Union Pacific

by Zane Grey

When a year passed after the departure of Neale and King, it seemed to Slingerland that they would never return. There was peril in the trails these days. He grew more and more convinced of some fatality, but he did not confide his fears to Allie. She was happy and full of trust; every day, almost every hour, she looked for Neale. The long wait did not drag her down; she was as fresh and hopeful as ever and the rich bloom mantled her cheek. Slingerland had not the heart to cast a doubt into her happiness. He let her live her dreams.

  There came a day that spring when it was imperative for him to visit a distant valley, where he had left traps he now needed, and, as the distance was long and time short, he decided to go alone.

  Allie laughed at the idea of being unsafe at the cabin. “I can take care of myself,” she said. “I’m not afraid.”

  Slingerland scarcely doubted her. She had nerve, courage; she knew how to use a gun, and underneath her softness and tenderness was a spirit that would not flush at anything. Still he did not feel satisfied with the idea of leaving her alone, and it was with a wrench that he did it now.

  Moreover, he was longer at the journey than he had anticipated being. The moment he turned his face homeward a desire to hurry, an anxiety, a dread fastened upon him. A presentiment of evil gathered. But encumbered as he was with heavy traps, he could not travel swiftly. It was late afternoon when he topped the last ridge between him and home.

  What Slingerland saw caused him to drop his traps and gaze aghast. A heavy column of smoke rose above the valley. His first thought was of Sioux. But he doubted that the Indians would betray his friendship. The cabin had caught on fire by accident or else wandering desperadoes had happened along to ruin him. But he was not one to conjecture or to make despair over he knew not what. He ran down the slope, stole down around to the group of pines, and, under cover, cautiously approached the spot where his cabin had stood.

  It was a heap of smoking logs and probably had burned for hours. There was no sign of Allie or of anyone. Then he ran into the glade. Almost at once he saw boot tracks and hoof tracks; pelts and hides and furs lay scattered around, as if they had been discarded for choicer ones.

  “Robbers,” muttered Slingerland. “An’ they’ve got the lass.”

  He shook under the roughest blow he had ever been dealt; his conscience flayed him; his distress over Allie’s fate was so keen and unfamiliar that, used as he was to prompt decision and action, he remained there, staring at the ruins of his home.

  Presently he roused himself. He had no hopes. He knew the nature of men who had done this deed. But it was possible that he might overtake them. In the dust he found four sizes of boot tracks and he took the trail down the valley.

  Then he became aware that a storm was imminent and that the air had become cold and raw. Rain began to fall, and darkness came quickly. Slingerland sought the shelter of a nearby ledge, and there, hungry, cold, wet, and unhappy, he waited for sleep that would not come.

  It rained hard all night and by morning the brook had become a yellow flood and the trail was under water. Toward noon the rain turned to a drizzly snow and finally ceased. Slingerland passed on down the valley searching for tracks. The ground everywhere had been washed clean and smooth. When he reached the old St. Vrain and Laramie Trail, it looked as if a horse had not passed there in months. He spent another wretched night, and next day awoke to the necessities of life. Except for his rifle, and his horses, and a few traps back up in the hills, he had nothing to show for years of hard and successful work. But that did not matter. He had begun with as little and he could begin again. He killed meat, satisfied his hunger, and cooked more that he might carry with him. Then he spent two more days in that locality, until he had crossed every outlet from his valley. Not striking a track he saw nothing but defeat.

  That moment was bitter.

  “If Neale’ll happen along hyar now he’d kill me . . . an’ sarve me right,” muttered the trapper.

  But he believed Neale, too, had gone the way of so many who braved these wilds. Slingerland saw in the fate of Neale and Allie the result of civilization marching westward. If before he had disliked the idea of the railroad entering his wild domain, he hated it now. Before that survey the Indians had been peaceful, and no dangerous men rode the trails. What right had the government to steal land from the Indians—to break treaties—to run a steam track down the plains and mountains? Slingerland foresaw the bloodiest period ever known in the West, before that work should be completed. It had struck him deep—this white man movement across the Black Hills, and it was not the loss of all he had worked for that he minded. For years his life had been lonely, and then suddenly it had been full. Never again would it be either.

