10
Neale and King traveled light, without pack-animals, and at sunrise theyreached the main trail.
It bore evidence of considerable use and was no longer a trail, buta highroad. Fresh tracks of horses and oxen, wagon-wheel ruts, deadcamp-fires, and scattered brush that had been used for wind-breaks--allthese things attested to the growing impetus of that movement; soon itwas to become extraordinary.
All this was Indian country. Neale and his companion had no idea whetheror not the Sioux had left their winter quarters for the war-path. Butit was a vast region, and the Indians could not be everywhere. Neale andKing took chances, as had all these travelers, though perhaps the riskwas not so great, because they rode fleet horses. They discovered nosigns of Indians, and it appeared as if they were alone in a wilderness.
They covered sixty miles from early dawn to dark, with a short rest atnoon, and reached Fort Fetterman safely without incident or accident.Troops were there, but none of the U. P. engineering staff. Neale didnot meet any soldiers with whom he was acquainted. Orders were there forhim, however, to report to North Platte as soon as it was possible toreach there. Troops were to be moving soon, so Neale learned, and thelong journey could be made in comparative safety.
Here Neale received the tidings that forty miles of railroad had beenbuilt during the last summer, and trains had been run that distance westfrom Omaha. His heart swelled. Not for many a week had he heard anythingfavorable to the great U. P. project, and here was news of rails laid,trains run. Already this spring the graders were breaking ground farahead of the rail-layers. Report and rumor at the fort had it thatlively times had attended the construction. But the one absorbing topicwas the Sioux Indians, who were expected to swarm out of the hills thatsummer and give the troops hot work.
In due time Neale and Larry arrived at North Platte, which was littlemore than a camp. The construction gangs were not expected to reachthere until late in the fall. Baxter was at North Platte, with a lamesurveyor, and no other helpers; consequently he hailed Neale and Larrywith open arms. A summer's work on the hot monotonous plains staredNeale in the face, but he must resign himself to the inevitable. Heworked, as always, with that ability and energy which had made himinvaluable to his superiors. Here, however, the labor was a dull, hotgrind, without any thrills. Neale filled the long days with duty andseldom let his mind-wander. In leisure hours, however, he dreamed ofAllie and the future. He found no trouble in passing time that way. Alsohe watched eagerly for arrivals from the west, whom he questioned aboutIndians in the Wyoming hills; and from troops or travelers coming fromthe east he heard all the news of the advancing railroad construction.It was absorbingly interesting, yet Neale could credit so few of thetales.
The summer and early fall passed.
Neale was ordered to Omaha. The news stunned him. He had built allhis hopes on another winter out in the Wyoming hills, and thisdisappointment was crushing. It made him ill for a day. He almost threwup his work. It did not seem possible to live that interminable stretchwithout seeing Allie Lee. The nature of his commission, however, broughtonce again to mind the opportunity that knocked at his door. Neale hadrun all the different surveys for bridges in the Wyoming hills and nowhe was needed in the office of the staff, where plans and drawingswere being made. Again he bowed to the inevitable. But he determinedto demand in the spring that he be sent ahead to the forefront of theconstruction work.
Another disappointment seemed in order. Larry King refused to go anyfarther back east. Neale was exceedingly surprised.
"Do you throw up your job?" he asked.
"Shore not. I can work heah," replied Larry.
"There won't be any outside work on these bleak plains in winter."
"Wal, I reckon I'll loaf, then," he drawled.
Neale could not change him. Larry vowed he would take his old place withNeale next spring, if it should be open to him.
"But why? Red, I can't figure you," protested Neale.
"Pard, I reckon I'm fur enough back east right heah," said Larry,significantly.
A light dawned upon Neale. "Red! You've done something bad!" exclaimedNeale, in genuine dismay.
"Wal, I don't know jest how bad it was, but it shore was hell," repliedLarry, with a grin.
"Red, you aren't afraid," asserted Neale, positively.
The cowboy flushed and looked insulted. "If any one but you said thet tome he'd hev to eat it."
