out upon the huge, billowy bosom of the plains. Again she sought a
hiding-place, but none offered. There was no warmth in the sand, and the
night wind arose, cold and moaning. She could not sleep. The whole empty
world seemed haunted. Rustlings of the sage, seepings of the sand,
gusts of the wind, the night, the loneliness, the faithless stars and
a treacherous moon that sank, the wailing of wolves--all these things
worked upon her mind and spirit until she lost her courage. She feared
to shut her eyes or cover her face, for then she could not see the
stealthy forms stalking her out of the gloom. She prayed no more to her
star.
“Oh, God, have you forsaken me?” she moaned.
How relentless the grip of the endless hours! The black night held fast.
And yet when she had grown nearly mad waiting for the dawn, it finally
broke, ruddy and bright, with the sun, as always, a promise of better
things to come.
Allie found no water that day. She suffered from the lack of it, but
hunger appeared to have left her. Her strength diminished, yet she
walked and plodded miles on miles, always gazing both hopelessly and
hopefully along the winding trail.
At the close of the short and merciful day despair seized upon Allie’s
mind. With night came gloom and the memory of her mother’s fate. She
still clung to a strange faith that all would soon be well. But
reason, fact, reality, these present things pointed to certain
doom--starvation--death by thirst--or Indians! A thousand times she
imagined she heard the fleet hoof-beating of many mustangs. Only the
tiny pats of the broken sage leaves in the wind!
It was a dark and cloudy night, warmer and threatening rain. She
kept continually turning round and round to see what it was that came
creeping up behind her so stealthily. How horrible was the dark--the
blackness that showed invisible things! A wolf sent up his hungry,
lonely cry. She did not fear this reality so much as she feared the
intangible. If she lived through this night, there would be another like
it to renew the horror. She would rather not live. Like a creature beset
by foes all around she watched; she faced every little sound; she peered
into the darkness, instinctively unable to give up, to end the struggle,
to lie down and die.
Neale seemed to be with her. He was alive. He was thinking of her at
that very moment. He would expect her to overcome self and accident and
calamity. He spoke to her out of the distance and his voice had the old
power, stronger than fear, exhaustion, hopelessness, insanity. He could
call her back from the grave.
And so the night passed.
In the morning, when the sun lit the level land, far down the trail
westward gleamed a long white line of moving wagons.
Allie uttered a wild and broken cry, in which all the torture shuddered
out of her heart. Again she was saved! That black doubt was shame to her
spirit. She prayed her thanksgiving, and vowed in her prayers that no
adversity, however cruel, could ever again shake her faith or conquer
her spirit.
She was going on to meet Neale. Life was suddenly sweet again,
unutterably full, blazing like the sunrise. He was there--somewhere to
the eastward.
She waited. The caravan was miles away. But it was no mirage, no trick
of the wide plain! She watched. If the hours of night had been long,
what were these hours of day with life and the chance of happiness ever
advancing?
At last she saw the scouts riding in front and alongside, and the
plodding oxen. It was a large caravan, well equipped for defense.
She left the little rise of ground and made for the trail. How uneven
the walking! She staggered. Her legs were weak. But she gained the trail
and stood there. She waved. They were not so far away. Surely she would
be seen. She staggered on--waved again.
There! The leading scout had halted. He pointed. Other riders crowded
around him. The caravan came to a stop.
Allie heard voices. She waved her arms and tried to run. A scout
dismounted, advanced to meet her, rifle ready. The caravan feared a
Sioux trick. Allie described a lean, gray old man; now he was rapidly
striding toward her.
“It’s a white gal!” she heard him shout.
Others ran forward as she staggered to meet them.
“I’m alone--I’m--lost!” she faltered.
“A white gal in Injun dress,” said another.
And then kind hands were outstretched to her.
“I’m--running--away... Indians!” panted Allie.
“Whar?” asked the lean old scout.
“Over the ridges--miles--twenty miles--more. They had me. I got--away...
four--three days ago.”
The group around Allie opened to admit another man.
“Who’s this--who’s this?” called a quick voice, soft and liquid, yet
with a quality of steel in it.
Allie had heard that voice. She saw a tall man in long black coat and
wide black hat and flowered vest and flowing tie. Her heart contracted.
“ALLIE!” rang the voice.
