the U P Trail (1940)

by Grey, Zane

  His action caused a breaking of the strange, vise-like clutch; the mute and motionless spell; that had fallen upon Allie. She felt the gathering of tremendous forces in her; in an instant she would show these stupid men the tumult of a woman's heart.

  "Lee, be generous," spoke up General Lodge, feelingly. "Let Neale see the girl."

  "I said no!" snapped Lee.

  "But why not, in Heaven's name?"

  "Why? I told you why," declared Lee, passionately.

  "But, Lee; that implication may not be true. We didn't read all that letter," protested General Lodge.

  "Ask him."

  Then the general turned to Neale. "Boy; tell me; did this Stanton woman love you; did you strike her? Did you; " The general's voice failed.

  Neale faced about with a tragic darkening of his face. "To my shame- -it is true," he said, clearly.

  Then Allie Lee swept forward. "Oh, Neale!"

  He seemed to rise and leap at once. And she ran straight into his arms. No man, no trouble, no mystery, no dishonor, no barrier; nothing could have held her back the instant she saw how the sight of her, how the sound of her voice, had transformed Neale. For one tumultuous, glorious, terrible moment she clung to his neck, blind, her heart bursting. Then she fell back with hands seeking her breast.

  "I heard!" she cried. "I know nothing of Beauty Stanton's letter.... But you didn't shoot her. It was Larry. I saw him do it."

  "Allie!" he whispered.

  At last he had realized her actual presence, the safety of her body and soul; and all that had made him strange and old and grim and sad vanished in a beautiful transfiguration.

  "You know Larry did it!" implored Allie. "Tell them so."

  "Yes, I know," he replied. "But I did worse. I; "

  She saw him shaken by an agony of remorse; and that agony was communicated to her.

  "Neale! she loved you?"

  He bowed his head.

  "Oh!" Her cry was almost mute, full of an unutterable realization of tragic fatality for her. "And you; you; "

  Allison Lee strode between them facing Neale. "See! She knows... and if you would spare her; go!" he exclaimed.

  "She knows; what?" gasped Neale, in a frenzy between doubt and certainty.

  Allie felt a horrible, nameless, insidious sense of falsity; a nightmare unreality; an intangible Neale, fated, drifting away from her.

  "Good-bye; Allie! ... Bless you! I'll be; happy; knowing; you're; " He choked, and the tears streamed down his face. It was a face convulsed by renunciation, not by guilt. Whatever he had done, it was not base.

  "DON'T LET ME; GO! ... _I_; FORGIVE YOU!" she burst out. She held out her arms.

  "THERE'S NO ONE IN THE WORLD BUT YOU!"

  But Neale plunged away, upheld by Slingerland, and Allie's world grew suddenly empty and black.

  The train swayed and creaked along through the Night with that strain and effort which told of upgrade. The oil-lamps burned dimly in corners of the coach. There were soldiers at open windows looking out. There were passengers asleep sitting up and lying down and huddled over their baggage.

  But Allie Lee was not asleep. She lay propped up with pillows and blankets, covered by a heavy coat. Her window was open, and a cool desert wind softly blew her hair. She stared out into the night, and the wheels seemed to be grinding over her crushed heart.

  It was late. An old moon, misshapen and pale, shone low down over a dark, rugged horizon. Clouds hid the stars. The desert void seemed weirdly magnified by the wan light, and all that shadowy waste, silent, lonely, bleak, called out to

  Allie Lee the desolation of her soul. For what had she been saved? The train creaked on, and every foot added to her woe. Her unquenchable spirit, pure as a white flame that had burned so wonderfully through the months of her peril, flickered now that her peril ceased to be. She had no fount of emotion left to draw upon, else she would have hated this creaking train.

  It moved on. And there loomed bold outlines of rock and ridge familiar to her.

  They had been stamped upon her memory by the strain of her lonely wanderings along that very road. She knew every rod of the way, dark, lonely, wild as it was. In the midst of that stark space lay the spot where Benton had been. A spot lost in the immensity of the desert. If she had been asleep she would have awakened while passing there. There was not a light. Flat patches and pale gleams, a long, wan length of bare street, shadows everywhere; these marked

  Benton's grave.