"I beg your pardon, old man. But I'm surprised. It doesn't seem likeyou.... And then--Lord! I'll miss you."
"No more 'n I'll miss you, pard," replied Larry.
Suddenly Neale had a happy thought. "Red, you go back to Slingerland'sand help take care of Allie. I'd feel she was safer."
"Wal, she might be safer, but I wouldn't be," declared the cowboy,bluntly.
"You red-head! What do you mean?" demanded Neale.
"I mean this heah. If I stayed around another winter near AllieLee--with her alone, fer thet trapper never set up before thetfire--I'd--why, Neale, I'd ambush you like an Injun when you come back!"
"You wouldn't," rejoined Neale. He wanted to laugh but had no mirth.
Larry did not mean that, but neither did he mean to be funny. "I'll behangin' round heah, waitin' fer you. It's only a few months. Go on toyour work, pard. You'll be a big man on the road some day."
Neale left North Platte with a wagon-train.
After a long, slow journey the point was reached where the graders hadleft off work for that year. Here had been a huge construction camp;and the bare and squalid place looked as if it once had been a town ofcrudest make, suddenly wrecked by a cyclone and burned by prairiefire. Fifty miles farther on, representing two more long, tedious, andunendurable days, and Neale heard the whistle of a locomotive. It camefrom far off. But it was a whistle. He yelled, and the men journeyingwith him joined in.
Smoke showed on the horizon, together with a wide, low, uneven line ofshacks and tents.
Neale was all eyes when he rode into that construction camp. The placewas a bedlam. A motley horde of men appeared to be doing everythingunder the sun but work, and most of them seemed particularly eager toboard a long train of box-cars and little old passenger-coaches. Nealemade a dive for the train, and his sojourn in that camp was a short andexciting one of ten minutes.
He felt unutterably proud. He had helped survey the line along which thetrain was now rattling and creaking and swaying. All that swiftly passedunder his keen eyes was recorded in his memory--the uncouth crowd oflaborers, the hardest lot he had ever seen; the talk, noise, smoke;the rickety old clattering coaches; the wayside dumps and heaps andwreckage. But they all seemed parts of a beautiful romance to him. Nealesaw through the eyes of golden ambition and illimitable dreams.
And not for a moment of that endless ride, with interminable stops, didhe weary of the two hundred and sixty miles of rails laid that year,and of the forty miles of the preceding year. Then came Omaha, abeehive--the making of a Western metropolis!
Neale plunged into the bewildering turmoil of plans, tasks, schemes,land-grants, politics, charters, inducements, liens and loans,Government and army and State and national interests, grafts and dealsand bosses--all that mass of selfish and unselfish motives, all thatwealth of cunning and noble aims, all that congested assemblage ofhumanity which went to make up the building of the Union Pacific.
Neale was a dreamer, like the few men whose minds had first given birthto the wonderful idea of a railroad from East to West. Neale foundhimself confronted by a singularly disturbing fact. However grand thisproject, its political and mercenary features could not be beautiful tohim. Why could not all men be right-minded about a noble cause and workunselfishly for the development of the West and the future generations?It was a melancholy thing to learn that men of sincere and generouspurpose had spent their all trying to raise the money to build the UnionPacific; on the other hand, it was a satisfaction to hear that manycapitalists with greedy claws had ruined themselves in like efforts.
; The President of the United States and Congress had their own troublesat the close of the war, and the Government could do but littlemoney-raising with land-grants and loans. But they offered a great bonusto the men who would build the railroad.
The first construction company subscribed over a million and a halfdollars, and paid in one-quarter of that. The money went so swiftlythat it opened the company's eyes to the insatiable gulf beneath thatenterprise, and they quit.
Thereupon what was called the Credit Mobilier was inaugurated, and itbecame both famous and infamous.
It was a type of the construction company by which it was the customto build railroads at that time. The directors, believing that whatevermoney was to be made out of the Union Pacific must be collected duringthe construction period, organized a clever system for just thispurpose.