She looked up to see a dark, handsome face--a Spanish face with almond
eyes, sloe-black and magnetic--a face that suddenly blazed.
She recognized the man with whom her mother had run away--the man she
had long believed her father--the adventurer Durade! Then she fainted.
14
Allie recovered to find herself lying in a canvas-covered wagon, and
being worked over by several sympathetic women. She did not see Durade.
But she knew she had not been mistaken. The wagon was rolling along as
fast as oxen could travel. Evidently the caravan had been alarmed by the
proximity of the Sioux and was making as much progress as possible.
Allie did not answer many questions. She drank thirstily, but she was
too exhausted to eat.
“Whose caravan?” was the only query she made.
“Durade’s,” replied one woman, and it was evident from the way she spoke
that this was a man of consequence.
As Allie lay there, slowly succumbing to weariness and drowsiness, she
thought of the irony of fate that had let her escape the Sioux only
to fall into the hands of Durade. Still, there was hope. Durade was
traveling toward the east. Out there somewhere he would meet Neale, and
then blood would be spilled. She had always regarded Durade strangely,
wondering that in spite of his kindness to her she could not really care
for him. She understood now and hated him passionately. And if there was
any one she feared it was Durade. Allie lost herself in the past,
seeing the stream of mixed humanity that passed through Durade’s
gambling-halls. No doubt he was on his way, first to search for her
mother, and secondly, to profit by the building of the railroad. But he
would never find her mother. Allie was glad.
At length she fell asleep and slept long, then dozed at intervals. The
caravan halted. Allie heard the familiar sing-song calls to the oxen.
Soon all was bustle about her, and this fully awakened her. In a moment
or more she must expect to be face to face with Durade. What should
she tell him? How much should she let him know? Not one word about her
mother! He would be less afraid of her if he found out that the mother
was dead. Durade had always feared Allie’s mother.
The women with whom Allie had ridden helped her out of the wagon, and,
finding her too weak to stand, they made a bed for her on the ground.
The camp site appeared to be just the same as any other part of that
monotonous plain-land, but evidently there was a stream or water-hole
near by. Allie saw her companions were the only women in the caravan;
they were plain persons, blunt, yet kind, used to hard, honest work, and
probably wives of defenders of the wagon-train.
They could not conceal their curiosity in regard to Allie, nor their
wonder. She had heard them whispering together whenever they came near.
Presently Allie saw Durade. He was approaching. How well she remembered
him! Yet the lapse of time and the change between her childhood and the
present seemed incalculable. He spoke to the women, motioning in her
direction. His bearing and action were that of a man of education, and a
gentleman. Yet he looked what her mother had called him--a broken man of
class, an adventurer, a victim of base passions.
He came and knelt by Allie. “How are you now?” he asked. His voice was
gentle and courteous, different from that of the other men.
“I can’t stand up,” replied Allie.
“Are you hurt?”
“No--only worn out.”
“You escaped from Indians?”
“Yes--a tribe of Sioux. They intended to keep me captive. But a young
squaw freed me--led me off.”
He paused as if it was an effort to speak, and a long, thin, shapely
hand went to his throat. “Your mother?” he asked, hoarsely. Suddenly his
face had turned white.
Allie gazed straight into his eyes, with wonder, pain, suspicion. “My
mother! I’ve not seen her for nearly two years.”
“My God! What happened? You lost her? You became separated?...
Indians--bandits?... Tell me!”
“I have--no--more to tell,” said Allie. His pain revived her own. She
pitied Durade. He had changed--aged--there were lines in his face that
were new to her.
“I spent a year in and around Ogden, searching,” went on Durade. “Tell
me--more.”
“No!” cried Allie.
“Do you know, then?” he asked, very low.
“I’m not your daughter--and mother ran off from you. Yes, I know that,”
replied Allie, bitterly.
“But I brought you up--took care of you--helped educate you,” protested
Durade, with agitation. “You were my own child, I thought. I was always
kind to you. I--I loved the mother in the daughter.”
“Yes, I know.... But you were wicked.”
“If you won’t tell me it must mean she’s still alive,” he replied,
swiftly. “She’s not dead;... I’ll find her. I’ll make her come back to
me--or kill her... After all these years--to leave me!”
He seemed wrestling with mingled emotions. The man was proud and strong,
but defeat in life, in the crowning passion of life, showed in his white
face. The evil in him was not manifest then.
