a service. He thanked her. Neale’s manner with women was courteous and
deferential. It showed strangely here by contrast. The Stanton woman was
superb, not more than thirty years old, with a face that must have been
lovely once and held the haunting ghost of beauty still. Her hair was
dead gold; her eyes were large and blue, with dark circles under them;
and her features had a clear-cut classic regularity.
“Where’s Ancliffe?” asked Hough, addressing Stanton. She pointed, and
Hough left them.
“Neale, you’re new here,” affirmed the woman, rather curiously.
“Didn’t I look like it? I can’t forget what that girl said,” replied
Neale.
“Tell me.”
“She asked me what in the hell I came here for. And she called me--”
“Oh, I heard what Ruby called you. It’s a wonder it wasn’t worse. She
can swear like a trooper. The men are mad over Ruby. It’d be just like
her to fall in love with you for snubbing her.”
“I hope she doesn’t,” replied Neale, constrainedly.
“May I ask--what did you come here for?”
“You mean here to your dance-hall? Why, Hough brought me. I met him. We
played cards and--”
“No. I mean what brought you to Benton?”
“I just drifted here.... I’m looking for a--a lost friend,” said Neale.
“No work? But you’re no spiker or capper or boss. I know that sort. And
I can spot a gambler a mile. The whole world meets out here in Benton.
But not many young men like you wander into my place.”
“Like me? How so?”
“The men here are wolves on the scent for flesh; like bandits on the
trail of gold.... But you--you’re like my friend Ancliffe.”
“Who is he?” asked Neale, politely.
“WHO is he? God only knows. But he’s an Englishman and a gentleman. It’s
a pity men like Ancliffe and you drift out here.”
She spoke seriously. She had the accent and manner of breeding.
“Why, Miss Stanton?” inquired Neale. He was finding another woman here
and it was interesting to him.
“Because it means wasted life. You don’t work. You’re not crooked. You
can’t do any good. And only a knife in the back or a bullet from some
drunken bully’s gun awaits you.”
“That isn’t a very hopeful outlook, I’ll admit,” replied Neale,
thoughtfully.
At this point Hough returned with a pale, slender man whose clothes
and gait were not American. He introduced him as Ancliffe. Neale felt
another accession of interest. Benton might be hell, but he was meeting
new types of men and women. Ancliffe was fair; he had a handsome face
that held a story, and tired blue eyes that looked out upon the world
wearily and mildly, without curiosity and without hope. An Englishman of
broken fortunes.
“Just arrived, eh?” he said to Neale. “Rather jolly here, don’t you
think?”
“A fellow’s not going to stagnate in Benton,” replied Neale.
“Not while he’s alive,” interposed Stanton.
“Miss Stanton, that idea seems to persist with you--the brevity of
life,” said Neale, smiling. “What are the average days for a mortal in
this bloody Benton?”
“Days! You mean hours. I call the night blessed that some one is
not dragged out of my place. And I don’t sell drinks.... I’ve saved
Ancliffe’s life nine times I know of. Either he hasn’t any sense or he
wants to get killed.”
“I assure you it’s the former,” said the Englishman.
“But, my friends, I’m serious,” she returned, earnestly. “This awful
place is getting on my nerves.... Mr. Neale here, he would have had to
face a gun already but for me.”
“Miss Stanton, I appreciate your kindness,” replied Neale. “But it
doesn’t follow that if I had to face a gun I’d be sure to go down.”
“You can throw a gun?” questioned Hough.
“I had a cowboy gun-thrower for a partner for years, out on the
surveying of the road. He’s the friend I mentioned.”
“Boy, you’re courting death!” exclaimed Stanton.
Then the music started up again. Conversation was scarcely worth while
during the dancing. Neale watched as before. Twice as he gazed at the
whirling couples he caught the eyes of the girl Ruby bent upon him. They
were expressive of pique, resentment, curiosity. Neale did not look that
way any more. Besides, his attention was drawn elsewhere. Hough yelled
in his ear to watch the fun. A fight had started. A strapping fellow
wearing a belt containing gun and bowie-knife had jumped upon a table
just as the music stopped. He was drunk. He looked like a young workman
ambitious to be a desperado.
“Ladies an’ gennelmen,” he bawled, “I been--requested t’ sing.”
Yells and hoots answered him. He glared ferociously around, trying to
pick out one of his insulters. Trouble was brewing. Something was thrown
at him from behind and it struck him. He wheeled, unsteady upon his
feet. Then several men, bareheaded and evidently attendants of the hall,
made a rush for him. The table was upset. The would-be singer went down
in a heap, and he was pounced upon, handled like a sack, and thrown out.