  Allie stared with strained eyes. They were there; in the blackness; those noble men who had died for her in vain. No; not in vain! She breathed a prayer for them; a word of love for Larry. Larry, the waster of life, yet the faithful, the symbol of brotherhood. As long as she lived she would see him stalk before her with his red, blazing fire, his magnificent effrontery, his supreme will. He, who had been the soul of chivalry, the meekest of men before a woman, the inheritor of a reverence for womanhood, had ruthlessly shot out of his way that wonderful white-armed Beauty Stanton.

  She, too, must lie there in the shadow. Allie shivered with the cool desert wind that blew in her face from the shadowy spaces. She shut her eyes to hide the dim passing traces of terrible Benton and the darkness that hid the lonely graves.

  The train moved on and on, leaving what had been Benton far behind; and once more Allie opened her weary eyes to the dim, obscure reaches of the desert. Her heart beat very slowly under its leaden weight, its endless pang. Her blood flowed at low ebb. She felt the long-forgotten recurrence of an old morbid horror, like a poison lichen fastening upon the very spring of life. It passed and came again, and left her once more. Her thoughts wandered back along the night track she had traversed, until again her ears were haunted by that strange sound which had given Roaring City its name. She had been torn away from hope, love, almost life itself. Where was Neale? He had turned from her, obedient to

  Allison Lee and the fatal complexity and perversenes's of life. The vindication of her spiritual faith and the answer to her prayers lay in the fact that she had been saved; but rather than to be here in this car, daughter of a rich father, but separated from Neale, she would have preferred to fill one of the nameless graves in Benton.

  Chapter 33

  The sun set pale-gold and austere as Neale watched the train bear Allie Lee away. No thought of himself entered into that solemn moment of happiness. Allie

  Lee; alive; safe; her troubles ended; on her way home with her father! The long train wound round the bold bluff and at last was gone. For Neale the moment held something big, final. A phase; a part of his life ended there.

  "Son, it's over," said Slingerland, who watched with him. "Allie's gone home; back to whar she belongs; to come into her own. Thank God! An' you; why this day turns you back to whar you was once.... Allie owes her life to you an' her father's life. Think, son, of these hyar times; how much wuss it might hev been."

  Neale's sense of thankfulness was unutterable. Passively he went with

  Slingerland, silent and gentle. The trapper dressed his wounds, tended him, kept men away from him, and watched by him as if he were a sick child.

  Neale suffered only the weakness following the action and stress of great passion. His mind seemed full of beautiful solemn bells of blessing, resonant, ringing the wonder of an everlasting unchangeable truth. Night fell; the darkness thickened; the old trapper kept his vigil; and Neale sank to sleep, and the sweet, low- toned bells claimed him in his dreams.

  How strange for Neale to greet a dawn without hatred! He and Slingerland had breakfast together.

  "Son, will you go into the hills with me?" asked the old trapper.

  "Yes, some day, when the railroad's built," replied Neale, thoughtfully.

  Slingerland's keen eyes quickened. "But the railroad's about done; an' you need a vacation," he insisted.

  "Yes," Neale answered, dreamily.

  "Son, mebbe you ought to wait awhile. You're packin' a bullet somewhar in your carcass."

  "It's here," sai
d Neale, putting his hand to his breast, high up toward the shoulder. "I feel it; a dull, steady, weighty pain.... But that's nothing. I hope

  I always have it."

  "Wal, I don't.... An', son, you ain't never goin' back to drink an' cards-an' all thet hell? ... Not now!"

  Neale's smile was a promise, and the light of it was instantly reflected on the rugged face of the trapper.

  "Reckon I needn't asked thet. Wal, I'll be sayin' good-bye.... You kin expect me back some day.... To see the meetin' of the rails from east an' west; an' to pack you off to my hills."

  Neale rode out of Roaring City on the work-train, sitting on a flat- car with a crowd of hairy-breasted, red-shirted laborers.

  That train carried hundreds of men, tons of steel rails, thousands of ties; and also it was equipped to feed the workers and to fight Indians. It ran to the end of the rails, about forty miles out of Roaring City.

  Neale sought out Reilly, the boss. This big Irishman was in the thick of the start of the day-which was like a battle. Neale waited in the crowd, standing there in his shirt-sleeves, with the familiar bustle and color strong as wine to his senses. At last Reilly saw him and shoved out a huge paw.

