by Zane Grey
“I reckon I’ll go ahaid,” said King. Like all Texans of his type, Larry Red King was slow, easy, cool, careless. Moreover he gave a singular impression of latent nerve, wildness, violence.
There seemed all assurance of a deadlock, when General Lodge stepped forward, and addressed his inquiry to Neale.
“Red thinks the rope will break. So he wants to go first,” replied Neale.
There were broad smiles forthcoming, yet no one laughed. This was one of the thousands of strange human incidents that must be enacted in the building of the railroad. It might have been humorous, but it was big. It fixed the spirit and it foreshadowed events. All this shone in General Lodge’s stern face.
“Obey orders,” he admonished King.
The loop was taken from King’s waist and transferred to Neale’s, and then all was made ready to let the daring surveyor with his instrument down over the wall.
Neale took one more look down the rugged front of the cliff. When he straightened up, the ruddy bronze had left his face.
“There’s a bulge of rock. I can’t see what’s below it,” he said. “No use for signals. I’ll go down the length of the rope and trust to find a footing. I can’t be hauled up.”
They all conceded this, silently. Then Neale sat down, let his legs dangle over the wall, firmly grasped his instrument, and said to the troopers who held the rope: “All right.”
They lowered him foot by foot.
It was windy up there. The dust flew up from under the wall. Black canyon swifts, like swallows, darted with wildly rustling wings, uttering frightened twitterings. The engineers leaned over, watching Neale’s progress. Larry Red King did not look over the precipice. He seemed uncertain, waiting. He watched the slowly slipping rope as knot by knot it passed over. It fascinated him.
“He’s reached the bulge of rock!” called Baxter, craning his neck.
“There, he’s down . . . out of sight!” exclaimed Henney.
Casey, the flagman, leaned farther out than any other.
“Phwat a domn’ strange way to build a railroad, I sez,” he remarked.
The gorge lay asleep in the westering sun, silent, full of blue haze. Seen from this height, far above the break when the engineers had first halted, it had the dignity and dimensions of a canyon. Its walls had begun to change color in the sunset light.
Foot by foot the soldiers let the rope slip until probably two hundred feet had been let out, and there were scarcely a hundred left. By this time all that part of the cable that had been made of lassoes had passed over; the remainder consisted of pieces of worn and knotted and frayed rope at which the engineers began to gaze fearfully.
“I don’t like this,” said Henney nervously. “Neale surely ought to have found a ledge or bench or slope by now.”
Instinctively the soldiers held back, reluctantly yielding inches when before they had slacked feet. But intent as was their gaze, it could not rival that of the cowboy.
“Hold!” he yelled, suddenly pointing to where the strained rope curved over the edge of the wall.
The troopers held hard. The rope ceased to pay out. The strain seemed to increase. Larry Red King pointed with a lean hand.
“It’s a-goin’ to break!”
His voice, hoarse and swift now, checked the forward movement of the engineers. He plunged to his knees before the rope and reached clutchingly, as if he wanted to grasp it, yet dared not.
“Ropes was my job! Old an’ rotten! It’s breakin’ . . . !”
Soon as he spoke the rope snapped. The troopers, thrown off their balance, fell backward. Baxter groaned; Boone and Henney cried out in horror; General Lodge stood aghast, dazed. Then they all froze right in the position of intense listening.
A dull sound puffed up from the gorge, a low crash, then a slow-rising roar and rattle of sliding earth and rock. It diminished and ceased with the hollow cracking of stone against stone.
Casey broke the silence among the listening men with a curse. Larry Red King rose from his knees, holding the end of the snapped rope, which he threw from him with passionate violence. Then with action just as violent he unbuckled his belt and pulled it tighter and buckled it again. His eyes seemed blazing with blue lightning and they accused the agitated engineers of murder. But he turned away without speaking and hurried along the edge of the gorge, evidently searching for a place to go down.
General Lodge ordered the troopers to follow King and, if possible, recover Neale’s body.
“That lad had a future,” said old Henney sadly. “We’ll miss him.”
