The U. P. Trail Part 24

"Wal, then, mebbe Slingerland got away an' the cabin was burned after."

"I can't hope that... I tell you--it means h.e.l.l'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 G.o.d! 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 gra.s.s, 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 sh.o.r.e 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--"

"Tell me quick!" hoa.r.s.ely interrupted Neale. "What happened to Allie Lee?"

"Fellars, my pard heah is hurt deep," said Larry. "The girl you spoke of was his sweetheart."

"Young man, we only know what Al told us," replied the trapper. "He said the only time he ever left the la.s.s alone was the very day she was taken. Al come home to find the cabin red-hot ashes. Everythin' gone. No sign of the la.s.s. No sign of murder. She was jest carried off. There was tracks--hoss tracks an' boot tracks, to the number of three or four men an' hosses. Al trailed 'em. But thet very night he had to hold up to keep from bein' drowned, as we had to hyar. Wal, next day he couldn't find any tracks. But he kept on huntin' fer a few days, an' then give up. He said she'd be dead by then--said she wasn't the kind thet could have lived more 'n a day with men like them. Some hard customers are driftin' by from the gold-fields. An' Bill an' I, hyar, ain't in love with this railroad idee. It 'll ruin the country fer trappin' an'

livin'."

Some weeks later a gaunt and ragged cowboy limped into North Platte, walking beside a broken horse, upon the back of which swayed and reeled a rider tied in the saddle.

It was not a sight to interest any except the lazy or the curious, for in that day such things were common in North Platte. The horse had bullet creases on his neck; the rider wore a b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.+rt; the gaunt pedestrian had a bandaged arm.

Neale lay ill of a deeper wound while the bullet-hole healed in his side. Day and night Larry tended him or sat by him or slept near him in a shack on the outskirts of the camp. Shock, grief, starvation, exhaustion, loss of blood and sleep--all these brought Warren Neale close to death. He did not care to live. It was the patient, loyal friend who fought fever and heartbreak and the ebbing tide of life.

Baxter and Henney visited North Platte and called to see him, and later the chief came and ordered Larry to take Neale to the tents of the corps. Every one was kind, solicitous, earnest. He had been missed. The members of his corps knew the strange story of Allie Lee; they guessed the romance and grieved over the tragedy. They did all they could do, and the troop doctor added his attention; but it was the nursing, the presence, and the spirit of Larry King that saved Neale.

He got well and went back to work with the cowboy for his helper.

In that camp of toil and disorder none but the few with whom Neale was brought in close touch noted anything singular about him. The engineers, however, observed that he did not work so well, nor so energetically, nor so accurately. His enthusiasm was lacking. The cowboy, always with him, was the one who saw the sudden spells of somber abstraction and the poignant, hopeless, sleepless pain, the eternal regret. And as Neale slackened in his duty Larry King grew more faithful.

Neale began to drink and gamble. For long the cowboy fought, argued, appealed against this order of things, and then, failing to change or persuade Neale, he went to gambling and drinking with him. But then it was noted that Neale never got under the influence of liquor or lost materially at cards. The cowboy spilled the contents of Neale's gla.s.s and played the game into his hands.

Both of them shrank instinctively from the women of the camp. The sight of anything feminine hurt.

North Platte stirred with the quickening stimulus of the approach of the rails and the trains, and the army of soldiers whose duty was to protect the horde of toilers, and the army of tradesmen and parasites who lived off them.

The construction camp of the graders moved on westward, keeping ahead of the camps of the layers.

The first train that reached North Platte brought directors of the U. P.

R.--among them Warburton and Rudd and Rogers; also Commissioners Lee and Dunn and a host of followers on a tour of inspection.

The five miles of Neale's section of road that the commissioners had judged at fault had been torn up, resurveyed, and relaid.

Neale rode back over the line with Baxter and surveyed the renewed part.

Then, returning to North Platte, he precipitated consternation among directors and commissioners and engineers, as they sat in council, by throwing on the table figures of the new survey identical with his old data.

"Gentlemen, the five miles of track torn up and rebuilt had precisely the same grade, to an inch!" he declared, with ringing scorn.

Baxter corroborated his statement. The commissioners roared and the directors demanded explanations.

"I'll explain it," shouted Neale. "Forty-six thousand dollars a mile!

Five miles--two hundred and thirty thousand dollars! Spent twice! Taken twice by the same construction company!"

Warburton, a tall, white-haired man in a frock-coat, got up and pounded the table with his fist. "Who is this young engineer?" he thundered. "He has the nerve to back his work instead of sneaking to get a bribe. And he tells the truth. We're building twice--spending twice when once is enough!"

An uproar ensued. Neale had cast a bomb into the council. Every man there and all the thousands in camp knew that railroad ties cost several dollars each; that wages were abnormally high, often demanded in advance, and often paid twice; that parallel with the great spirit of the work ran a greedy and cunning graft. It seemed to be inevitable, considering the nature and proportions of the enterprise. An absurd law sent out the commissioners, the politicians appointed them, and both had fat pickings. The directors likewise played both ends against the middle; they received the money from the stock sales and loans; they paid it out to the construction companies; and as they employed and owned these companies the money returned to their own pockets. But more than one director was fired by the spirit of the project--the good to be done--the splendid achievement--the trade to come from across the Pacific. The building of the road meant more to some of them than a mere fortune.

Warburton was the lion of this group, and he roared down the dissension.

Then with a whirl he grasped Neale round the shoulders and shoved him face to face with the others.