The crowd roared its glee.
“The worst of that is those fellows always come back drunk and ugly,”
said Stanton. “Then we all begin to run or dodge.”
“Your men didn’t lose time with that rowdy,” remarked Neale.
“I’ve hired all kinds of men to keep order,” she replied. “Laborers,
ex-sheriffs, gunmen, bad men. The Irish are the best on the job. But
they won’t stick. I’ve got eight men here now, and they are a tough lot.
I’m scared to death of them. I believe they rob my guests. But what can
I do? Without some aid I couldn’t run the place. It’ll be the death of
me.”
Neale did not doubt that. A shadow surely hovered over this strange
woman, but he was surprised at the seriousness with which she spoke.
Evidently she tried to preserve order, to avert fights and bloodshed, so
that licentiousness could go on unrestrained. Neale believed they must
go hand in hand. He did not see how it would be possible for a place
like this to last long. It could not. The life of the place brought out
the worst in men. It created opportunities. Neale watched them pass,
seeing the truth in the red eyes, the heavy lids, the open mouths, the
look and gait and gesture. A wild frenzy had fastened upon their minds.
He found an added curiosity in studying the faces of Ancliffe and Hough.
The Englishman had run his race. Any place would suit him for the end.
Neale saw this and marveled at the man’s ease and grace and amiability.
He reminded Neale of Larry Red King--the same cool, easy, careless
air. Ancliffe would die game. Hough was not affected by this sort of
debauched life any more than he would have been by any other kind.
He preyed on men. He looked on with cold, gray, expressionless face.
Possibly he, too, would find an end in Benton sooner or later.
These reflections, passing swiftly, made Neale think of himself. What
was true for others must be true for him. The presence of any of these
persons--of Hough and Ancliffe, of himself, in Beauty Stanton’s gaudy
resort was sad proof of a disordered life.
Some one touched him, interrupted his thought.
“You’ve had trouble?”, asked Stanton, who had turned from the others.
“Yes,” he said.
“Well, we’ve all had that.... You seem young to me.”
Hough turned to speak to Stanton. “Ruby’s going to make trouble.”
“No!” exclaimed the woman, with eyes lighting.
Neale then saw that the girl Ruby, with a short, bold-looking fellow who
packed a gun, and several companions of both sexes, had come in from the
dance-hall and had taken up a position near him. Stanton went over to
them. She drew Ruby aside and talked to her. The girl showed none of
the passion that had marked her manner a little while before. Presently
Stanton returned.
“Ruby’s got over her temper,” she said, with evident relief, to Neale.
“She asked me to say that she apologized. It’s just what I told you.
She’ll fall madly in love with you for what you did.... She’s of good
family, Neale. She has a sister she talks much of, and a home she could
go back to if she wasn’t ashamed.”
“That so?” replied Neale, thoughtfully. “Let me talk to her.”
At a slight sign from Stanton, Ruby joined the group.
“Ruby, you’ve already introduced yourself to this gentleman, but not so
nicely as you might have done,” said Beauty.
“I’m sorry,” replied Ruby. A certain wistfulness showed in her low
tones.
“Maybe I was rude,” said Neale. “I didn’t intend to be. I couldn’t dance
with any one here--or anywhere....” Then he spoke to her in a lower
tone. “But I’ll tell you what I will do. I won a thousand dollars
to-night. I’ll give you half of it if you’ll go home.”
The girl shrank as if she had received a stab. Then she stiffened.
“Why don’t you go home?” she retorted. “We’re all going to hell out
here, and the gamest will get there soonest.”
She glared at Neale an instant, white-faced and hard, and then,
rejoining her companions, she led them away.
Beauty Stanton seemed to have received something of the check that had
changed the girl Ruby.
“Gentlemen, you are my only friends in Benton. But these are business
hours.”
Presently she leaned toward Neale and whispered to him: “Boy, you’re
courting death. Some one--something has hurt you. But you’re young....
GO HOME!”
Then she bade him good night and left the group.
He looked on in silence after that. And presently, when Ancliffe
departed, he was glad to follow Hough into the street. There the same
confusion held. A loud throng hurried by, as if bent on cramming into a
few hours the life that would not last long.
Neale was interested to inquire more about Ancliffe. And the gambler
replied that the Englishman had come from no one knew where; that he did
not go to extremes in drinking or betting; that evidently he had become
attached to Beauty Stanton; that surely he must be a ruined man of class
who had left all behind him, and had become like so many out there--a
leaf in the storm.
“Stanton took to you,” went on Hough. “I saw that.... And poor Ruby!
