Casey nodded grimly, and then he knelt to listen at Stanton’s breast.
“Stone dead now--thot’s shure.”
For her shroud these deliberate men used strippings of canvas from the
tent, and then, carrying her up the bare and sandy slope, they lowered
her into the grave next to the one of the cowboy.
Again Casey made a sign of the cross. He worked longer at the filling in
than his comrade, and patted the mound of sand hard and smooth. When he
finished, his pipe was out. He relighted it.
“Wal, Beauty Stanton, shure yez hev a cleaner grave than yez hed a
bed.... Nice white desert sand.... An’ prisintly no man will ivir know
where yez come to lay.”
The laborers shouldered their spades and plodded away.
The wind blew steadily in from the desert seeping the sand in low, thin
sheets. Afternoon waned, the sun sank, twilight crept over the barren
waste. There were no sounds but the seep of sand, the moan of wind,
the mourn of wolf. Loneliness came with the night that mantled Beauty
Stanton’s grave. Shadows trooped in from the desert and the darkness
grew black. On that slope the wind always blew, and always the sand
seeped, dusting over everything, imperceptibly changing the surface
of the earth. The desert was still at work. Nature was no respecter of
graves. Life was nothing. Radiant, cold stars blinked pitilessly out of
the vast blue-black vault of heaven. But there hovered a spirit beside
this woman’s last resting-place--a spirit like the night, sad, lonely,
silent, mystical, immense.
And as it hovered over hers so it hovered over other nameless graves.
In the eternal workshop of nature, the tenants of these unnamed and
forgotten graves would mingle dust of good with dust of evil, and by the
divinity of death resolve equally into the elements again.
The place that had known Benton knew it no more. Coyotes barked dismally
down what had been the famous street of the camp and prowled in and out
of the piles of debris and frames of wood. Gone was the low, strange
roar that had been neither music nor mirth nor labor. Benton remained
only a name.
The sun rose upon a squalid scene--a wide flat area where stakes and
floors and frames mingled with all the flotsam and jetsam left by a
hurried and profligate populace, moving on to another camp. Daylight
found no man there nor any living creature. And all day the wind blew
the dust and sheets of sand over the place where had reigned such strife
of toil and gold and lust and blood and death. A train passed that day,
out of which engineer and fireman gazed with wondering eyes at what had
been Benton. Like a mushroom it had arisen, and like a dust-storm on
the desert wind it had roared away, bearing its freight of labor, of
passion, and of evil. Benton had become a name--a fabulous name.
But nature seemed more merciful than life. For it began to hide what man
had left--the scars of habitations where hell had held high carnival.
Sunset came, then night and the starlight. The lonely hours were winged,
as if in a hurry to resolve back into the elements the flimsy remains of
that great camp.
And that spot was haunted.
29
Casey left Benton on the work-train. It was composed of a long string
of box--and flat-cars loaded with stone, iron, gravel, ties--all
necessaries for the up-keep of the road. The engine was at the rear end,
pushing instead of pulling; and at the extreme front end there was a
flat-car loaded with gravel. A number of laborers rode on this car,
among whom was Casey. In labor or fighting this Irishman always
gravitated to the fore.
All along the track, from outside of Benton to the top of a long, slow
rise of desert were indications of the fact that Indians had torn up the
track or attempted to derail trains.
The signs of Sioux had become such an every-day matter in the lives of
the laborers that they were indifferent and careless. Thus isolated,
unprotected groups of men, out some distance from the work-train, often
were swooped down upon by Indians and massacred.
The troopers had gone on with the other trains that carried Benton’s
inhabitants and habitations.
Casey and his comrades had slow work of it going westward, as it was
necessary to repair the track and at the same time to keep vigilant
watch for the Sioux. They expected the regular train from the east to
overtake them, but did not even see its smoke. There must have been a
wreck or telegraph messages to hold it back at Medicine Bow.
Toward sunset the work-train reached the height of desert land that
sloped in long sweeping lines down to the base of the hills.
At this juncture a temporary station had been left in the shape of
several box-cars where the telegraph operators and a squad of troopers
lived.
As the work-train lumbered along to the crest of this heave of barren
land Casey observed that some one at the station was excitedly waving a
flag. Thereupon Casey, who acted as brakeman, signaled the engineer.
“Dom’ coorious that,” remarked Casey to his comrade McDermott. “Thim
operators knowed we’d stop, anyway.”