“Where have you lived all this time?” he asked, presently.
“Back in the hills with a trapper.”
“You have grown. When I saw you I thought it was the ghost of your
mother. You are just as she was when we met.”
He seemed lost in sad retrospection. Allie saw streaks of gray in his
once jet-black hair.
“What will you do?” asked Allie.
He was startled. The softness left him. A blaze seemed to leap under
skin and eyes, and suddenly he was different--he was Durade the gambler,
instinct with the lust of gold and life.
“Your mother left me for YOU,” he said, with terrible bitterness. “And
the game has played you into my hands. I’ll keep you. I’ll hold you to
get even with her.”
Allie felt stir in her the fear she had had of him in her childhood when
she disobeyed. “But you can’t keep me against my will--not among people
we’ll meet eastward.”
“I can, and I will!” he declared, softly, but implacably. “We’re
not going East. We’ll be in rougher places than the gold-camps of
California. There’s no law but gold and guns out here... But--if you
speak of me to any one may your God have mercy on you!”
The blaze of him betrayed the Spaniard. He meant more than dishonor,
torture, and death. The evil in him was rampant. The love that had been
the only good in an abnormal and disordered mind had turned to hate.
Allie knew him. He was the first person who had ever dominated her
through sheer force of will. Unless she abided by his command her fate
would be worse than if she had stayed captive among the Sioux. This man
was not an American. His years among men of later mold had not changed
the Old World cruelty of his nature. She recognized the fact in utter
despair. She had not strength left to keep her eyes open.
After a while Allie grew conscious that Durade had left her. She felt
like a creature that had been fascinated by a deadly snake and then left
to itself; in the mean time she could do nothing but wait. Shudderingly,
mournfully, she resigned herself to the feeling that she must stay under
Durade’s control until a dominance stronger than his should release her.
Neale seemed suddenly to have retreated far into the past, to have gone
out of the realm of her consciousness. And yet the sound of his voice,
the sight of his face, would make instantly that spirit of hers--his
spirit--to leap like a tigress in her defense. But where was Neale? The
habits of life were all powerful; and all her habits had been formed
under Durade’s magnetic eye. Neale retreated and so did spirit, courage,
hope. Love remained, despairing, yet unquenchable.
Allie’s resignation established a return to normal feelings. She ate and
grew stronger; she slept and was refreshed.
The caravan moved on about twenty-five miles a day. At the next camp
Allie tried walking again, to find her feet were bruised, her legs
cramped, and action awkward and painful. But she persevered, and the
tingling of revived circulation was like needles pricking her flesh. She
limped from one camp-fire to another; and all the rough men had a kind
word or question or glance for her. Allie did not believe they were all
honest men. Durade had employed a large force, and apparently he had
taken on every one who applied. Miners, hunters, scouts, and men of no
hall-mark except that of wildness composed the mixed caravan. It spoke
much for Durade that they were under control. Allie well remembered
hearing her mother say that he had a genius for drawing men to him and
managing them.
Once during her walk, when every one appeared busy, a big fellow with
hulking shoulders and bandaged head stepped beside her.
“Girl,” he whispered, “if you want a knife slipped into Durade, tell him
about me!”
Allie recognized the whisper before she did the heated, red face with
its crooked nose and bold eyes and ugly mouth. Fresno! He must have
escaped from the Sioux and fallen in with Durade.
Allie shrunk from him. Durade, compared with this kind of ruffian, was a
haven of refuge. She passed on without a sign. But Fresno was safe from
her. This meeting made her aware of an impulse to run back to Durade,
instinctively, just as she had when a child. He had ruined her mother;
he had meant to make a lure of her, the daughter; he had showed what
his vengeance would be upon that mother, just as he had showed Allie her
doom should she betray him. But notwithstanding all this, Durade was not
Fresno, nor like any of those men whose eyes seemed to burn her.
She returned to the wagon and to the several women and men attached to
it, with the assurance that there were at least some good persons in
that motley caravan crew.
The women, naturally curious and sympathetic, questioned her in one
way and another. Who was she, what had happened to her, where were her
people or friends? How had she ever escaped robbers and Indians in that
awful country? Was she really Durade’s daughter?
Allie did not tell much about herself, and finally she was left in
peace.
The lean old scout who had first seen Allie as she staggered into the
trail told her it was over a hundred miles to the first camp of the
railroad-builders.