Boone’s face expressed sickness and horror. Baxter choked. “Too bad . . . but what’s to be done?”
The chief engineer looked away from the shadowy gorge where the sun was burning the ramparts red. To have command of men was hard, bitter. Death stalked with his orders. He foresaw that the building of this railroad was to resemble the war in which he had sent so many lads and soldiers and officers to their graves.
The engineers descended the long slope and returned to camp a mile down the narrow valley. Fires were blazing; columns of smoke were curling aloft; the merry song and reckless laugh of soldiers were ringing out, so clear in the still air; horses were neighing and stamping.
Colonel Dillon reported to General Lodge that one of the scouts had sighted a large band of Sioux Indians encamped in a valley not far distant. This tribe had gone on the warpath and had begun to harass the engineers. Neale’s tragic fate was forgotten in the apprehension of what threatened when the Sioux discovered the significance of that surveying expedition.
“The Sioux could make the building of the U.P. impossible,” said Henney, always nervous and pessimistic.
“No Indians . . . nothing can stop me,” declared his chief.
The troopers sent to follow Larry Red King came back to camp saying that they had lost him and that they could not find any place where it was possible to get down into the gorge.
In the morning King had not returned.
Detachments of troopers were sent in different directions to try again. And the engineers went out once more to attack their problems. Success did not attend the efforts of either the troopers or the engineers. And at sunset, when all had wearily returned to camp, Larry Red King was still absent. Then he was given up for lost.
But before dark the tall cowboy limped into camp, dusty and torn, carrying Neale’s long tripod and surveying instrument. It looked the worse for a fall, but apparently was not badly damaged. King did not give the troopers any satisfaction. Limping on to the tents of the engineers, he set down the instrument and called. Boone was the first to come out, and his call brought Henney, Baxter, and younger members of the corps. General Lodge, sitting at his campfire some rods away and bending over his drawings, did not see King’s arrival.
No one detected any difference in the cowboy, except that he limped. Slow, cool, careless, he was yet somehow vital and impelling.
“Wal, we run the line around . . . five miles up the gorge whar crossin’ is easy . . . an’ only ninety feet grade to the mile.”
The engineers looked at him as if he were crazy.
“But Neale! He fell . . . he’s dead!” exclaimed Henney.
“Daid? Wal, no, Neale ain’t daid,” drawled King.
“Where is he, then?”
“I reckon he’s comin’ along back heah.”
“Is he hurt?”
“Shore. An’ hungry, too, which is what I am,” replied Larry, and he limped away.
Some of the engineers hurried out in the gathering dusk to meet Neale while the others went to General Lodge with the good news.
The chief received this quietly with intent eyes.
“Bring Neale and King here . . . as soon as their needs have been seen to,” he ordered. Then he called after Baxter: “Ninety feet to the mile . . . you said?”
“Ninety foot grade, so King reported.”
“By all that’s lucky,” breathed the chief, as if his load had been immeasurably li
ghtened. “Send those boys to me.”
Some of the soldiers had found Neale down along the trail and were helping him into camp. He was crippled and almost exhausted. He made light of his condition, yet he groaned when he dropped into a seat before the fire, and appeared grateful for the service tendered him.
Someone approached Larry Red King to inform him that the general wanted to see him.
“Wal, I’m hungry . . . an’ he ain’t my boss,” replied King, and went on with his meal. It was well known that the Southerner would not talk.
But Neale talked—he blazed in eloquence about his lineman—and before an hour had passed everyone in camp knew that King had saved Neale’s life. Then the loquacious Casey, intruding upon the cowboy’s reserve, got roundly cursed for his pains.
“Go whan out among thim Sooz Injuns, an’ be a dead hero, then,” retorted Casey as the cowboy stalked off to be alone in the gloom. Evidently Casey was disappointed not to get another cursing, for he turned to his comrade McDermott, an axe-man.
“Say, Mac, whot do you make of cowboys?”
“I tell ye, Pat, I make of thim thet you’ll be full of bullet holes before this railroad’s built.”