An extravagant sum was to be paid to the Credit Mobilier for theconstruction work, thus securing for stockholders of the Union Pacific,who now controlled the Credit Mobilier, the bonds loaned by the UnitedStates Government.
The operations of the Credit Mobilier finally gave rise to one of themost serious political scandals in the history of the United StatesCongress.
The cost of all material was high, and it rose with leaps and boundsuntil it was prodigious. Omaha had no railroad entering it from theeast, and so all the supplies, materials, engines, cars, machinery, andlaborers had to be transported from St. Louis up the swift Missourion boats. This in itself was a work calling for the limit of practicalmanagement and energy. Out on the prairie-land, for hundreds of miles,were to be found no trees, no wood, scarcely any brush. The prairie-landwas beautiful ground for buffalo, but it was a most barren desert forthe exigencies of railroad men. Moreover, not only did wood and fuel andrailroad-ties have to be brought from afar, but also stone for bridgesand abutments. Then thousands of men had to be employed, and those whohired out for reasonable money soon learned that others were gettingmore; having the company at their mercy, they demanded exorbitant wagesin their turn.
One of the peculiar features of the construction, a feature over whichNeale grew impotently furious, was the law that when a certain sectionof so many miles had been laid and equipped the Government of the UnitedStates would send out expert commissioners, who would go over the lineand pass judgment upon the finished work. No two groups of commissionersseemed to agree. These experts, who had their part to play in thebewildering and labyrinthine maze of men's contrary plans and plots,reported that certain sections would have to be done over again.
The particular fault found with one of these sections was the allegedsteepness of the grade, and as Neale had been the surveyor in charge, hesoon heard of his poor work. He went over his figures and notes with theresult that he called on Henney and absolutely swore that the grade wasright. Henney swore too, in a different and more forcible way, but heagreed with Neale and advised him to call upon the expert commissioners.
Neale did so, and found them, with one exception, open to conviction.The exception was a man named Allison Lee. The name Lee gave Nealea little shock. He was a gray-looking man, with lined face, and thatconcentrated air which Neale had learned to associate with those whowere high in the affairs of the U. P.
Neale stated that his business was to show that his work had been doneright, and he had the figures to prove it. Mr. Lee replied that thesurvey was poor and would have to be done over.
"Are you a surveyor?" queried Neale, sharply, with the blood beating inhis temples.
"I have some knowledge of civil engineering," replied the commissioner.
"Well, it can't be very much," declared Neale, whose temper was up.
"Young man, be careful what you say," replied the other.
"But Mr.--Mr. Lee--listen to me, will you?" burst out Neale. "It's allhere in my notes. You've hurried over the line and you just slipped up afoot or so in your observations of that section."
Mr. Lee refused to look at the notes and waved Neale aside.
"It'll hurt my chances for a big job," Neale said, stubbornly.
"You probably will lose your job, judging from the way you address yoursuperiors."
That finished Neale. He grew perfectly white.
"All this expert-commissioner business is rot," he flung at Lee. "Rot!Lodge knows it. Henney knows it. We all do. And so do you. It's a lot ofdamn red tape! Every last man who can pull a stroke with the Governmentruns in here to annoy good efficient engineers who are building theroad. It's an outrage. It's more. It's not honest... Thatsection has forty miles in it. Five miles you claim must beresurveyed--regraded--relaid. Forty-six thousand dollars a mile!...That's the secret--two hundred and thirty thousand dollars more for aconstruction company!"
Neale left the office and, returning to Henney, repeated the interviewto him word for word. Henney complimented Neale's spirit, but deploredthe incident. It could do no good and might do harm. Many of thesecommissioners were politicians, working in close touch with thedirectors, and not averse to bleeding the Credit Mobilier.
All the engineers, including the chief, though he was noncommittal, werebitter about this expert-commissioner law. If a good road-bed had beensurveyed, the engineers knew more about it than any one else. They werethe pioneers of the work. It was exceedingly annoying and exasperatingto have a number of men travel leisurely in trains over the line andcriticize the labors of engineers who had toiled in heat and cold andwet, with brain and heart in the task. But it was so.