That was the opinion of the several other laborers on the front car. And
when the work-train halted, that car had run beyond the station a few
rods. Casey and his comrades jumped off.
A little group of men awaited them. The operator, a young fellow named
Collins, was known to Casey. He stood among the troopers, pale-faced and
shaking.
“Casey, who’s in charge of the train?” he asked, nervously.
The Irishman’s grin enlarged, making it necessary for him to grasp his
pipe.
“Shure the engineer’s boss of the train an’ I’m boss of the gang.”
More of the work-train men gathered round the group, and the engineer
with his fireman approached.
“You’ve got to hold up here,” said Collins.
Casey removed his pipe to refill it. “Ah-huh!” he grunted.
“Wire from Medicine Bow--order to stop General Lodge’s train--three
hundred Sioux in ambush near this station--Lodge’s train between here
and Roaring City,” breathlessly went on the operator.
“An’ the message come from Medicine Bow!” ejaculated Casey, while his
men gaped and muttered.
“Yes. It must have been sent here last night. But O’Neil, the night
operator, was dead. Murdered by Indians while we slept.”
“Thot’s hell!” replied Casey, seriously, as he lit his pipe.
“The message went through to Medicine Bow. Stacey down there sent it
back to me. I tried to get Hills at Roaring City. No go! The wire’s
cut!”
“An’ shure the gineral’s train has left--wot’s that new camp--Roarin’
wot?”
“Roaring City.... General Lodge went through two days ago with a private
train. He had soldiers, as usual. But no force to stand off three
hundred Sioux, or even a hundred.”
“Wal, the gineral must hev lift Roarin’ City--else thot message niver
would hev come.”
“So I think.... Now what on earth can we do? The engineer of his train
can’t stop for orders short of this station, for the reason that there
are no stations.”
“An’ thim Sooz is in ambush near here?” queried Casey, reflectively.
“Shure thot could only be in wan place. I rimimber thot higher, narrer
pass.”
“Right. It’s steep up-grade coming east. Train can be blocked. General
Lodge with his staff and party--and his soldiers--would be massacred
without a chance to fight. That pass always bothered us for fear of
ambush. Now the Sioux have come west far enough to find it.... No chance
on earth for a train there--not if it carried a thousand soldiers.”
“Wal, if the gineral an’ company was sthopped somewhere beyond thot
pass?” queried Casey, shrewdly, as he took a deep pull at his pipe.
“Then at least they could fight. They have stood off attacks before.
They might hold out for the train following, or even run back.”
“Thin, Collins, we’ve only got to sthop the gineral’s train before it
reaches thot dom’ trap.”
“But we can’t!” cried Collins. “The wire is cut. It wouldn’t help
matters if it weren’t. I thought when I saw your train we might risk
sending the engine on alone. But your engine is behind all these loaded
cars. No switch. Oh, it is damnable!”
“Collins, there’s more domnable things than yez ever heerd of.... I’ll
sthop Gineral Lodge!”
The brawny Irishman wheeled and strode back toward the front car of the
train. All the crowd,--to a man, muttering and gaping, followed him.
Casey climbed up on the gravel-car.
“Casey, wot in hell would yez be afther doin’?” demanded McDermott.
Casey grinned at his old comrade. “Mac, yez do me a favor. Uncouple the
car.”
McDermott stepped between the cars and the rattle and clank of iron told
that he had complied with Casey’s request. Collins, with all the men on
the ground, grasped Casey’s idea.
“By God! Casey can you do it? There’s down-grade for twenty miles. Once
start this gravel-car and she’ll go clear to the hills. But--but--”
“Collins, it’ll be aisy. I’ll slip through thot pass loike oil. Thim
Sooz won’t be watchin’ this way. There’s a curve. They won’t hear till
too late. An’ shure they don’t niver obsthruct a track till the last
minute.”
“But, Casey, once through the pass you can’t control that gravel-car.
The brakes won’t hold. You’ll run square into the general’s train--wreck
it!”
“Naw! I’ve got a couple of ties, an’ if thot wreck threatens I’ll heave
a tie off on the track an’ derail me private car.”
“Casey, it’s sure death!” exclaimed Collins. His voice and the pallor of
his face and the beads of sweat all proclaimed him new to the U. P. R.
“Me boy, nothin’s shure whin yez are drillin’ with the Paddies.”
