The U. P. Trail

by Zane Grey

  33

  The sun set pale-gold and austere as Neale watched the train bear AllieLee away. No thought of himself entered into that solemn moment ofhappiness. Allie Lee--alive--safe--her troubles ended--on her way homewith her father! The long train wound round the bold bluff and at lastwas gone. For Neale the moment held something big, final. A phase--apart of his life ended there.

  "Son, it's over," said Slingerland, who watched with him. "Allie's gonehome--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 herlife to you an' her father's life. Think, son, of these hyar times--howmuch wuss it might hev been."

  Neale's sense of thankfulness was unutterable. Passively he went withSlingerland, silent and gentle. The trapper dressed his wounds, tendedhim, kept men away from him, and watched by him as if he were a sickchild.

  Neale suffered only the weakness following the action and stressof great passion. His mind seemed full of beautiful solemn bells ofblessing, resonant, ringing the wonder of an everlasting unchangeabletruth. Night fell--the darkness thickened--the old trapper kept hisvigil--and Neale sank to sleep, and the sweet, low-toned bells claimedhim in his dreams.

  How strange for Neale to greet a dawn without hatred! He and Slingerlandhad 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 somewharin your carcass."

  "It's here," said Neale, putting his hand to his breast, high up towardthe shoulder. "I feel it--a dull, steady, weighty pain.... But that'snothing. 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 reflectedon the rugged face of the trapper.

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

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

  That train carried hundreds of men, tons of steel rails, thousands ofties; 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 thickof the start of the day--which was like a battle. Neale waited in thecrowd, standing there in his shirt-sleeves, with the familiar bustle andcolor strong as wine to his senses. At last Reilly saw him and shovedout a huge paw.

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

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

  "I want to work with my hands. Let me heave ties or carry rails or swinga sledge--for just a few days. I've explained to General Lodge. It's akind 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 goback--be in the finish--to lay some rails--drive some spikes."

  The boss lost his humorous, quizzing expression. "Shure--shure," repliedReilly, as if he saw, but failed to comprehend. "Ye're on.... An' morepower 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 trackwhere 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, acrossthe waste; dust flew up in puffs; uprooted clumps of sage, like balls,went rolling along; and everywhere the veils of heat rose from thesun-baked earth.

  "Drill, ye terriers, drill!" rang out a cheery voice. And Nealeremembered Casey.

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

  "Phwat the hell's ye're hurry!" protested his partner. This fellow wasgnarled 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 thelevel road-bed. Men there set it straight and tamped the gravel aroundit. Neale and his partner went back for another, passing a dozen couplescarrying ties forward. Behind these staggered the rows of men burdenedwith the heavy iron rails.

  So the day's toil began.

  Pat had glanced askance at Neale, and then had made dumb signs to hisfellow-laborers, indicating his hard lot in being yoked to this new wildman on the job. But his ridicule soon changed to respect. Presently heoffered 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," repliedNeale.

  "The hell ye say! Come on, thin!"

  At first Neale had no sensations of heat, weariness, thirst, or pain. Hedragged the little Irishman forward to drop the ties--then strode backahead of him. Neale was obsessed by a profound emotion. This was a newbeginning for him. For him the world and life had seemed to cease whenyesternight the sun sank and Allie Lee passed out of sight. His motivein working there, he imagined, was to lay a few rails, drive a fewspikes along the last miles of the road that he had surveyed. He meantto work this way only a little while, till the rails from east met thosefrom west.

  This profound emotion seemed accompanied by a procession of thoughts,each thought in turn, like a sun with satellites, reflecting itsradiance upon them and rousing strange, dreamy, full-heartedfancies... Allie lived--as good, as innocent as ever, incomparablybeautiful--sad-eyed, eloquent, haunting. From that mighty thought sprangboth Neale's exaltation and his activity. He had loved her so well thatconviction of her death had broken his heart, deadened his ambition,ruined his life. But since, by the mercy of God and the innocence thathad made men heroic, she had survived all peril, all evil, then hadbegun 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 ofblood throbbing through his heart, he dedicated all his spirituallife to memory. And likewise there seemed a tremendous need in him ofsustained physical action, even violence. He turned to the last stagesof the construction of the great railroad.