In May, 1866, a wagon-train escorted by troops rolled into the growingcamp of North Platte, and the first man to alight was Warren Neale,strong, active, eager-eyed as ever, but older and with face pale fromhis indoor work and hope long deferred.
The first man to greet him was Larry King, in whom time did not makechanges.
They met as long-separated brothers.
"Red how're your horses?" was Neale's query, following the greeting.
"Wintered well, but cost me all I had. I'm shore busted," replied Larry.
"I've plenty of money," said Neale, "and what's mine is yours. Come on,Red. We'll get light packs and hit the trail for the Wyoming hills."
"Wal, I reckoned so... Neale, it's shore goin' to be risky. The Injunsare on the rampage already. You see how this heah camp has growed. Menridin' in all since winter broke. An' them from west tell some hardstories."
"I've got to go," replied Neale, with emotion. "It's nearly a year sinceI saw Allie. Not a word between us in all that time!... Red, I can'tstand it longer."
"Shore, I know," replied King, hastily. "You ain't reckonin' I wanted tocrawfish? I'll go. We'll pack light, hit the trail at night, an' hide upin the daytime."
Neale had arrived in North Platte before noon, and before sunset he andKing were far out on the swelling slopes of plainland, riding toward thewest.
Traveling by night, camping by day, they soon left behind them themonotonous plains of Nebraska. The Sioux had been active for two summersalong the southern trails of Wyoming. The Texan's long training on theranges stood them in good stead here. His keen eye for tracks and smokeand distant objects, his care in hiding trails and selecting camps, andhis skill and judgment in all pertaining to the horses--these thingsmade the journey possible. For they saw Indian signs more than oncebefore the Wyoming hills loomed up in the distance. More than oneflickering camp-fire they avoided by a wide detour.
Slingerland's valley showed all the signs of early summer. The familiartrail, however, bore no tracks of horses or man or beast. A heavy rainhad fallen recently and it would have obliterated tracks.
Neale's suspense sustained the added burden of dread. In the oppressivesilence of the valley he read some nameless reason for fear. The trailseemed the same, the brook flowed and murmured as of old, the treesshone soft and green, but Neale sensed a difference. He dared not lookat Larry for confirmation of his fears. The valley had not of late beenlived in!
Neale rode hard up the trail under the pines. A blackened heap lay whereonce the cabin had stood. Neale's heart gave a terr
ible leap and thenseemed to cease beating. He could not breathe nor speak nor move. Hiseyes were fixed on the black remains of Slingerland's cabin.
"Gawd Almighty!" gasped Larry, and he put out a shaking hand to clutchNeale. "The Injuns! I always feared this--spite of Slingerland's talk."
The feel of Larry's fierce fingers, like hot, stinging arrows in hisflesh, pierced Neale's mind and made him realize what his stunnedfaculties had failed to grasp. It seemed to loosen the vise-like holdupon his muscles, to liberate his tongue.
He fell off his horse.
"Red! Look--look around!"
Allie was gone! The disappointment at not seeing her was crushing, andthe fear of utter loss was terrible. Neale lay on the ground, blind,sick, full of agony, with his fingers tearing at the grass. The evilpresentiments that had haunted him for months had not been groundlessfancies. Perhaps Allie had called to him again, in another hour ofcalamity, and this time he had not responded. She was gone! That ideastruck him cold. It meant the most dreadful of all happenings. For awhile he lay there, prostrate under the shock. He was dimly aware ofLarry's coming and sitting down beside him.
"No sign of any one," he said, huskily. "Not even a track!... Thet firemust hev been about two weeks ago. Mebbe more, but not much. There'sbeen a big rain an' the ground's all washed clean an' smooth ... Not atrack!"
It was the cowboy's habit to calculate the past movements of people andhorses by the nature of the tracks they left.