Casey was above surprise and beyond disdain. He was a huge,
toil-hardened, sun-reddened, hard-drinking soldier of the railroad, a
loquacious Irishman whose fixed grin denied him any gravity, a
foreman of his gang. His chief delight was to outdo his bosom comrade,
McDermott. He did not realize that he represented an unconquerable and
unquenchable spirit. Neither did his comrade know. But under Casey’s
grin shone something simple, radiant, hard as steel.
“Put yer shoulders ag’in’ an’ shove me off,” he ordered.
Like automatons the silent laborers started the car.
“Drill, ye terriers, drill! Drill, ye terriers, drill!” sang Casey, as
he stood at the wheel-brake.
The car gathered momentum. McDermott was the last to let go.
“Good luck to yez!” he shouted, hoarsely.
“Mac, tell thim yez saw me!” called Casey. Then he waved his hand in
good-by to the crowd. Their response was a short, ringing yell. They
watched the car glide slowly out of sight.
For a few moments Casey was more concerned with the fact that a breeze
had blown out his pipe than with anything else. Skilful as years had
made him, he found unusual difficulty in relighting it, and he would not
have been beyond stopping the car to accomplish that imperative need.
When he had succeeded and glanced back the station was out of sight.
Casey fixed his eyes upon the curve of the track ahead where it
disappeared between the sage-covered sandy banks. Here the grade was
scarcely perceptible to any but experienced eyes. And the gravel-car
crept along as if it would stop any moment. But Casey knew that it was
not likely to stop, and if it did he could start it again. A heavy-laden
car like this, once started, would run a long way on a very little
grade. What worried him was the creaking and rattle of wheels, sounds
that from where he stood were apparently very loud.
He turned the curve into a stretch of straight track where there came
a perceptible increase in the strength of the breeze against his face.
While creeping along at this point he scooped out a hole in the gravel
mound on the car, making a place that might afford some protection from
Indian bullets and arrows. That accomplished, he had nothing to do but
hold on to the wheel-brake, and gaze ahead.
It seemed a long time before the speed increased sufficiently to insure
him against any danger of a stop. The wind began to blow his hair and
whip away the smoke of his pipe. And the car began to cover distance.
Several miles from the station he entered the shallow mouth of a gully
where the grade increased. His speed accelerated correspondingly until
he was rolling along faster than a man could run. The track had been
built on the right bank of the gully which curved between low bare
hills, and which grew deeper and of a rougher character. Casey had
spiked many of the rails over which he passed.
He found it necessary to apply the brake so that he would not take the
sharp curves at dangerous speed. The brake did not work well and gave
indications that it would not stand a great deal. With steady, rattling
creak, and an occasional clank, the car rolled on.
If Casey remembered the lay of the land, there was a long, straight
stretch of track, ending in several curves, the last of which turned
sharply into the narrow cut where the Sioux would ambush and obstruct
the train. At this point it was Casey’s intention to put off the brake
and let his car run wild.
It seemed an endless time before he reached the head of that stretch.
Then he let go of the wheel. And the gravel-car began to roll on faster.
Casey appeared to be grimly and conscientiously concerned over his task,
and he was worried about the outcome. He must get his car beyond that
narrow cut. If it jumped the track or ran into an obstruction, or if
the Sioux spied him in time, then his work would not be well done. He
welcomed the gathering momentum, yet was fearful of the curve he saw a
long distance ahead. When he reached that he would be going at a high
rate of speed--too fast to take the curve safely.
A little dimness came to Casey’s eyes. Years of hot sun and dust and
desert wind had not made his eyes any stronger. The low gray walls, the
white bleached rocks, the shallow stream of water, the fringe of brush,
and the long narrowing track--all were momentarily indistinct in his
sight. His breast seemed weighted. Over and over in his mind revolved
the several possibilities that awaited him at the cut, and every rod of
the distance now added to his worry. It grew to be dread. Chances were
against him. The thing intrusted to him was not in his control. Casey
resented this. He had never failed at a job. The U. P. R. had to be
built--and who could tell?--if the chief engineer and all his staff
and the directors of the road were massacred by the Sioux, perhaps that
might be a last and crowning catastrophe.