  What fine comrades these hairy-breasted toilers made! Neale had admiredthem once; now he loved them. Every group seemed to contain a trio likethat one he had known so well--Casey, Shane, and McDermott. Then hedivined that these men were all alike. They all toiled, swore, fought,drank, gambled. Hundreds of them went to nameless graves. But the workwent 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 wonderedwhere it had come from, what kind of a tree it was, who had played inits shade, how surely birds had nested in it and animals had grazedbeneath it. Between him and that square log of wood there was anaffinity. Somehow his hold upon it linked him strangely to a long past,intangible spirit of himself. He must cling to it, lest he might losethat illusive feeling. Then when he laid it down he felt regret fadeinto 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 h
e strode back for another load his magnifying eyes gloated overthe toilers in action--the rows of men carrying and laying rails, andthe splendid brawny figures of the spikers, naked to the waist, swingingthe 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 thathardest work of all.

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

  A shifting, colorful, strenuous scene of toil!

  Gradually Neale felt that he was fitting into this scene, becoming apart of it, an atom once more in the great whole. He doubted whilehe thrilled. Clearly as he saw, keenly as he felt, he yet seemedbewildered. Was he not gazing out at this construction work throughwindows of his soul, once more painted, colored, beautiful, because themost precious gift he might have prayed for had been given him--life andhope for Allie Lee?

  He did not know. He could not think.

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

  "Pat, we've been given the honor of pace-makers. They've got to keep upwith 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'tye 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 wasCasey.... Mon, ye're sweatin' blood roight now!"

  Pat pointed at Neale's red, wet shirt. Neale slapped his breast, anddrops 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 aheadof 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 greatCasey, with its set grin and the black pipe. Swiftly then he saw itas he had heard of it last, and a shadow glanced fleetingly across thesingular radiance of his mind.

  The shrill whistle of the locomotive halted the work and called themen to dinner and rest. Instantly the scene changed. The slow, steady,rhythmic motions of labor gave place to a scramble back to the long lineof 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 beenmerry, so was that of rest, with always a dry, grim earnestness in thebackground.

  Neale slowed down during the afternoon, to the unconcealed thankfulnessof his partner. The burn of the sun, the slippery sweat, thegrowing ache of muscles, the never-ending thirst, the lessening ofstrength--these sensations impinged upon Neale's emotion and graduallywore to the front of his consciousness. His hands grew raw, his backstiff and sore, his feet crippled. The wound in his breast burned andbled and throbbed. At the end of the day he could scarcely walk.

  He rode in with the laborers, slept twelve hours, and awokeheavy-limbed, slow, and aching. But he rode out to work, and his secondday was one of agony.

  The third was a continual fight between will and body, between spiritand pain. But so long as he could step and lift he would work on. Fromthat time he slowly began to mend.

  Then came his siege with the rails. That was labor which made carryingties seem light. He toiled on, sweating thin, wearing hard, growingclearer of mind. As pain subsided, and weariness of body no longerdominated him, slowly thought and feeling returned until that morningdawned when, like a flash of lightning illuminating his soul, theprofound and exalted emotion again possessed him. Soon he came to divinethat the agony of toil and his victory over weak flesh had added to hisstrange happiness. Hour after hour he bent his back and plodded besidehis comrades, doing his share, burdened as they were, silent, watchful,listening, dreaming, keen to note the progress of the road, yet deep inhis own intense abstraction. He seemed to have two minds. He saw everyrod of the ten miles of track laid every day, knew, as only an engineercould know, the wonder of such progress; and, likewise, always in hissight, in his mind, shone a face, red-lipped, soulful, lovely like asaint's, with mournful violet eyes, star-sweet in innocence. Life hadgiven Allie Lee back to him--to his love and his memory; and all thatcould happen to him now must be good. At first he had asked for nothing,so grateful was he to fate, but now he prayed for hours and days andnights to remember.

  The day came when Neale graduated into the class of spikers. Thisdivision of labor to him had always represented the finest spirit of thebuilding. The drivers--the spikers--the men who nailed the rails--whoriveted the last links--these brawny, half-naked wielders of thesledges, bronzed as Indians, seemed to embody both the romance and theachievement. Neale experienced a subtle perception with the first touchand lift and swing of the great hammer. And there seemed born in him agenius for the stroke. He had a free, easy swing, with tremendous power.He could drive so fast that his comrade on the opposite rail, and thecarriers and layers, could not keep up with him. Moments of rest seemedearned. During these he would gaze with glinting eyes back at the gangsand the trains, at the smoke, dust, and movement; and beyond toward theeast.

  One day he drove spikes for hours, with the gangs in uninterrupted laboraround him, while back a mile along the road the troopers fought theSioux; and all this time, when any moment he might be ordered to drophis sledge for a rifle, he listened to the voice in his memory and sawthe face.