“Down-hill all the way,” he concluded. “An’ we’ll make it in a jiffy.”
Nevertheless, it took nearly all of four days to sight the camp of the
traders--the advance-guard of the great construction work.
In those four days Allie had recovered her bloom, her health, her
strength--everything except the wonderful assurance which had been hers.
Durade had spoken daily with her, and had been kind, watchful, like a
guardian.
It was with a curious thrill that Allie gazed around as she rode into
the construction camp--horses and men and implements all following the
line of Neale’s work. Could Neale be there? If so, how dead was her
heart to his nearness?
The tents of the workers, some new and white, others soiled and ragged,
stretched everywhere; large tents belched smoke and resounded with the
ring of hammers on anvil; soldiers stood on guard; men, red-shirted and
blue-shirted, swarmed as thick as ants; in a wide hollow a long line of
horses, in double row, heads together, pulled hay from a rack as long as
the line, and they pulled and snorted and bit at one another; a strong
smell of hay and burning wood mingled with the odor of hot coffee and
steaming beans; fires blazed on all sides; under another huge tent, or
many tents without walls, stretched wooden tables and benches; on the
scant sage and rocks and brush, and everywhere upon the tents, lay in a
myriad of colors and varieties the lately washed clothes of the toilers;
and through the wide street of the camp clattered teams and swearing
teamsters, dragging plows with clanking chains and huge scoops turned
upside down. Bordering the camp, running east as far as eye could see,
stretched a high, flat, yellow lane, with the earth hollowed away from
it, so that it stood higher than the level plain--and this was the work
of the graders, the road-bed of the Union Pacific Railroad, the U. P.
Trail.
This camp appeared to be Durade’s destination. His caravan rode through
and halted on the outskirts of the far side. Preparations began for what
Allie concluded was to be a permanent halt. At once began a significant
disintegration of Durade’s party. One by one the scouts received payment
from their employer, and with horse and pack disappeared toward the
camp. The lean old fellow who had taken kindly interest in Allie looked
in at the opening of the canvas over her wagon, and, wishing her luck,
bade her good-by. The women likewise said good-by, informing her that
they were going on home. Not one man among those left would Allie have
trusted.
During the hurried settling of camp Durade came to Allie.
“Allie,” he said, “you don’t have to keep cooped up in there unless I
tell you. But don’t talk to any one--and don’t go that way.”
He pointed toward the humming camp. “That place beats any gold-diggings
I ever saw,” he concluded.
The tall, scant sage afforded Allie some little seclusion, and she
walked there until Durade called her to supper. She ate alone on a
wagon-seat, and when twilight fell she climbed into her wagon, grateful
that it was high off the ground and so inclosed her from all except
sound.
Darkness came; the fire died down; the low voices of Durade and his men,
and of callers who visited them, flowed continuously.
Then, presently, there arose a strange murmur, unlike any sound Allie
had ever heard. It swelled into a low, distant roar. She was curious
about it. Peeping out of her wagon-cover she saw where the darkness
flared to yellow with a line of lights--torches or lanterns or fires.
Crossing and re-crossing these lights were black objects, in twos and
threes and dozens. And from this direction floated the strange, low
roar. Suddenly she realized. It was the life of the camp. Hundreds and
thousands of men were there together, and as the night advanced the
low roar rose and fell, and lulled away to come again--strange, sad,
hideous, mirthful. For a long time Allie could not sleep.
Next morning Durade called her. When she unlaced the canvas flaps, it
was to see the sun high and to hear the bustle of work all about her.
Durade brought her breakfast and gave her instructions. While he was
about in the daytime she might come out and do what she could to
amuse herself; but when he was absent or at night she must be in her
wagon-tent, laced in, and she was not to answer any call. She would
be guarded by Stitt, one of his men, a deaf mute, faithful to his
interests, and who had orders to handle her roughly should she disobey.
Allie would not have been inclined to mutiny, even without the fear and
abhorrence she felt of this ugly and deformed mute.
That day Durade caused to be erected tents, canopies, tables, benches,
and last a larger tent, into which the tables and benches were carried.
Fresno worked hard, as did all the men except Stitt, who had nothing to
do but watch Allie’s wagon. Wearily the time passed for her. How many
days must she spend thus, watching idly, because there was nothing else
to do? Still, back in her consciousness there was a vague and growing
thought. Sooner or later Neale would appear in the flesh, as he now came
to her in her dreams.