  Slingerland turned his back to the trails made by the advancing march of the empire builders and he sought the seclusion of the more inaccessible hills.

  “Someday I’ll work out with a load of pelts,” he said. “An’ then . . . mebbe I’ll hyar what become of Neale . . . an’ her.”

  He found, as one of his kind knew how to find, the valleys where no white man had trod—where the game abounded and was tame—where if the red man came he was friendly—where the silent days and lonely nights slowly made bearable his memory of Allie Lee.

  Chapter Twelve

  Allie Lee possessed a mind twice as active and dreamy. While she dreamed of Neale and their future, she busied herself with many tasks and many activities, and a whole year blew by without a lagging or melancholy hour.

  Neale had been detained or sent back to Omaha, or given more important work than formerly. She divined Slingerland’s doubt, but it would not stay before her consciousness. Her heart told her that all was well with Neale and that sooner or later he would return for her.

  In Allie love had worked magic. It had freed her from a horrible black memory. Her state had been one of wretchedness; she had been alone; she had wanted to die to forget those awful yells and screams—the murder—the blood—the terror and her anguish; she had nothing to want to live for; she had almost hated those two kind men who tried so hard to make her forget. Then suddenly, she never remembered when, she had seen Neale with different eyes. A few words, a touch, a gift, and a pledge—and life was transformed for Allie Lee. Like a flower blooming overnight her heart had opened to love, and all the distemper in her blood and the blackness in her mind were dispelled. The relief from pain and dread was so great that love became a beautiful and all-absorbing passion. Freed then, and strangely happy, she took to the life around her as naturally as if she had been born there, and she grew like a wildflower. Neale returned to her that autumn to make perfect the realization of her dreams. When he went away, she could not be unhappy. She owed it to him to be perfect in joy, faith, love, and duty, and her adversity had discovered to her a courage and a will. She lived for Neale.

  Summer, autumn, winter passed, short days, full of solitude, beauty, thoughts, and anticipations, and always achievement, for she could not stay idle. When the first green brightened the cottonwoods and willows along the brook, she knew that before their leaves had attained full growth Neale would be on his way to her. A strange and inexplicable sense of the heart told her he was coming.

  More than once that spring had she bent over the mossy rock to peer down at her face mirrored in the crystal spring. Neale had made her aware of her beauty, and proud of it, since it seemed to be such a strange treasure for him. She marveled at her value to Neale and she accepted it as a fact because he had told her she was precious. At a word of his it seemed all the forces of her nature were drawn upon to fulfill his wish.

  * * * * *

  On the May morning that Slingerland left her alone, a few hours after his departure she was startled by a clip-clop of horses trotting up the trail. Her first thought was that Neale and King had returned. All her being suddenly radiated with rapture. She flew to the door.

  Four horsemen rode into the clearing, but Neale was not among them.

  Allie’s joy was short-lived. The reaction to disapp
ointment seemed a violent agonizing wrench. She lost all control of her muscles for a moment and had to lean against the cabin to keep from falling.

  By this time the foremost rider pulled in his horse near the door. He was a young giant with hulking shoulders—ruddy-faced, bold-eyed, ugly-mouthed. He reminded Allie of someone she had seen in California. He stared hard at her.

  “Hullo! Ain’t you Durade’s girl?” he asked in gruff astonishment.

  Then Allie knew she had been seen out in the gold fields. “No, I’m not,” she replied.

  “A-huh! You look uncommon like her . . . Anybody home ’round here?”

  “Slingerland went over the hill,” replied Allie. “He’ll be back presently.”

  The fellow brushed her aside and went into the cabin. Then the other three riders arrived.

  “’Mornin’, miss,” said one, a grizzled veteran who might have been miner or trapper or bandit. The other two reined in behind him. One wore a wide-brimmed black sombrero from under which a dark sinister face gleamed. The last had sandy hair and light roving eyes.

  “Whar’s Fresno?” asked this last individual.