Casey had his first cold thrill. And his nerves tightened for the
crisis, while his horny hands gripped on the brake. The car was running
wild, with a curve just ahead. It made an unearthly clatter. The Indians
would hear that. But they would have to be swift, if he stayed on the
track. Almost before he realized it the car lurched at the bend. Casey
felt the off-side wheels leave the rail, heard the scream of the inside
wheels grinding hard. But for his grip on the wheel he would have been
thrown. The wind whistled in his ears. With a sudden lurch the car
seemed to rise. Casey thought it had jumped the track. But it banged
back, righted itself, rounded the curve.
Here the gully widened--sent off branches. Casey saw hundreds of
horses--but not an Indian. He rolled swiftly on, crossed a bridge, and
saw more horses. His grim anticipation became a reality. The Sioux were
in the ambush. What depended on him and his luck! Casey’s red cheek
blanched, but it was not with fear for himself. Not yet on this ride had
he entertained one thought concerning his own personal relation to its
fragile possibilities.
To know the Sioux were there made a tremendous difference. A dark and
terrible sternness actuated Casey. He projected his soul into that
clattering car of iron and wood. And it was certain he prayed. His hair
stood straight up. There! the narrow cut in the hill! the curve of the
track! He was pounding at it. The wheels shrieked. Looking up, he saw
only the rocks and gray patches of brush and the bare streak of earth.
No Indian showed.
His gaze strained to find an obstruction on the track. The car rode the
curve on two wheels. It seemed alive. It entered the cut with hollow,
screeching roar. The shade of the narrow place was gloomy. Here! It must
happen! Casey’s heart never lifted its ponderous weight. Then, shooting
round the curve, he saw an open track and bright sunlight beyond.
Above the roar of wheels sounded spatting reports of rifles. Casey
forgot to dodge into his gravel shelter. He was living a strange,
dragging moment--an age. Out shot the car into the light. Likewise
Casey’s dark blankness of mind ended. His heart lifted with a mighty
throb. There shone the gray endless slope, stretching out and down to
the black hills in the distance. Shrill wild yells made Casey wheel.
The hillside above the cut was colorful and spotted with moving objects.
Indians! Puffs of white smoke arose. Casey felt the light impact of
lead. Glancing bright streaks darted down. They were arrows. Two
thudded into the gravel, one into the wood. Then something tugged at
his shoulder. Another arrow! Suddenly the shaft was there in his sight,
quivering in his flesh. It bit deep. With one wrench he tore it out
and shook it aloft at the Sioux. “Oh bate yez dom’ Sooz!” he yelled,
in fierce defiance. The long screeching clamor of baffled rage and the
scattering volley of rifle-shots kept up until the car passed out of
range.
Casey faced ahead. The Sioux were behind him. He had a free track. Far
down the gray valley, where the rails disappeared, were low streaks of
black smoke from a locomotive. The general’s train was coming.
The burden of worry and dread that had been Casey’s was now no
more--vanished as if by magic. His job had not yet been completed, but
he had won. He never glanced back at the Sioux. They had failed in
their first effort at ambushing the cut, and Casey knew the troops would
prevent a second attempt. Casey faced ahead. The whistle of wind filled
his ears, the dry, sweet odor of the desert filled his nostrils. His car
was on a straight track, rolling along down-grade, half a mile a minute.
And Casey, believing he might do well to slow up gradually, lightly put
on the brake. But it did not hold. He tried again. The brake had broken.
He stood at the wheel, his eyes clear now, watching ahead. The train
down in the valley was miles away, not yet even a black dot in the gray.
The smoke, however, began to lift.
Casey was suddenly struck by a vague sense that something was wrong with
him.
“Phwat the hell!” he muttered. Then his mind, strangely absorbed,
located the trouble. His pipe had gone out! Casey stooped in the hole
he had made in the gravel, and there, knocking his pipe in his palm, he
found the ashes cold. When had that ever happened before? Casey wagged
his head. For his pipe to go cold and he not to know! Things were
happening on the U. P. R. these days. Casey refilled his pipe, and, with
the wind whistling over him, he relit it. He drew deep and long, stood
up, grasped the wheel, and felt all his blood change.
“Me poipe goin’ cold--that wor funny!” soliloquized Casey.
The phenomenon appeared remarkable to him. Indeed, it stood alone. He
measured the nature of this job by that forgetfulness. And memories
thrilled him. With his eye clear on the track that split the gray
expanse, with his whole being permeated by the soothing influence of
smoke, with his task almost done, Casey experienced an unprecedented
thing for him--he lived over past performances and found them vivid,
thrilling, somehow sweet. Battles of the Civil War; the day he saved a
flag; and, better, the night he saved Pat Shane, who had lived only to
stop a damned Sioux bullet; many and many an adventure with McDermott,
who, just a few minutes past, had watched him with round, shining eyes;
and the fights he had seen and shared--all these things passed swiftly
through Casey’s mind and filled him with a lofty and serene pride.
