the U P Trail (1940)

by Grey, Zane

  "Lay hold, Mac," he said.

  They lowered the corpse into the hole. Casey stood up, making a sign of the cross before him.

  "He wor a man!"

  Then they filled the grave.

  "Mac, wouldn't it be dacent to mark where Larry King's buried? A stone or wooden cross with his name?"

  McDermott wrinkled his red brow and scratched his sandy beard. Then he pointed.

  "Casey, wot's the use? See, the blowin' sand's kivered all the graves."

  "Mac, yez wor always hell at shirkin' worrk. Come on, now, Drill, ye terrier, drill!"

  They quickly dug another long, narrow hole. Then, taking a rude stretcher, they plodded away in the direction of a dilapidated tent that appeared to be the only structure left of Benton. Casey entered ahead of his comrade.

  "Thot's sthrange!"

  "Wot?" queried McDermott.

  "Didn't yez kiver her face whin we laid her down here?"

  "Shure an' I did, Casey."

  "An' that face has a different look now! ... Mac, see here!"

  Casey stooped to pick up a little book from the woman's breast. His huge fingers opened it with difficulty.

  "Mac, there's wroitin' in ut!" he exclaimed.

  "Wal, rade, ye baboon."

  "Oh, I kin rade ut, though I ain't much of a wroiter meself," replied Casey, and then laboriously began to decipher the writing. He halted suddenly and looked keenly at McDermott.

  "Wot the divil! ... B'gorra, ut's to me fri'nd Neale; an' a love letter; an'; "

  "Wal, kape it, thin, fer Neale an' be dacent enough to rade no more."

  Lifting Beauty Stanton, they carried her out into the sunlight. Her white face was a shadowed and tragic record.

  "Mac, she wor shure a handsome woman," said Casey, "an' a loidy."

  "Casey, yez are always sorry fer somebody.... Thot Stanton wuz a beauty an' she mebbe wuz a loidy. But she wuz dom' bad."

  "Mac, I knowed long ago thot the milk of human kindness hed curdled in yez. An' yez hev no brains."

  "I'm as intilligint as yez any day," retorted McDermott.

  "Thin why hedn't yez seen thot this poor woman was alive whin we packed her out here? She come to an' writ thot letter to Neale; thin she doied!"

  "My Gawd! Casey, yez ain't meanin' ut!" ejaculated McDermott, aghast.

  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 bed 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.

  Chapter 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 gr
unted.

  "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 cu
t, 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.