Then Neale awoke to violence. He sprang up and rushed to the ruins ofthe cabin, frantically tore and dug around the burnt embers, and did notleave off until he had overhauled the whole pile. There was nothing butashes and embers. Whereupon he ran to the empty corrals, to the sheds,to the wood-pile, to the spring, and all around the space once sohabitable. There was nothing to reward his fierce energy--nothing toscrutinize. Already grass was springing in the trails and upon spotsthat had once been bare.
Neale halted, sweating, hot, wild, before his friend. Larry avoided hisgaze.
"She's gone!... She's gone!" Neale panted.
"Wal, mebbe Slingerland moved camp an' burned this place," suggestedLarry. "He was sore after them four road-agents rustled in heah."
"No--no. He'd have left the cabin. In case he moved--Allie was to writeme a note--telling me how to find them. I remember--we picked out theplace to hide the note... Oh! she's gone! She's gone!"
"Wal, then, mebbe Slingerland got away an' the cabin was burned after."
"I can't hope that... I tell you--it means hell's opened up before me."
"Wal, it's tough, I know, Neale, but mebbe--"
Neale wheeled fiercely upon him. "You're only saying those things! Youdon't believe them! Tell me what you do really think."
"Lord, pard, it couldn't be no wuss," replied Larry, his lean faceworking. "I figger only one way. This heah. Slingerland had left Alliealone... Then--she was made away with an' the cabin burned."
"Indians?"
"Mebbe. But I lean more to the idee of an outfit like thet one what washeah."
Neale groaned in his torture. "Not that, Reddy--not that!... The Indianswould kill her--scalp her--or take her captive into their tribe... Buta gang of cutthroat ruffians like these... My God! if I KNEW that hadhappened it'd kill me."
Larry swore at his friend. "It can't do no good to go to pieces," heexpostulated. "Let's do somethin'."
"What--in Heaven's name!" cried Neale, in despair.
"Wal, we can rustle up every trail in these heah Black Hills. Mebbe wecan find Slingerland."
Then began a search--frantic, desperate, and forlorn on the part ofNeale; faithful and dogged and keen on the part of King. Neale was likea wild man. He heeded no advice or caution. Only the cowboy's iron armsaved Neale and his horse. It was imperative to find water and grass,and to eat, necessary things which Neale seemed to have forgotten. Heseldom slept or rested or ate. They risked meeting the Sioux in everyvalley and on every ridge. Neale would have welcomed the sight ofIndians; he would have rushed into peril in the madness of his grief.Still, there was hope! He lived all the hours in utter agony of mind,but his heart did not give up.
They coursed far and near, always keeping to the stream beds, for ifSlingerland had made another camp it would be near water. More thanone trail led nowhere; more than one horse track roused hopes that werefutile. The Wyoming hills country was surely a lonely and a wild one,singularly baffling to the searchers, for in two weeks of wide travel itdid not yield a sign or track of man. Neale and King used up all theirscant supply of food, threw away all their outfit except a bag of salt,and went on, living on the meat they shot.
Then one day, unexpectedly, they came upon two trappers by a beaver-dam.Neale was overcome by his emotion he sensed that from these men hewould learn something. The first look from them told him that his errandwas known.
"Howdy!" greeted Larry. "It shore is good to see you men--the fust we'vecome on in an awful hunt through these heah hills."
"Thar ain't any doubt thet you look it, friend," replied one of thetrappers.
"We're huntin' fer Slingerland. Do you happen to know him?"
"Knowed Al fer years. He went through hyar a week ago--jest after thebig rain, wasn't it, Bill?"
"Wal, to be exact it was eight days ago," replied the comrade Bill.
"Was--he--alone?" asked Larry, thickly.
"Sure, an' lookin' sick. He lost his girl not long since, he said, an'it broke him bad."
"Lost her! How?"
"Wal, he was sure it wasn't redskins," rejoined the trapper,reflectively. "Slingerland stood in with the Sioux--traded with 'em.He--"
"Tell me quick!" hoarsely interrupted Neale. "What happened to AllieLee?"
"Fellars, my pard heah is hurt deep," said Larry. "The girl you spoke ofwas his sweetheart."
