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In 1865, just after the war, a party of engineers was at work in theWyoming hills on a survey as hazardous as it was problematical. They hadcharge of the laying out of the Union Pacific Railroad.
This party, escorted by a company of United States troops under ColonelDillon, had encountered difficulties almost insurmountable. And now,having penetrated the wild hills to the eastern slope of the Rockiesthey were halted by a seemingly impassable barrier--a gorge too deep tofill, too wide to bridge.
General Lodge, chief engineer of the corps, gave an order to one ofhis assistants. "Put young Neale on the job. If we ever survey a linethrough this awful place we'll owe it to him."
The assistant, Baxter, told an Irishman standing by and smoking a short,black pipe to find Neale and give him the chief's orders. The Irishman,Casey by name, was raw-boned, red-faced, and hard-featured, a man inuredto exposure and rough life. His expression was one of extreme and fixedgood humor, as if his face had been set, mask-like, during a grin. Heremoved the pipe from his lips.
"Gineral, the flag I've been holdin' fer thot dom' young surveyor is thewrong color. I want a green flag."
Baxter waved the Irishman to his errand, but General Lodge looked upfrom the maps and plans before him with a faint smile. He had a dark,stern face and the bearing of a soldier.
"Casey, you can have any color you like," he said. "Maybe green wouldchange our luck."
"Gineral, we'll niver git no railroad built, an' if we do it'll be theIrish thot builds it," responded Casey, and went his way.
Truly only one hope remained--that the agile and daring Neale, with hiseye of a mountaineer and his genius for estimating distance and grade,might run a line around the gorge.
While waiting for Neale the engineers went over the maps and drawingsagain and again, with the earnestness of men who could not be beaten.
Lodge had been a major-general in the Civil War just ended, and beforethat he had traveled through this part of the West many times, andalways with the mighty project of a railroad looming in his mind. It hadtaken years to evolve the plan of a continental railroad, and it cameto fruition at last through many men and devious ways, through plots andcounterplots. The wonderful idea of uniting East and West by a railroadoriginated in one man's brain; he lived for it, and finally he diedfor it. But the seeds he had sown were fruitful. One by one other mendivined and believed, despite doubt and fear, until the day arrived whenCongress put the Government of the United States, the army, a group offrock-coated directors, and unlimited gold back of General Lodge, andbade him build the road.
In all the length and breadth of the land no men but the chief engineerand his assistants knew the difficulty, the peril of that undertaking.The outside world was interested, the nation waited, mostly in doubt.But Lodge and his engineers had been seized by the spirit of some greatthing to be, in the making of which were adventure, fortune, fame,and that strange call of life which foreordained a heritage for futuregenerations. They were grim; they were indomitable.
Warren Neale came hurrying up. He was a New Englander of poor family,self-educated, wild for adventure, keen for achievement, eager, ardent,bronze-faced, and keen-eyed, under six feet in height, built like awedge, but not heavy--a young man of twenty-three with strong latentpossibilities of character.
General Lodge himself explained the difficulties of the situation andwhat the young surveyor was expected to do. Neale flushed with pride;his eyes flashed; his jaw set. But he said little while the engineersled him out to the scene of the latest barrier. It was a rugged gorge,old and yellow and crumbled, cedar-fringed at the top, bare and white atthe bottom. The approach to it was through a break in the walls, so thatthe gorge really extended both above and below this vantage-point.
"This is the only pass through these foot-hills," said Engineer Henney,the eldest of Lodge's corps.
The passage ended where the break in the walls fronted abruptly upon thegorge. It was a wild scene. Only inspired and dauntless men could haveentertained any hope of building a railroad through such a place. Themouth of the break was narrow; a rugged slope led up to the left; to theright a huge buttress of stone wall bulged over the gorge; across stoodout the seamed and cracked cliffs, and below yawned the abyss. Thenearer side of the gorge could only be guessed at.
Neale crawled to the extreme edge of the precipice, and, lying flat, hetried to discover what lay beneath. Evidently he did not see much, forupon getting up he shook his head. Then he gazed at the bulging wall.
"The side of that can be blown off," he muttered.
"But what's around the corner? If it's straight stone wall for miles andmiles we are done," said Boone, another of the engineers.
