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--”