“Thin, b’gosh, I should drink fer a long time yit,” replied Casey.
Later General Lodge visited Neale and received the drawings and figures that made easy solution to what had been a formidable problem.
“It was easy, once I landed under that bulge of cliff,” said Neale. “There’s a slope of about forty-five degrees . . . not all rock. And four miles up, the gorge peters out. We can cross. I got to where I could see the divide . . . and, oh, there is where our troubles begin. The worst is all to come.”
“You’ve said it,” replied the chief soberly. “We can’t follow the trail and get the grade necessary. We’ve got to hunt up a pass.”
“We’ll find one,” said Neale hopefully.
“Neale, you’re ambitious and you’ve the kind of spirit that never gives up. I’ve watched you work from the start. You’ll make a big position for yourself with this railroad, if you only live through the building of it.”
“Oh, I’ll live through it all right,” replied Neale, laughing. “I’m like a cat . . . always land on my feet . . . and have nine lives besides.”
“You sure must. How far did you fall this time?”
“Not far. I landed in a tree, where my instrument stuck. But I crashed down, and got a hard knock on the head. When Red joined me, I was unconscious and sliding for another precipice.”
“That Texan seems attached to you.”
“Well, if he wasn’t before, he will be now, for I’ll make him attached,” said Neale feelingly. “I’ll tell you, General, King’s red-headed, a droll lazy Southerner, and he’s made fun of by the men. But they don’t understand him. They certainly can’t see how dangerous he is. Only I don’t mean that. I do mean . . . he’s true.”
“Yes, he showed that. When the rope snapped, I was sure he’d pull a gun on us . . . Neale, I would have liked to have you and Larry Red King with me through the war.”
“Thank you, General Lodge . . . But I like the prospects now.”
“Neale, you’re hungry for wild life?”
“Yes,” replied Neale simply.
“I said as much. I felt . . . somewhat of that when I was your age . . . And you like our prospects? Well, you’ve thought things out. Neale, the building of the U.P. will be hell.”
“General, I can see that. It sort of draws me . . . two ways . . . the wildness of it and then to accomplish something.”
“My lad, I hope you accomplish something more . . . for you have already a thousand soldiers in one wild camp out here in these wild hills . . . and thousands of others . . . honest merchants and dishonest merchants, whiskey men, gamblers, desperadoes, bandits, and bad women. Niggers, greasers, Indians, all together moving from camp to camp, where there can be no law.”
“It will be great!” exclaimed Neale, with shining eyes.
“It will be terrible,” muttered the elder man gravely. Then, as he got up and bade his young assistant good night, the somberness had returned to his eyes and the weight to his shoulders. He did not underestimate his responsibility or the nature of his task, and he sensed nameless and unknown events, beyond all divining, that inevitably must grow out of the colossal enterprise.
Henney was the next to come to see Neale. The old engineer appeared elated about something, which for the moment he apparently forgot in his solicitation for the young man’s welfare. Presently, after he had been reassured, the smile came back to his face, and he said: “The chief has promoted you.”
“What?” exclaimed Neale, starting up.
“It’s a fact. He just talked it over with Baxter and me. This last job of yours pleased him mightily . . . and so you go up.”
“Go up! To what?” queried Neale eagerly.
“Well, that’s why he consulted me, I guess.” Henney laughed. “You see we sort of had to make something to promote you to, for the present.”
“Oh, I see. I was wondering what job there could be,” replied Neale, and he laughed, too. “What did the chief say?”
“He said a lot. Seems to have you figured both as to your work . . . and desire to see this wild life out here. He said you’d land at the top if the U.P. is ever built . . . Chief engineer. Superintendent of maintenance of way!”
“Good Lord,” breathed Neale. “You’re not in earnest?”