I’ll tell you, Neale, I’m sorry for some of these women.”
“Who wouldn’t be?”
“Women of this class are strange to you, Neale. But I’ve mixed with them
for years. Of course Benton sets a pace no man ever saw before. Still,
even the hardest and vilest of these scullions sometimes shows an
amazing streak of good. And women like Ruby and Beauty Stanton,
whose early surroundings must have been refined--they are beyond
understanding. They will cut your heart out for a slight, and sacrifice
their lives for sake of a courteous word. It was your manner that
cut Ruby and won Beauty Stanton. They meet with neither coldness nor
courtesy out here. It must be bitter as gall for a woman like Stanton to
be treated as you treated her--with respect. Yet see how it got her.”
“I didn’t see anything in particular,” replied Neale.
“You were too excited and disgusted with the whole scene,” said Hough
as they reached the roaring lights of the gambling-hell. “Will you go in
and play again? There are always open games.”
“No, I guess not--unless you think--”
“Boy, I think nothing except that I liked your company and that I owed
you a service. Good night.”
Neale walked to his lodgings tired and thoughtful and moody. Behind him
the roar lulled and swelled. It was three o’clock in the morning. He
wondered when these night-hawks slept. He wondered where Larry was. As
for himself, he found slumber not easily gained. Dawn was lighting the
east when he at last fell asleep.
16
Neale slept until late the next day and awoke with the pang that a new
day always gave him now. He arose slowly, gloomily, with the hateful
consciousness that he had nothing to do. He had wanted to be alone, and
now loneliness was bad for him.
“If I were half a man I’d get out of here, quick!” he muttered, in
scorn. And he thought of the broken Englishman, serene and at ease,
settled with himself. And he thought of the girl Ruby who had flung the
taunt at him. Not for a long time would he forget that. Certainly this
abandoned girl was not a coward. She was lost, but she was magnificent.
“I guess I’ll leave Benton,” he soliloquized. But the place, the
wildness, fascinated him. “No! I guess I’ll stay.”
It angered him that he was ashamed of himself. He was a victim of many
moods, and underneath every one of them was the steady ache, the dull
pain, the pang in his breast, deep in the bone.
As he left his lodgings he heard the whistle of a train. The scene down
the street was similar to the one which had greeted him the day before,
only the dust was not blowing so thickly. He went into a hotel for his
meal and fared better, watching the hurry and scurry of men. After he
had finished he strolled toward the station.
Benton had two trains each day now. This one, just in, was long and
loaded to its utmost capacity. Neale noticed an Indian arrow sticking
fast over a window of one of the coaches. There were flat cars loaded
with sections of houses, and box-cars full of furniture. Benton was
growing every day. At least a thousand persons got off that train,
adding to the dusty, jostling melee.
Suddenly Neale came face to face with Larry King.
“Red!” he yelled, and made at the cowboy.
“I’m shore glad to see you,” drawled Larry. “What ‘n hell busted loose
round heah?”
Neale drew Larry out of the crowd. He carried a small pack done up in a
canvas covering.
“Red, your face looks like home to a man in a strange land,” declared
Neale. “Where are your horses?”
Larry looked less at his ease.
“Wal, I sold them.”
“Sold them! Those great horses? Oh, Red, you didn’t!”
“Hell! It costs money to ride on this heah U.P.R. thet we built, an’ I
had no money.”
“But what did you sell them for? I--I cared for those horses.”
“Will you keep quiet aboot my hosses?”
Neale had never before seen the tinge of gray in that red-bronze face.
“But I told you to straighten up!”
“Wal, who hasn’t?” retorted Larry.
“You haven’t! Don’t lie.”
“If you put it thet way, all right. Now what’re you-all goin’ to do
aboot it?”
“I’ll lick you good,” declared Neale, hotly. He was angry with Larry,
but angrier with himself that he had been the cause of the cowboy’s loss
of work and of his splendid horses.
“Lick me!” ejaculated Larry. “You mean beat me up?”
“Yes. You deserve it.”
Larry took him in earnest and seemed very much concerned. Neale could
almost have laughed at the cowboy’s serious predicament.
“Wal, I reckon I ain’t much of a fighter with my fists,” said Larry,
soberly. “So come an’ get it over.”
“Oh, damn you, Red!... I wouldn’t lay a hand on you. And I am sick, I’m
so glad to see you!... I thought you got here ahead of me.”
Neale’s voice grew full and trembling.
Larry became confused, his red face grew redder, and the keen blue flash
of his eyes softened.
“Wal, I heerd what a tough place this heah Benton was--so I jest come.”
Larry ended this speech lamely, but the way he hitched at his belt was
conclusive.
