippled and almost exhausted. He made
light of his condition, yet he groaned when he dropped into a seat
before the fire.
Some one approached Larry King to inform him that the general wanted to
see him.
“Wal, I’m hungry--an’ he ain’t my boss,” replied Larry, and went on with
his meal. It was well known that the Southerner would not talk.
But Neale talked; he blazed up in eloquent eulogy of his lineman; before
an hour had passed away every one in camp knew that Larry had saved
Neale’s life. Then the loquacious Casey, intruding upon the cowboy’s
reserve, got roundly cursed for his pains.
“G’wan out among thim Sooz Injuns an’ be a dead hero, thin,” retorted
Casey, as the cowboy stalked off to be alone in the gloom. Evidently
Casey was disappointed not to get another cursing, for he turned to his
comrade, McDermott, an axman. “Say, Mac, phwot do you make of cowboys?”
“I tell ye, Pat, I make of thim thet you’ll be full of bulletholes
before this railroad’s built.”
“Thin, b’gosh, I’ll hould drink fer a long time yit,” replied Casey.
Later General Lodge visited Neale and received the drawings and figures
that made plain solution of what had been a formidable problem.
“It was easy, once I landed under that bulge of cliff,” said Neale.
“There’s a slope of about forty-five degrees--not all rock. And four
miles up the gorge peters out. We can cross. I got to where I could see
the divide--and oh! there is where our troubles begin. The worst is all
to come.”
“You’ve said it,” replied the chief, soberly. “We can’t follow the trail
and get the grade necessary. We’ve got to hunt up a pass.”
“We’ll find one,” said Neale, hopefully.
“Neale, you’re ambitious and you’ve the kind of spirit that never gives
up. I’ve watched your work from the start. You’ll make a big position
for yourself with this railroad, if you only live through the building
of it.”
“Oh, I’ll live through it, all right,” replied Neale, laughing. “I’m
like a cat--always on my feet--and have nine lives besides.”
“You surely must! How far did you fall this time?”
“Not far. I landed in a tree, where my instrument stuck. But I crashed
down, and got a hard knock on the head. When Larry found me I was
unconscious and sliding for another precipice.”
“That Texan seems attached to you.”
“Well, if he wasn’t before he will be now,” said Neale, feelingly. “I’ll
tell you, General, Larry’s red-headed, a droll, lazy Southerner,
and he’s made fun of by the men. But they don’t understand him. They
certainly can’t see how dangerous he is. Only I don’t mean that. I do
mean that he’s true like steel.”
“Yes, he showed that. When the rope snapped I was sure he’d pull a gun
on us.... Neale, I would like to have had you and Larry Red King with me
through the war.”
“Thank you, General Lodge.... But I like the prospects now.”
“Neale, you’re hungry for wild life?”
“Yes,” replied Neale, simply.
“I said as much. I felt very much the same way when I was your age. And
you like our prospects?... Well, you’ve thought things out. Neale, the
building of the U. P. will be hell!”
“General, I can see that. It sort of draws me--two ways--the wildness of
it and then to accomplish something.”
“My lad, I hope you will accomplish something big without living out all
the wildness.”
“You think I might lose my head?” queried Neale.
“You are excitable and quick-tempered. Do you drink?”
“Yes--a little,” answered the young man. “But I don’t care for liquor.”
“Don’t drink, Neale,” said the chief, earnestly. “Of course it doesn’t
matter now, for we’re only a few men out here in the wilds. But when our
work is done over the divide, we must go back along the line. You know
ground has been broken and rails laid west of Omaha. The work’s begun.
I hear that Omaha is a beehive. Thousands of idle men are flocking West.
The work will be military. We must have the army to protect us, and
we will hire all the soldiers who apply. But there will be hordes of
others--the dregs of the war and all the bad characters of the frontier.