“‘Wal, I shore am,’ as your cowboy pard says,” returned Henney. And then he shifted to earnestness. “Listen, Neale. Here’s the matter in a nutshell. You will be called up to run those particular and difficult surveys, as that of yesterday. But no more of the routine for you. Added to that you will be sent forward and back, inspecting, figuring. You can make your headquarters with us or in the construction camps, as suits your convenience. All this of course presently, when we get farther on. So you will be in a way free . . . your own boss a good deal of the time. And fitting yourself for that maintenance of way job. In fact the chief said that . . . called you Maintenance of Way Neale . . . I congratulate you. And my advice is, keep on as you’ve begun . . . go straight . . . look out for your wildness and temper . . . That’s all. Good night.”
Then he went out, leaving Neale speechless.
* * * * *
Neale had many callers that night and the last was Larry Red King. The cowboy stooped to enter the tent.
“Wal, how aboot you-all?” he drawled.
“Not so good, Red,” replied Neale. “My head’s hot and I’ve got a lot of pain. I think I’m going to be a little flighty. Would you mind getting your blankets and staying with me tonight?”
“I reckon I’d be glad,” answered King. He put a hand on Neale’s face. “You shore have fever.” He left the tent, to return presently with a roll of blankets and a canteen, which he carried awkwardly. Then he began to bathe Neale’s face with cold water. There was a flickering campfire outside that threw shadows on the wall of the tent. By its light Neale saw that King’s left hand was bandaged and that he used it clumsily.
“What’s wrong with your hand?” he queried.
“I reckon nawthin’.”
“Why is it bound up, then?”
“Wal, someone sent thet fool Army doctor to me an’ he said I had two busted bones in it.”
“He did? I had no idea you were hurt. You never said a word. And you carried me and my instrument all day . . . with a broken hand!”
“Wal, I ain’t so shore it’s broke.”
Neale swore at his friend, and then he fell asleep. King watched beside him, ever and anon re-wetting the hot brow.
The campfire died out and at length the quietness of late night set in. The wind mourned and lulled by intervals; a horse thudded his hoofs now and then; there were soft steady footsteps of the sentry on guard, and the wild cry of a night bird.
Chapter Three
Across the Black Hills some miles from the camp of the eng
ineers lay a valley watered by a stream that ran down from Cheyenne Pass.
A band of Sioux Indians had an encampment there. Viewed from the summit of a grassy ridge the scene was colorful and idle and quiet, in keeping with the lonely beautiful valley. Cottonwoods and willows showed a bright green; the course of the stream was marked in dark where the water ran, and light where the sand had bleached; brown and black dots scattered over the valley were grazing horses; lodge-pole tents gleamed white in the sun, and tiny bits of red stood out against the white as lazy wreaths of blue smoke rose upward.
The Black Hills were split by many such valleys and many bare grassy ridges sloped up toward the mountains. Upon the side of one ridge, the highest that rose boldly between the camp of the white men and that of the red men, there stood a solitary mustang, haltered with a lasso. He was a ragged, shaggy wild beast, and there was no saddle or bridle on him, nothing but the halter. He was not grazing, although the grass bleached white grew long and thick under his hoofs. He looked up the slope, in a direction indicated by his pointing ears, and he watched a wavering movement of the long grass.
It was wild up on that ridge, bare of everything except grass, and the strange wavering had a nameless wildness in its motion. No stealthy animal accounted for that trembling—that forward undulating quiver. It wavered on to the summit of the ridge.
What a wide and wonderful prospect opened up to view from this lofty point! Ridge after ridge sloped up to the Black Hills and these in turn raised their bleak dark heads toward the mountains, looming pale and gray, with caps of snow, in the distance. Out beyond the ridges, indistinct in the glare, stretched an illimitable expanse, gray and dull, that was the prairie land. An eagle, lord of all he surveyed, sailed around and around in the sky.
Below this grassy summit yawned a valley, narrow and long, losing itself by turns to distant east and west, and through it ran a faint white winding line that was the old St. Vrain and Laramie Trail.
There came a moment when the wavering in the grass ceased on the extreme edge of the slope. Then it parted to disclose the hideous visage of a Sioux Indian in war paint. His dark piercing malignant glance fixed upon the St. Vrain and Laramie Trail. His half-naked body rested at ease; a rifle lay under his hand.