“Wal, by Gawd! Look who’s heah!” he suddenly exclaimed.
Neale wheeled with a start. He saw a scout, in buckskin, a tall form
with the stride of a mountaineer, strangely familiar.
“Slingerland!” he cried.
The trapper bounded at them, his tanned face glowing, his gray eyes
glad.
“Boys, it’s come at last! I knowed I’d run into you some day,” he said,
and he gripped them with horny hands.
Neale tried to speak, but a terrible cramp in his throat choked him. He
appealed with his hands to Slingerland. The trapper lost his smile and
the iron set returned to his features.
Larry choked over his utterance. “Al-lie! What aboot--her?”
“Boys, it’s broke me down!” replied Slingerland, hoarsely. “I swear to
you I never left Allie alone fer a year--an’ then--the fust time--when
she made me go--I come back an’ finds the cabin burnt.... She’s gone!
Gone!... No redskin job. That damned riffraff out of Californy. I
tracked ‘em. Then a hell of a storm comes up. No tracks left! All’s
lost! An’ I goes back to my traps in the mountains.”
“What--became--of--her?” whispered Neale.
Slingerland looked away from him.
“Son! You remember Allie. She’d die, quick!... Wouldn’t she, Larry?”
“Shore. Thet girl--couldn’t--hev lived a day,” replied Larry, thickly.
Neale plunged blindly away from his friends. Then the torture in his
breast seemed to burst. The sobs came, heavy, racking. He sank upon a
box and bowed his head. There Larry and Slingerland found him.
The cowboy looked down with helpless pain. “Aw, pard--don’t take it--so
hard,” he implored.
But he knew and Slingerland knew that sympathy could do no good here.
There was no hope, no help. Neale was stricken. They stood there, the
elder man looking all the sadness and inevitableness of that wild life,
and the younger, the cowboy, slowly changing to iron.
“Slingerland, you-all said some Californy outfit got Allie?” he queried.
“I’m sure an’ sartin,” replied the trapper. “Them days there wasn’t any
travelin’ west, so early after winter. You recollect them four bandits
as rode in on us one day? They was from Californy.”
“Wal, I’ll be lookin’ fer men with thet Californy brand,” drawled King,
and in his slow, easy, cool speech there was a note deadly and terrible.
Neale slowly ceased his sobbing. “My nerve’s gone,” he said, shakily.
“No. It jest broke you all up to see Slingerland. An’ it shore did me,
too,” replied Larry.
“It’s hard, but--” Slingerland could not finish his thought.
“Slingerland, I’m glad to see you, even if it did cut me,” said Neale,
more rationally. “I’m surprised, too. Are you here with a load of
pelts?”
“No. Boys, I hed to give up trappin’. I couldn’t stand the
loneliness--after--after... An’ now I’m killin’ buffalo meat for the
soldiers an’ the construction gangs. Jest got in on thet train with a
car-load of fresh meat.”
“Buffalo meat,” echoed Neale. His mind wandered.
“Son, how’s your work goin’?”
Neale shook his head.
The cowboy, answering for him, said, “We kind of chucked the work,
Slingerland.”
“What? Are you hyar in Benton, doin’ nothin’?”
“Shore. Thet’s the size of it.”
The trapper made a vehement gesture of disapproval and he bent a
scrutinizing gaze upon Neale.
“Son, you’ve not gone an’--an’--”
“Yes,” replied Neale, throwing out his hands. “I quit. I couldn’t work.
I CAN’T work. I CAN’T rest or stand still!”
A spasm of immense regret contracted the trapper’s face. And Larry King,
looking away over the sordid, dusty passing throng, cursed under his
breath. Neale was the first to recover his composure.
“Let’s say no more. What’s done is done,” he said. “Suppose you take us
on one of your buffalo-hunts.”
Slingerland grasped at straws. “Wal, now, thet ain’t a bad idee. I can
use you,” he replied, eagerly. “But it’s hard an’ dangerous work. We git
chased by redskins often. An’ you’d hev to ride. I reckon, Neale, you’re
good enough on a hoss. But our cowboy friend hyar, he can’t ride, as I
recollect your old argyments.”
“My job was hosses,” drawled Larry.
“An’ besides, you’ve got to shoot straight, which Reddy hasn’t hed
experience of,” went on Slingerland, with a broader smile.
“I seen you was packin’ a Winchester all shiny an’ new,” replied Larry.
“Shore I’m in fer anythin’ with ridin’ an’ shootin’.”
Neale and Larry accepted the proposition then and there.
“You’ll need to buy rifles an’ shells, thet’s all,” said Slingerland.