They will flock to the construction camp. Millions of dollars will go
along with the building. Gold!... Where it’s all coming from I have no
idea. The Government backs us with the army--that’s all. But the gold
will be forthcoming. I have that faith.... And think, lad, what it will
mean in a year or two. Ten thousand soldiers in one camp out here
in these wild hills. And thousands of others--honest merchants and
dishonest merchants, whisky men, gamblers, desperadoes, bandits, and
bad women. Niggers, Greasers, Indians, all together moving from camp to
camp, where there can be no law.”
“It will be great!” exclaimed Neale, with shining eyes.
“It will be terrible,” muttered the elder man, gravely. Then, as he got
up and bade his young assistant good night, the somberness had returned
to his eyes and the weight to his shoulders. He did not underestimate
his responsibility nor the nature of his task, and he felt the coming of
nameless and unknown events beyond all divining.
Henney was Neale’s next visitor. The old engineer appeared elated, but
for the moment he apparently forgot everything else in his solicitude
for the young man’s welfare.
Presently, after he had been reassured, the smile came back to his face.
“The chief has promoted you,” he said.
“What!” exclaimed Neale, starting up.
“It’s a fact. He just talked it over with Baxter and me. This last job
of yours pleased him mightily... and so you go up.”
“Go up!... To what?” queried Neale, eagerly.
“Well, that’s why he consulted us, I guess,” laughed Henney. “You see,
we sort of had to make something to promote you to, for the present.”
“Oh, I see! I was wondering what job there could be,” replied Neale, and
he laughed, too. “What did the chief say?”
“He said a lot. Figured you’d land at the top if the U. P. is ever
built.... Chief engineer!... Superintendent of maintenance of way!”
“Good Lord!” breathed Neale. “You’re not in earnest?”
“Wal, I shore am, as your cowboy pard says,” returned Henney. And then
he spoke with real earnestness. “Listen, Neale. Here’s the matter in a
nutshell. You will be called upon to run these particular and difficult
surveys, just as yesterday. But no more of the routine for you. Added to
that, you will be sent forward and back, inspecting, figuring. You can
make your headquarters with us or in the construction camps, as suits
your convenience. All this, of course, presently, when we get farther
on. So you will be in a way free--your own boss a good deal of the time.
And fitting yourself for that ‘maintenance of way’ job. In fact,
the chief said that--he called you Maintenance-of-Way Neale. Well,
I congratulate you. And my advice is keep on as you’ve begun--go
straight--look out for your wildness and temper.... That’s all. Good
night.”
Then he went out, leaving Neale speechless.
Neale had many callers that night, and the last was Larry Red King. The
cowboy stooped to enter the tent.
“Wal, how aboot you-all?” he drawled.
“Not so good, Red,” replied Neale. “My head’s hot and I’ve got a lot of
pain. I think I’m going to be a little flighty. Would you mind getting
your blankets and staying with me tonight?”
“I reckon I’d be glad,” answered King. He put a hand on Neale’s face.
“You shore have fever.” He left the tent, to return presently with a
roll of blankets and a canteen. Then he awkwardly began to bathe Neale’s
face with cold water. There was a flickering camp-fire outside that
threw shadows on the wall of the tent. By its light Neale saw that
King’s left hand was bandaged and that he used it clumsily.
“What’s wrong with your hand?” he queried.
“I reckon nawthin’.”
“Why is it bound up, then?”
“Wal, some one sent thet fool army doctor to me an’ he said I had two
busted bones in it.”
“He did! I had no idea you were hurt. You never said a word. And you
carried me and my instrument all day--with a broken hand!”
“Wal, I ain’t so shore it’s broke.”
Neale swore at his friend and then he fell asleep. King watched beside
him, ever and anon rewetting the hot brow.
The camp-fire died out, and at length the quietness of late night set
in. The wind mourned and lulled by intervals; a horse thudded his hoofs
now and then; there were the soft, steady footsteps of the sentry on
guard, and the wild cry of a night bird.
5
Neale had not been wrong when he told the engineers that once they had
a line surveyed across the gorge and faced the steep slopes of the other
side their troubles would be magnified.