  "Hullo, Neale! I'm glad to see ye.... They tell me ye did a dom' foine job."

  "Reilly, I need work," said Neale.

  "But, mon; ye was shot!" ejaculated the boss.

  "I'm all right."

  "Ye look thot an' no mistake.... Shure, now, ye ain't serious about work?

  You; that's chafe of all thim engineer jobs?"

  "I want to work with my hands. Let me heave ties or carry rails or swing a sledge; for just a few days. I've explained to General Lodge. It's a kind of vacation for me."

  Reilly gazed with keen, twinkling eyes at Neale. "Ye can't be drunk an' look sober."

  "Reilly, I'm sober; and in dead earnest," appealed Neale. "I want to go back; be in the finish; to lay some rails; drive some spikes."

  The boss lost his humorous, quizzing expression. "Shure; shure," replied Reilly, as if he saw, but failed to comprehend. "Ye're on.... An' more power to ye!"

  He sent Neale out with the gang detailed to heave railroad ties.

  A string of flat-cars, loaded with rails and ties, stood on the track where the work of yesterday had ended. Beyond stretched the road-bed, yellow, level, winding as far as eye could see. The sun beat down hot; the dry, scorching desert breeze swept down from the bare hills, across the waste; dust flew up in puffs; uprooted clumps of sage, like balls, went rolling along; and everywhere the veils of heat rose from the sun-baked earth.

  "Drill, ye terriers, drill!" rang out a cheery voice. And Neale remembered

  Casey.

  Neale's gang was put to carrying ties. Neale got hold of the first tie thrown off the car.

  "Phwat the hell's ye're hurry!" protested his partner. This fellow was gnarled and knotted, brick-red in color, with face a network of seams, and narrow, sun-burnt slits for eyes. He answered to the name of Pat.

  They carried the tie out to the end of the rails and dropped it on the level road-bed. Men there set it straight and tamped the gravel around it. Neale and his partner went back for another, passing a dozen couples carrying ties forward. Behind these staggered the rows of men burdened with the heavy iron rails.

  So the day's toil began.

  Pat had glanced askance at Neale, and then had made dumb signs to his fellow-laborers, indicating his hard lot in being yoked to this new wild man on the job. But his ridicule soon changed to respect. Presently he offered his gloves to Neale. They were refused.

  "But, fri'nd, ye ain't tough loike me," he protested.

  "Pat, they'll put you to bed to-night; if you stay with me," replied Neale.

  "The hell ye say! Come on, thin!"

  At first Neale had no sensations of heat, weariness, thirst, or pain. He dragged the little Irishman forward to drop the ties; then strode back ahead of him.

  Neale was obsessed by a profound emotion. This was a new beginning for him. For him the world and life had seemed to cease when yesternight the sun sank and

  Allie Lee passed out of sight. His motive in working there, he imagined, was to lay a few rails, drive a few spikes along the last miles of the road that he had surveyed. He meant to work this way only a little while, till the rails from east met those from west.

  This profound emotion seemed accompanied by a procession of thoughts, each thought in turn, like a sun with satellites, reflecting its radiance upon them and rousing strange, dreamy, full- hearted fancies ... Allie lived; as good, as innocent as ever, incomparably beautiful; sad-eyed, eloquent, haunting. From that mighty thought sprang both Neale's exaltation and his activity. He had loved her so well that conviction of her death had broken his heart, deadened his ambition, ruined his life. But since, by the mercy of God and the innocence that had made men heroic, she had survived all peril, all evil, then had begun a colossal overthrow in Neale's soul of the darkness, the despair, the hate, the indifference. He had been flung aloft, into the heights, and he had seen into heaven. He asked for nothing in the world. All-satisfied, eternally humble, grateful with every passionate drop of blood throbbing through his heart, he dedicated all his spiritual life to memory. And likewise there seemed a tremendous need in him of sustained physical action, even violence. He turned to the last stages of the construction of the great railroad.

  What fine comrades these hairy-breasted toilers made! Neale had admired them once; now he loved them. Every group seemed to contain a trio like that one he had known so well; Casey, Shane, and McDermott. Then he divined that these men were all alike. They all toiled, swore, fought, drank, gambled. Hundreds of them went to nameless graves. But the work went on; the great, driving, united heart beat on.