“I’ve hosses an’ outfit over at the work-camp, an’ I’ve been huntin’
east of thar. Come on, we’ll go to a store. Thet train’s goin’ back
soon.”
“Wal, I come in on thet train an’ now I’m leavin’ on it,” drawled Larry.
“Shore is funny. Without even lookin’ over this heah Benton.”
On the ride eastward Slingerland inquired if Neale and Larry had ever
gone back to the scene of the massacre of the caravan where Horn had
buried his gold.
Neale had absolutely forgotten the buried gold. Probably when he and
Larry had scoured the wild hills for trace of Allie they had passed down
the valley where the treasure had been hidden. Slingerland gave the same
reason for his oversight. They talked about the gold and planned, when
the railroad reached the foot-hills, to go after it.
Both Indians and buffalo were sighted from the train before the trio got
to the next camp.
“I reckon I don’t like thet,” declared Slingerland. “I was friendly with
the Sioux. But now thet I’ve come down hyar to kill off their buffalo
fer the whites they’re ag’in’ me. I know thet. An’ I allus regarded them
buffalo as Injun property. If it wasn’t thet I seen this railroad means
the end of the buffalo, an’ the Indians, too, I’d never hev done it.
Thet I’ll swar.”
It was night when they reached their destination. How quiet and dark
after Benton! Neale was glad to get there. He wondered if he could
conquer his unrest. Would he go on wandering again? He doubted himself
and dismissed the thought. Perhaps the companionship of his old friends
and the anticipation of action would effect a change in him.
Neale and Larry spent the night in Slingerland’s tent. Next morning
the trapper was ready with horses at an early hour, but, owing to the
presence of Sioux in the vicinity, it was thought best to wait for the
work-train and ride out on the plains under its escort.
By and by the train, with its few cars and half a hundred workmen, was
ready, and the trapper and his comrades rode out alongside. Some few
miles from camp the train halted at a place where stone-work and filling
awaited the laborers. Neale was again interested, in spite of himself.
Yet his love for that railroad was quite as hopeless as other things in
his life.
These laborers were picked men, all soldiers, and many Irish; they
stacked their guns before taking up shovels and bars.
“Dom me if it ain’t me ould fri’nd Neale!” exclaimed a familiar voice.
And there stood Casey, with the same old grin, the same old black pipe.
Neale’s first feeling of pleasure at seeing the old flagman was
counteracted by one of dismay at the possibility of coming in contact
with old acquaintances. It would hurt him to meet General Lodge or any
of the engineers who had predicted a future for him.
Shane and McDermott were also in this gang, and they slouched forward.
“It’s thot gun-throwin’ cowboy as wuz onct goin’ to kill Casey!”
exclaimed McDermott, at sight of Larry.
Neale, during the few moments of reunion with his old comrades of the
survey, received a melancholy insight into himself and a clearer view of
them. The great railroad had gone on, growing, making men change. He had
been passed by. He was no longer a factor. Along with many, many other
men, he had retrograded. The splendid spirit of the work had not gone
from him, but it had ceased to govern his actions. He had ceased to
grow. But these uncouth Irishmen, they had changed. In many ways they
were the same slow, loquacious, quarreling trio as before, but they
showed the effect of toil, of fight, of growth under the great movement
and its spirit--the thing which great minds had embodied; and these
laborers were no longer ordinary men. Something shone out of them. Neale
saw it. He felt an inexplicable littleness in their presence. They had
gone on; he had been left. They would toil and fight until they filled
nameless graves. He, too, would find a nameless grave, he thought, but
he would not lie in it as one of these. The moment was poignant for
Neale, exceedingly bitter, and revealing.
Slingerland was not long in sighting buffalo. After making a careful
survey of the rolling country for lurking Indians he rode out with
Neale, Larry, and two other men--Brush and an Irishman named Pat--who
were to skin the buffalo the hunters killed, and help load the meat into
wagons which would follow.
“It ain’t no trick to kill buffalo,” Slingerland was saying to his
friends. “But I don’t want old bulls an’ old cows killed. An’ when
you’re ridin’ fast an’ the herd is bunched it’s hard to tell the
difference. You boys stick close to me an’ watch me first. An’ keep one
eye peeled fer Injuns!”
Slingerland approached the herd without alarming it, until some little
red calves on the outskirts of the herd became frightened. Then the herd
lumbered off, raising a cloud of dust. The roar of hoofs was thunderous.
“Ride!” yelled Slingerland.
Not the least interesting sight to Neale was Larry riding away from
them. He was whacking the buffalo on the rumps with his bare hand before
Slingerland and Neale got near enough to shoot.