"Young man, we only know what Al told us," replied the trapper. "Hesaid the only time he ever left the lass alone was the very day she wastaken. Al come home to find the cabin red-hot ashes. Everythin' gone. Nosign of the lass. No sign of murder. She was jest carried off. There wastracks--hoss tracks an' boot tracks, to the number of three or four menan' hosses. Al trailed 'em. But thet very night he had to hold up tokeep from bein' drowned, as we had to hyar. Wal, next day he couldn'tfind any tracks. But he kept on huntin' fer a few days, an' then giveup. He said she'd be dead by then--said she wasn't the kind thet couldhave lived more 'n a day with men like them. Some hard customers aredriftin' by from the gold-fields. An' Bill an' I, hyar, ain't in lovewith this railroad idee. It 'll ruin the country fer trappin' an'livin'."
Some weeks later a gaunt and ragged cowboy limped into NorthPlatte, walking beside a broken horse, upon the back of which swayed andreeled a rider tied in the saddle.
It was not a sight to interest any except the lazy or the curious,for in that day such things were common in North Platte. The horse hadbullet creases on his neck; the rider wore a bloody shirt; the gauntpedestrian had a bandaged arm.
Neale lay ill of a deeper wound while the bullet-hole healed in hisside. Day and night Larry tended him or sat by him or slept near himin a shack on the outskirts of the camp. Shock, grief, starvation,exhaustion, loss of blood and sleep--all these brought Warren Nealeclose to death. He did not care to live. It was the patient, loyalfriend who fought fever and heartbreak and the ebbing tide of life.
Baxter and Henney visited North Platte and called to see him, and laterthe chief came and ordered Larry to take Neale to the tents of thecorps. Every one was kind, solicitous, earnest. He had been missed. Themembers of his corps knew the strange story of Allie Lee; they guessedthe romance and grieved over the tragedy. They did all they could do,and the troop doctor added his attention but it was the nursing, thepresence, and the spirit of Larry King that saved Neale.
He got well and went back to work with the cowboy for his helper.
In that camp of toil and disorder none but the few with whom Neale wasbrought in close touch noted anything singular about him. The engineers,however, observe
d that he did not work so well, nor so energetically,nor so accurately. His enthusiasm was lacking. The cowboy, always withhim, was the one who saw the sudden spells of somber abstraction andthe poignant, hopeless, sleepless pain, the eternal regret. And as Nealeslackened in his duty Larry King grew more faithful.
Neale began to drink and gamble. For long the cowboy fought, argued,appealed against this order of things, and then, failing to change orpersuade Neale, he went to gambling and drinking with him. But then itwas noted that Neale never got under the influence of liquor or lostmaterially at cards. The cowboy spilled the contents of Neale's glassand played the game into his hands.
Both of them shrank instinctively from the women of the camp. The sightof anything feminine hurt.
North Platte stirred with the quickening stimulus of the approachof the rails and the trains, and the army of soldiers whose duty was toprotect the horde of toilers, and the army of tradesmen and parasiteswho lived off them.
The construction camp of the graders moved on westward, keeping ahead ofthe camps of the layers.
The first train that reached North Platte brought directors of the U. P.R.--among them Warburton and Rudd and Rogers; also Commissioners Lee andDunn and a host of followers on a tour of inspection.
The five miles of Neale's section of road that the commissioners hadjudged at fault had been torn up, resurveyed, and relaid.
Neale rode back over the line with Baxter and surveyed the renewed part.Then, returning to North Platte, he precipitated consternation amongdirectors and commissioners and engineers, as they sat in council, bythrowing on the table figures of the new survey identical with his olddata.
"Gentlemen, the five miles of track torn up and rebuilt had preciselythe same grade, to an inch!" he declared, with ringing scorn.
Baxter corroborated his statement. The commissioners roared and thedirectors demanded explanations.
"I'll explain it," shouted Neale. "Forty-six thousand dollars a mile!Five miles--two hundred and thirty thousand dollars! Spent twice! Takentwice by the same construction company!"