  “I’m inside,” replied the man called Fresno, and he appeared at the door. He stretched out a long arm and grasped Allie before she could avoid him. When she began to struggle, the huge hand closed on her wrist until she could have screamed in pain.

  “Hold on, girl! It won’t do you no good to jerk . . . an’, if you holler, I’ll choke you,” he said. “Fellers, get inside the cabin an’ rustle around lively.”

  With one pull he hauled Allie toward his horse, and, taking a lasso off his saddle, he roped her arms to her sides and tied her to the nearest tree.

  “Keep mum now or it’ll be the wuss fer you,” he ordered, then went into the cabin.

  They were a bad lot. Slingerland’s reason for worry had at last been justified. Allie did not realize this until she found herself bound to the tree. Then she was furious and she strained with all her might to slip free of the rope. But the efforts were useless; she only succeeded in bruising her arm for nothing. And when she desisted, she was ready to succumb to despair. Until a flashing thought of Neale, of the agony that must be his if he lost her or if harm befell her, drew her up sharply, thrillingly. A girl’s natural and instinctive fear was vanquished by her love. And love in that desperate strait became all which was humanly possible of courage and spirit.

  She heard the robbers knocking things about in the cabin. They threw bales of beaver pelts out of the door. Presently Fresno reappeared carrying a buckskin sack in which Slingerland kept his money and few valuables, and the others followed, quarreling over a cane-covered demijohn in which there had once been liquor.

  “Nary a drop!” growled the one who got possession of it. And with rage he threw the thing back into the cabin where it crashed into the fire.

  “Sandy, you’ve scattered the fire,” protested the grizzled robber as he glanced into the cabin. “Them furs is catchin’.”

  “Let ’em burn!” called Fresno. “We got all we want. Come on.”

  “But what’s the sense burnin’ the feller’s cabin down?”

  “Nothin’ll burn,” said the dark-faced man, “an’, if it does, it’ll look like Indian work. Savvy, Old Miles.”

  They shuffled out together. Evidently Fresno was the leader or at least the strongest force. He looked at the sack in his hand, and then at Allie.

  “You fellers fight over that,” he said, and, throwing the sack on the ground, he strode toward Allie.

  The three men all made a rush for the sack and Sandy got it. The other two pressed around him, not threateningly, but aggressively, sure of their rights.

  “I’ll divide,” said Sandy, as he mounted his horse. “Wait till we make camp. You fellers pack the beavers.”

  Fresno untied Allie from the tree, but he left the lasso around her, and, holding to it and her arm, he rudely dragged her to his horse.

  “Git up, an’ hurry,” he ordered.

  Allie mounted. The stirrups were too long.

  “You fellers clear out!” called Fresno. “An’ ketch me one of them hosses we seen along the brook.”

  While he re-adjusted the stirrups, Allie looked down upon him. He was an uncouth ruffian and his touch gave her an insupportable disgust. He wore no weapons, but his saddle holster contained a revolver and the sheath a Winchester. Allie could have shot him and made a run for it, and she had the nerve. The others, however, did not get out of sight before Fresno had the stirrups adjusted. He strode after them, leading the horse. Allie glanced back to see a thin stream of smoke coming out of the cabin door. Then she faced about, desperately resolved to take any chance to get away. She decided these men would not be safe for very long. Whatever she was to do, she must do that day, and she only awaited her chance.

  At the ford Sandy caught one of Slingerland’s horses—a mustang and a favorite of Allie’s, and one she could ride. He was as swift as the wind. Once upon him she could run away from any horse these robbers rode. Fresno put the end of the lasso around the mustang’s neck.

  “Can you ride bareback?” he asked Allie.

  Allie lied. Her first thought was to lead them astray as to her skill with a horse, and then it occurred to her that, if she rode Fresno’s saddle, there might be an opportunity to use the gun.

  Fresno leaped astride the mustang and was promptly bucked off. The other men guffawed. Fresno swore and, picking himself up, tried again. This time the mustang behaved better, but it was plain he did not like the weight. Then Fresno started off, leading his own horse, and at a trot that showed he wanted to cover ground.