He was pleased with himself; more pleased with what McDermott would
think. Casey’s boyhood did not return to him, but his mounting
exhilaration and satisfaction were boyish. It was great to ride this
way!... There! he saw a long, black dot down in the gray. The train!...
General Lodge had once shaken hands with Casey.
Somebody had to do these things, since the U. P. R. must reach across
to the Pacific. A day would come when a splendid passenger-train would
glide smoothly down this easy grade where Casey jolted along on his
gravel-car. The fact loomed large in the simplicity of the Irishman’s
mind. He began to hum his favorite song. Facing westward, he saw the
black dot grow into a long train. Likewise he saw the beauty of the
red-gold sunset behind the hills. Casey gloried in the wildness of the
scene--in the meaning of his ride--particularly in his loneliness. He
seemed strangely alone there on that vast gray slope--a man and somehow
accountable for all these things. He felt more than he understood.
His long-tried nerves and courage and strength had never yielded this
wonderful buoyancy and sense of loftiness. He was Casey--Casey who had
let all the gang run for shelter from the Sioux while he had remained
for one last and final drive at a railroad spike. But the cool,
devil-may-care indifference, common to all his comrades as well as to
himself, was not the strongest factor in the Casey of to-day. Up out of
the rugged and dormant soul had burst the spirit of a race embodied
in one man. Casey was his own audience, and the light upon him was
the glory of the setting sun. A nightingale sang in his heart, and he
realized that this was his hour. Here the bloody, hard years found their
reward. Not that he had ever wanted one or thought of one, but it had
come--out of the toil, the pain, the weariness. So his nerves tingled,
his pulses beat, his veins glowed, his heart throbbed; and all the new,
sweet, young sensations of a boy wildly reveling in the success of his
first great venture, all the vague, strange, deep, complex emotions of
a man who has become conscious of what he is giving to the world--these
shook Casey by storm, and life had no more to give. He knew that,
whatever he was, whatever this incomprehensible driving spirit in him,
whatever his unknown relation to man and to duty, there had been given
him in the peril just passed, in this wonderful ride, a gift splendid
and divine.
Casey rolled on, and the train grew plain in his sight. When perhaps
several miles of track lay between him and the approaching engine, he
concluded it was time to get ready. Lifting one of the heavy ties, he
laid it in front where he could quickly shove it off with his foot.
Then he stood up. It was certain that he looked backward, but at no
particular thing--just an instinctive glance. With his foot on the tie
he steadied himself so that he could push it off and leap instantly
after.
And at that moment he remembered the little book he had found on Beauty
Stanton’s breast, and which contained the letter to his friend Neale.
Casey deliberated in spite of the necessity for haste. Then he took the
book from his pocket.
“B’gorra, yez niver can tell, an’ thim U. P. R. throopers hev been known
to bury a mon widout searchin’ his pockets,” he said.
And he put the little book between the teeth that held his pipe. Then he
shoved off the tie and leaped.
30
Neale, aghast and full of bitter amaze and shame at himself, fled from
the gambling-hall where he had struck Beauty Stanton. How beside himself
with rage and torture he had been! That woman to utter Allie Lee’s name!
Inconceivable! Could she know his story?
He tramped the dark streets, and the exercise and the cool wind calmed
him. Then the whistle of an engine made him decide to leave Benton at
once, on the first train out. Hurriedly he got his baggage and joined
the throng which even at that late hour was making for the station.
A regret that was pain burned deep in him--somehow inexplicable. He,
like other men, had done things that must be forgotten. What fatality in
the utterance of a single name--what power to flay!
From a window of an old coach he looked out upon the dim lights and pale
tent shapes.
“The last--of Benton!... Thank God!” he murmured, brokenly. Well he
realized how Providence had watched over him there. And slowly the train
moved out upon the dark, windy desert.
It took Neale nearly forty-eight hours to reach the new camp--Roaring
City. A bigger town than Benton had arisen, and more was going up--tents
and clapboard houses, sheds and cabins--the same motley jumble set under
beetling red Utah bluffs.