That night Allie, peeping out, saw by the fire and torch-light a
multitude of men drawn to Durade’s large tent. Mexicans, Negroes,
Irishmen--all kinds of men passed, loud and profane, careless and
reckless, quarrelsome and loquacious. Soon there arose in her ears the
long-forgotten but now familiar sounds of a gambling-hell in full blast.
The rolling rattle of the wheel, sharp, strident, and keen, intermingled
with the strange rich false clink of gold.
It needed only a few days and nights for Allie Lee to divine Durade’s
retrogression. Before this he had been a gambler for the sake of
gambling, even a sportsman in his evil way; now he seemed possessed of
an unscrupulous intent, a strange, cold, devouring passion to get gold
and more gold--always more gold. Allie divined evidence of this, saw
it, heard it. The man had struck the descent, and he was all the more
dangerous for his lapse from his former standards, poor as they had
been.
Not a week had elapsed before the gambling-hell roared all night. Allie
got most of her sleep during the day. She tried to shut out what sound
she could, and tried to be deaf to the rest. But she had to hear the
angry brawls, pistol-shots, and shrill cries; yes, and the trample of
heavy boots as men dragged a dead gamester out to the ditch.
Day was a relief, a blessing. Allie was frequently cooped up in her
narrow canvas-covered wagon, but she saw from there the life of the
grading camp.
There were various bosses--the boarding boss, who fed the laborers; the
stable boss, who had charge of the teams; the grading boss, who ruled
the diggers and scrapers; and the time-keeper boss, who kept track of
the work of all.
In the early morning a horde of hungry men stampeded the boarding-tents
where the cooks and waiters made mad haste to satisfy loud and merry
demands. At sunset the same horde dropped in, dirty and hot and lame,
and fought for seats while others waited for their turn.
Out on the level plain stretched the hundreds of teams, moving on and
returning, the drivers shouting, the horses bending. The hot sun glared,
the wind whipped up the dust, the laborers speeded up to the shout of
the boss. And ever westward crept the low, level, yellow bank of sand
and gravel--the road-bed of the first transcontinental railway.
Thus the daytime had its turmoil, too, but this last was splendid,
like the toil of heroes united to gain some common end. And the army of
soldiers waited, ever keen-eyed, for the skulking Sioux.
Mull, the boss of the camp, became a friend of Durade’s. The wily
Spaniard could draw to him any class of men. This Mull had been a driver
of truck-horses in New York, and now he was a driver of men.
He was huge, like a bull, heavy-lipped and red-cheeked, hairy and
coarse, with big sunken eyes. A brute--a caveman. He drank; he gambled.
He was at once a bully and a pirate. Responsible to no one but his
contractor, he hated the contractor and he hated his job. He was great
in his place, brutal with fist and foot, a gleaner of results from hard
men at a hard time.
He won gold from Durade, or, as Fresno guffawed to a comrade, he had
been allowed to win it. Durade picked his man. He had big schemes and he
needed Mull.
Benton was Durade’s objective point--Benton, the great and growing
camp-city, where gold and blood were spilled in the dusty streets and
life roared like a blast from hell.
All that Allie heard of Benton increased her dread, and at last she
determined that she would run any risk rather than be taken there. And
so one night, as soon as it grew dark, she slipped out of the wagon and,
under cover of darkness, made her escape.
15
The building of the U. P. R. as it advanced westward caused many camps
and towns to spring up and flourish, like mushrooms, in a single night;
and trains were run as far as the rails were laid.
Therefore strange towns and communities were born, like to nothing that
the world had ever seen before.
Warren Neale could not get away from the fascination of the work and
life, even though he had lost all his ambition and was now nothing more
than an ordinary engineer, insignificant and idle. He began to drink and
gamble in North Platte, more in a bitter defiance to fate than from any
real desire; then with Larry King he drifted out to Kearney.
At Kearney, Larry got into trouble--characteristic trouble. In a quarrel
with a construction boss named Smith, Larry accused Smith of being the
crooked tool of the crooked commissioners who had forced Neale to quit
his job. Smith grew hot and profane. The cowboy promptly slapped his
face. Then Smith, like the fool he was, went after his gun. He never got
it out.