Warburton, a tall, white-haired man in a frock-coat, got up and poundedthe table with his fist. "Who is this young engineer?" he thundered. "Hehas the nerve to back his work instead of sneaking to get a bribe. Andhe tells the truth. We're building twice--spending twice when once isenough!"
An uproar ensued. Neale had cast a bomb into the council. Every manthere and all the thousands in camp knew that railroad ties costseveral dollars each; that wages were abnormally high, often demandedin advance, and often paid twice; that parallel with the great spiritof the work ran a greedy and cunning graft. It seemed to be inevitable,considering the nature and proportions of the enterprise. An absurd lawsent out the commissioners, the politicians appointed them, and bothhad fat pickings. The directors likewise played both ends against themiddle; they received the money from the stock sales and loans; theypaid it out to the construction companies; and as they employed andowned these companies the money returned to their own pockets. But morethan one director was fired by the spirit of the project--the good tobe done--the splendid achievement--the trade to come from across thePacific. The building of the road meant more to some of them than a merefortune.
Warburton was the lion of this group, and he roared down the dissension.Then with a whirl he grasped Neale round the shoulders and shoved himface to face with the others.
"Here's the kind of man we want on this job!" he shouted, with red faceand bulging jaw. "His name's Neale. I've heard of some of his surveys.You've all seen him face this council. That only, gentlemen, is thespirit which can build the U. P. R. Let's push him up. Let's send him toWashington with those figures. Let's break this damned idiotic law forappointing commissioners to undo the work of efficient men."
Opportunity was again knocking at Neale's door.
Allison Lee arose in the flurry, and his calm, cold presence, the steelof his hard gray eyes, and the motion of his hand entitled him to avoice.
"Mr. Warburton--and gentlemen," he said, "_I_ remember this youngengineer Neale. When I got here to-day I inquired about him, rememberingthat he had taken severe exception to the judgment of the commissionersabout that five miles of road-bed. I learned he is a strange, excitableyoung fellow, who leaves his work for long wild trips and who is adrunkard and a gambler. It seems to me somewhat absurd seriously toconsider the false report with which he has excited this council."
"It's not false," retorted Neale, with flashing eyes. Then he appealedto Warburton and he was white and eloquent. "You directors know better.This man. Lee is no engineer. He doesn't know a foot-grade from aforty-five-degree slope. Not a man in that outfit had the right or theknowledge to pass judgment on our work. It's political. It's a damnedoutrage. It's graft."
Another commissioner bounced up with furious gestures.
"We'll have you fired!" he shouted.
Neale looked at him and back at Allison Lee and then at Warburton.
"I quit," he declared, with scorn. "To hell with your rotten railroad!"
Another hubbub threatened in the big tent. Some one yelled for quiet.
And suddenly there was quiet, but it did not come from that individual'scall. A cowboy had detached himself from the group of curious onlookersand had confronted the council with two big guns held low.
"Red! Hold on!" cried Neale.
It was Larry. One look at him blanched Neale's face.
"Everybody sit still an' let me talk," drawled Larry, with the cool,reckless manner that now seemed so deadly.
No one moved, and the silence grew unnatural. The cowboy advanced a fewstrides. His eyes, with a singular piercing intentness, were bent uponAllison Lee, yet seemed to hold all the others in sight. He held one gunin direct alignment with Lee, low down, and with the other he rapped onthe table. The gasp that went up from round that table proved that someone saw the guns were both cocked.
"Did I understand you to say Neale lied aboot them surveyin' figgers?"he queried, gently.
Allison Lee turned as white as a corpse. The cowboy radiated somedominating force, but the chill in his voice was terrible. It meant thatlife was nothing to him--nor death. What was the U. P. R. to him, or itsdirectors, or its commissioners, or the law? There was no law in thatwild camp but the law in his hands. And he knew it.
"Did you say my pard lied?" he repeated.
Allison Lee struggled and choked over a halting, "No."
The cowboy backed away, slowly, carefully, with soft steps, and he facedthe others as he moved.
"I reckon thet's aboot all," he said, and, slipping into the crowd, hewas gone.