  Another day dawned in which he saw the grading gangs return from workahead. They were done. Streams of horses, wagons, and men on the return!They had met the graders from the west, and the two lines of road-bedhad been connected. As these gangs passed, cheer on cheer greeted themfrom the rail-layers. It was a splendid moment.

  From lip to lip then went the word that the grading-gangs from east andwest had passed each other in plain sight, working on, grading on fora hundred miles farther than necessary. They had met and had passed on,side by side, doubling the expense of construction.

  This knowledge gave Neale a melancholy reminder of the dishonest aspectof the road-building. And he thought of many things. The spirit of thework was grand, the labor heroic, but, alas! side by side with thesesplendid and noble attributes stalked the specters of greed and gold andlust of blood and of death.

  But neither knowledge such as this, nor peril from Indians, nor thetoil-pangs of a galley slave had power to change Neale's supreme stateof joy.

  He gazed back toward the east, and then with mighty swing he drove aspike. He loved Allie Lee beyond all conception, and next he loved thebuilding of the railroad.

  When such thoughts came he went back to pure sensations, the great, boldpeaks looming dark, the winding, level road-bed, the smoky desert-land,reflecting heat, the completed track and gangs of moving men like brightants in the sunlight, and the exhaust of the engines, the old song,"Drill, ye terriers, drill!" the ring and crash and thud and scrapeof labor, the whistle of the seeping sand on the wind, the feel of theheavy sledge that he could wield as a toy, the throb of pulse, thesmell of dus
t and sweat, the sense of his being there, his action, hissolidarity, his physical brawn--once more manhood.

  But at last human instincts encroached upon Neale's superlativedetachment from self. It seemed all of a sudden that he stepped towardan east-bound train. When he reached the coach something halted him--athought--where was he going? The west-bound work-train was the onehe wanted. He laughed, a little grimly. Certainly he had grownabsentminded. And straightway he became thoughtful, in a different way.Not many moments of reflection were needed to assure him that he hadmoved toward the east-bound train with the instinctive idea of going toAllie Lee. The thing amazed him.

  "But she--she's gone out of my life," he soliloquized. "And I am--I wasglad!"

  The lightning-swift shift to past tense enlightened Neale.

  He went out to work. That work still loomed splendid to him, but itseemed not the same. He saw and felt the majesty of common free men,sweating and bleeding and groaning over toil comparable to the buildingof the Pyramids; he felt the best that had ever been in him quicken andbroaden as he rubbed elbows with these simple, elemental toilers;with them he had gotten down to the level of truth. His old genius forachievement, the practical and scientific side of him, still thrilledwith the battle of strong hands against the natural barriers ofthe desert. He saw the thousands of plodding, swearing, fighting,blaspheming, joking laborers on the field of action--saw the picturethey made, red and bronzed and black, dust-begrimed; and how here withthe ties and the rails and the road-bed was the heart of that epicalturmoil. What approach could great and rich engineers and directors havemade to that vast enterprise without these sons of brawn? Neale now sawwhat he had once dreamed, and that was the secret of his longing to getdown to the earth with these men.

  He loved to swing that sledge, to hear the spang of the steel ring out.He had a sheer physical delight in the power of his body, long sincethinned-out, hardened, tough as the wood into which he drove the spikes.He loved his new comrade, Pat, the gnarled and knotted little Irishmanwho cursed and complained of his job and fought his fellow-workers, yetwho never lagged, never shirked, and never failed, though his days ofusefulness must soon be over. Soon Pat would drop by the roadside, avictim to toil and whisky and sun. And he was great in his obscurity. Hewore a brass tag with a number; he signed his wage receipt with a cross;he cared only for drink and a painted hag in a squalid tent; yet in allthe essentials that Neale now called great his friend Pat reached up tothem--the spirit to work, to stand his share, to go on, to endure, tofulfill his task.

  Neale might have found salvation in this late-developed and splendidrelation to labor and to men. But there was a hitch in his brain. Hewould see all that was beautiful and strenuous and progressive aroundhim; and then, in a flash, that hiatus in his mind would operate to makehim hopeless. Then he would stand as in a trance, with far-away gazein his eyes, until his fellow-spiker would recall him to his neglectedwork. These intervals of abstraction grew upon him until he would leaveoff in the act of driving a spike.

  And sometimes in these strange intervals he longed for his old friend,brother, shadow--Larry Red King. He held to Larry's memory, though withit always would return that low, strange roar of Benton's gold and lustand blood and death. Neale did not understand the mystery of what he hadbeen through. It had been a phase of wildness never to be seen again byhis race. His ambition and effort, his fall, his dark siege with hell,his friendship and loss, his agony and toil, his victory, were allsymbolical of the progress of a great movement. In his experience layhid all that development.