  Allie heard the others quarrelling over something, probably the gold Slingerland had been so many years in accumulating.

  They rode on to where the valley opened into another, along which wound the old St. Vrain and Laramie Trail. They kept to this, traveling east for a few miles, and then entered an interesting valley, where some distance up they had a camp. They had not taken the precaution to hide either packs or mules, and so far as Allie could tell they had no fear of Indians. Probably they had crossed from California, and being dishonest, and avoiding caravans and camps, they had not become fully acquainted with the perils of that region.

  It was about noon when they arrived at this place. The sun was becoming blurred and a storm appeared brewing. Fresno dismounted, dropping the halter of the mustang. Then he let go his own bridle. The eyes he bent on Allie made her turn hers away as from something that could scorch and stain. He pulled her off the saddle, rudely, with coarse and meaning violence.

  Allie pushed him back and faced him. In a way she had lived among such men as this man, and she knew that resistance or pleadings were useless—would only inflame him. She was not ready yet to court death.

  “Wait,” she said.

  “A-huh,” he grunted, breathing heavily. He was an animal, slow-witted and brutal.

  “Fresno, I am Durade’s girl,” she went on.

  “I thought I knowed you. But you’ve grown to be a woman an’ a damn’ pretty one.”

  Allie drew him aside, farther from the others, who had renewed a loud altercation.

  “Fresno, it’s gold you want,” she affirmed, rather than asked.

  “Sure. But no small stake like thet’d be my choice . . . ag’in’ you.” He leered, jerking a thumb back at his companions.

  “You remember Horn?” went on Allie.

  “Horn! The miner who made thet big strike out near Sacramento?”

  “Yes, that’s who I mean,” replied Allie hurriedly. “We . . . we left California in his caravan. He brought all his gold with him.”

  Fresno began to lean down in great interest.

  “We were attacked by Sioux . . . Horn buried all that gold . . . on the spot . . . where he . . . all . . . all the others were killed . . . except me . . . And I know where.” Allie shuddered with what the words brought up. But no memory could weaken her.

  Fresno opened his huge mou
th to bawl this unexpected news to his comrades.

  “Don’t call them . . . don’t tell them,” Allie whispered. “There’s only one condition . . . I’ll take you . . . where that gold’s hidden.”

  “Girl, I can make you tell,” he replied menacingly.

  “No, you can’t.”

  “You ain’t so smart you think I’ll let you go . . . jest fer some gold?” he queried. “Gold’ll be cheap along this trail soon. An’ girls like you are scarce.”

  “No . . . that’s not what I meant . . . Get rid of the others . . . and I’ll tell you where Horn buried his gold.”

  Fresno stared at her. He grinned. The idea evidently surprised and flattered him, and grew perplexing.

  “But Frank . . . he’s my pard . . . thet one with the black hat,” he protested. “I couldn’t do no dirt to Frank . . . What’s your game, girl? I’ll beat you into tellin’ me where that gold is.”

  “Beating won’t make me tell,” replied Allie with intensity. “Nothing will . . . if I don’t want to . . . My game is for my life. You know I’ve no chance among four men like you.”

  “Aw, I don’t know about thet,” he blustered. “I can take care of you . . . But say, if you’d stand fer Frank . . . mebbe I’ll take you up . . . Girl, are you lyin’ about thet gold?”

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t the trapper dig it up? You must hev told him.”

  “Because he was afraid to keep it in or near his cabin. We meant to leave it until we were ready to get out of the country.”

  That appeared plausible to Fresno and he grew more thoughtful.

  Meanwhile the altercation among the other three ruffians assumed proportions that augured a fight.

  “I’ll divide this sack when I git good an’ ready,” declared Sandy.

  “But, pard, thet’s no square deal,” protested Old Miles. “I’m a-gittin’ mad. I seen you meant to keep it all.”

  The dark-faced ruffian shoved a grasping hand under Sandy’s nose. “When do I git mine?” he demanded.

  Fresno wheeled and called: “Frank, you come here!”