  Neale was under its impulse, in another sense.

  When he lifted a tie and felt the hard, splintering wood, he wondered where it had come from, what kind of a tree it was, who had played in its shade, how surely birds had nested in it and animals had grazed beneath it. Between him and that square log of wood there was an affinity. Somehow his hold upon it linked him strangely to a long past, intangible spirit of himself. He must cling to it, lest he might lose that illusive feeling. Then when he laid it down he felt regret fade into a realization that the yellow-gravel road-bed also inspirited him. He wanted to feel it, work in it, level it, make it somehow his own.

  When he strode back for another load his magnifying eyes gloated over the toilers in action; the rows of men carrying and laying rails, and the splendid brawny figures of the spikers, naked to the waist, swinging the heavy sledges.

  The blows rang out spang; spang; spang! Strong music, full of meaning! When his turn came to be a spiker, he would love that hardest work of all.

  The engine puffed smoke and bumped the cars ahead, little by little as the track advanced; men on the train carried ties and rails forward, filling the front cars as fast as they were emptied; long lines of laborers on the ground passed to and fro, burdened going forward, returning empty-handed; the rails and the shovels and the hammers and the picks all caught the hot gleam from the sun; the dust swept up in sheets; the ring, the crash, the thump, the scrape of iron and wood and earth in collision filled the air with a sound rising harshly above the song and laugh and curse of men.

  A shifting, colorful, strenuous scene of toil!

  Gradually Neale felt that he was fitting into this scene, becoming a part of it, an atom once more in the great whole. He doubted while he thrilled. Clearly as he saw, keenly as he felt, he yet seemed bewildered. Was he not gazing out at this construction work through windows of his soul, once more painted, colored, beautiful, because the most precious gift he might have prayed; for had been given him; life and hope for Allie Lee?

  He did not know. He could not think.

  His comrade, Pat, wiped floods of sweat from his scarlet face. "I'll be domned if ye ain't a son-of-a-gun fer worrk!" he complained.

  "Pat, we've been given the honor of pace-make
rs. They've got to keep up with us.

  Come on," replied Neale.

  "Be gad! there ain't a mon in the gang phwat'll trade fer me honor, thin," declared Pat. "Fri'nd, I'd loike to live till next pay-day,"

  "Come on, then, work up an appetite," rejoined Neale.

  "Shure I'll die.... An' I'd loike to ask, beggin' ye're pardon, hevn't ye got some Irish in ye?"

  "Yes, a little."

  "I knowed thot.... All roight, I'll die with ye, thin."

  In half an hour Pat was in despair again. He had to rest.

  "Phwat's; ye're; name?" he queried.

  "Neale."

  "It ought to be Casey. Fer there was niver but wan loike ye; an' he was Casey....

  Mon, ye're sweatin' blood roight now!"

  Pat pointed at Neale's red, wet shirt. Neale slapped his breast, and drops of blood and sweat spattered from under his hand.

  "An' shure ye're hands are bladin', too!" ejaculated Pat.

  They were, indeed, but Neale had not noted that.

  The boss, Reilly, passing by, paused to look and grin.

  "Pat, yez got some one to kape up with to-day. We're half a mile ahead of yestidy this time."

  Then he turned to Neale.

  "I've seen one in yer class; Casey by name. An' thot's talkin'."

  He went his way. And Neale, plodding on, saw the red face of the great Casey, with its set grin and the black pipe. Swiftly then he saw it as he had heard of it last, and a shadow glanced fleetingly across the singular radiance of his mind.

  The shrill whistle of the locomotive halted the work and called the men to dinner and rest. Instantly the scene changed. The slow, steady, rhythmic motions of labor gave place to a scramble back to the long line of cars. Then the horde of sweaty toilers sought places in the shade, and ate and drank and smoked and rested. As the spirit of work had been merry, so was that of rest, with always a dry, grim earnestness in the background.

  Neale slowed down during the afternoon, to the unconcealed thankfulness of his partner. The burn of the sun, the slippery sweat, the growing ache of muscles, the never-ending thirst, the lessening of strength; these sensations impinged upon Neale's emotion and gradually wore to the front of his consciousness. His hands grew raw, his back stiff and sore, his feet crippled. The wound in his breast burned and bled and throbbed. At the end of the day he could scarcely walk.