  The coming of night was always a relief now, for with the end ofthe day's work he need no longer fight his battle. It was a losingbattle--that he knew. Shunning everybody, he paced to and fro out on thedark, windy desert, under the lonely, pitiless stars.

  His longing to see Allie Lee grew upon him. While he had believed herdead he had felt her spirit hovering near him, in every shadow, andher voice whispered on the wind. She was alive now, but gone away,far distant, over mountains and plains, out of his sight and reach,somewhere to take up a new life alien to his. What would she do? Couldshe bear, it? Never would she forget him--be faithless to his memory!Yet she was young and her life had been hard. She might yield to thatcold Allison Lee's dictation. In happy surroundings her beauty andsweetness would bring a crowd of lovers to her.

  "But that's all--only natural," muttered Neale, in perplexity. "Iwant her to forget--to be happy--to find a home.... For her to growold--alone! No! She must love some man--marry--"

  And with the spoken words Neale's heart contracted. He knew that he liedto himself. If she ever cared for another man, that would be the end ofWarren Neale. But then, he was ended, anyhow. Jealousy, strange, new,horrible, added to Neale's other burdens, finished him. He had themanhood to try to fight selfishness, but he had failed to subdue it; andhe had nothing left to fight his consuming love and hatred of life andterrible loneliness and that fierce thing--jealousy. He had saved AllieLee! Why had he given her up? He had stained his hands with blood forher sake. And that awful moment came back to him when, maddened by thesting of a bullet, he had gloried in the cracking of Durade's bones, inthe ghastly terror and fear of death upon the Spaniard's face, in thefeel of the knife-blade as he forced Durade to stab himself. AlwaysNeale had been haunted by this final scene of his evil life inthe construction camps. A somber and spectral shape, intangible,gloomy-faced, often, attended him in the shadow. He justified his deed,for Durade would have killed Allison Lee. But that fact did not preventthe haunting shape, the stir in the dark air, the nameless step uponNeale's trail.

  And jealousy, stronger than all except fear, wore Neale out of hisexaltation, out of his dream, out of his old disposition to work.He could persist in courage if not in joy. But jealous longing woulddestroy him--he felt that. It was so powerful, so wonderful that itbrought back to him words and movements which until then he had beenunable to recall.

  And he lived over the past. Much still baffled him, yet gradually moreand more of what had happened became clear specifically in his memory.He could not think from the present back over the past. He had to ponderthe other way. One day, leaning on his sledge, Neale's torturing self,morbid, inquisitive, growing by what it fed on, whispered anotherquestion to his memory.

  "What were some of the last words she spoke to me?" And there, limnedwhite on the dark background of his mind, the answer appeared, "NEALE,_I_ FORGIVE YOU!"

  He recalled her face, the tragic eyes, the outstretched arms.

  "Forgive me! For what?" Neale muttered, dazed and troubled. He droppedhis sledge and remained standing there, though the noon whistle calledthe gang to dinner. Looking out across the hot, smoky, arid desert hesaw again that scene where he had appealed to Allison Lee.

  The picture was etched out vividly, and again he lived through those bigmoments of emotion.

  The room full of men--Lee's cold acceptance of fact, his thanks,his offer, his questions, his refusal--General Lodge's earnestsolicitation--the rapid exchange of passionate words between them--thequery put to Neale and his answer--the sudden appearance of Allie,shocking his heart with rapture--her sweet, wild words--and so the end!How vivid now--how like flashes of lightning in his mind!

  "Lee thought I'd killed Stanton," muttered Neale, in intense perplexity."But she--she told them Larry did it.... What a strange idea Leehad--and General Lodge, too. He defended me.... Ah!"

  Suddenly Neale drew from his pocket the little leather note-bookthat had been Stanton's, and which contained her letter to him.With trembling hands he opened it. Again this letter was to mean arevelation.

  General Lodge had said his engineer had read aloud only the first ofthat message to Neale; and from this Allison Lee and all the listenershad formed their impressions.

  Neale read these first lines.

  "No wonder they imagined I killed her!" he exclaimed. "She accuses me.But she never meant what they imagined she meant. Why, that evidencecould hang me!... Allie told them she saw Larry do it. And it'scommon kn
owledge now--I've heard it here.... What, then, had Allie toforgive--to forgive with eyes that will haunt me to my grave?"

  Then the truth burst upon him with merciless and stunning force.

  "My God! Allie believed what they all believed--what I must have blindlymade seem true!... That I was Beauty Stanton's lover!"