"The opposite wall is just that," added Henney. "A straight stone wall."
General Lodge gazed at the baffling gorge. His face became grimmer,harder. "It seems impossible to go on, but we must go on!" he said.
A short silence ensued. The engineers faced one another like menconfronted by a last and crowning hindrance. Then Neale laughed. Heappeared cool and confident.
"It only looks bad," he said. "We'll climb to the top and I'll go downover the wall on a rope."
Neale had been let down over many precipices in those stony hills. Hehad been the luckiest, the most daring and successful of all the menpicked out and put to perilous tasks. No one spoke of the accidents thathad happened, or even the fatal fall of a lineman who a few weeksbefore had ventured once too often. Every rod of road surveyed made theengineers sterner at their task, just as it made them keener to attainfinal success.
The climb to the top of the bluff was long and arduous. The whole corpswent, and also some of the troopers.
"I'll need a long rope," Neale had said to King, his lineman.
It was this order that made King take so much time in ascending thebluff. Besides, he was a cowboy, used to riding, and could not climbwell.
"Wal--I--shore--rustled--all the line--aboot heah," he drawled,pantingly, as he threw lassoes and coils of rope at Neale's feet.
Neale picked up some of the worn pieces. He looked dubious. "Is this allyou could get?" he asked.
"Shore is. An' thet includes what Casey rustled from the soldiers."
"Help me knot these," went on Neale.
"Wal, I reckon this heah time I'll go down before you," drawled King.
Neale laughed and looked curiously at his lineman. Back somewhere inNebraska this cowboy from Texas had attached himself to Neale. Theyworked together; they had become friends. Larry Red King made no bonesof the fact that Texas had grown too hot for him. He had been bornwith an itch to shoot. To Neale it seemed that King made too much of aservice Neale had rendered--the mere matter of a helping hand. Still,there had been danger.
"Go down before me!" exclaimed Neale.
"I reckon," replied King.
"You will not," rejoined the other, bluntly. "I may not need you at all.What's the sense of useless risk?"
"Wal, I'm goin'--else I throw up my job."
"Oh, hell!" burst out Neale as he strained hard on a knot. Again helooked at his lineman, this time with something warmer than curiosity inhis glance.
Larry Red King was tall, slim, hard as iron, and yet undeniably gracefulin outline--a singularly handsome and picturesque cowboy with flaminghair and smooth, red face and eyes of flashing blue. From his belt swunga sheath holding a heavy gun.
"Wal, go ahaid," added Neale, mimicking his comrade. "An' I shore hopethet this heah time you-all get aboot enough of your job."
One by one the engineers returned from different points along the wall,and they joined the group around Neale and King.
"Test that rope," ordered General Lodge.
The long rope appeared to be amply strong. When King fastened one endround his body under his arms the question arose among the engineers,just as it had arisen for Neale, whether or not it was needful to letthe lineman down before the surveyor. Henney, who superintended thissort of work, decided it was not necessary.
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br /> "I reckon I'll go ahaid," said King. Like all Texans of his type,Larry King was slow, easy, cool, careless. Moreover, he gave a singularimpression of latent nerve, wildness, violence.
There seemed every assurance of a deadlock when General Lodge steppedforward and addressed his inquiry to Neale.
"Larry thinks the rope will break. So he wants to go first," repliedNeale.
There were broad smiles forthcoming, yet no one laughed. This was oneof the thousands of strange human incidents that must be enacted in thebuilding of the railroad. It might have been humorous, but it was big.It fixed the spirit and it foreshadowed events.
General Lodge's stern face relaxed, but he spoke firmly. "Obey orders,"he admonished Larry King.
The loop was taken from Larry's waist and transferred to Neale's. Thenall was made ready to let the daring surveyor with his instrument downover the wall.
Neale took one more look at the rugged front of the cliff. When hestraightened up the ruddy bronze had left his face.
"There's a bulge of rock. I can't see what's below it," he said. "Nouse for signals. I'll go down the length of the rope and trust to find afooting. I can't be hauled up."
They all conceded this silently.
Then Neale sat down, let his legs dangle over the wall, firmly graspedhis instrument, and said to the troopers who held the rope, "All right!"
They lowered him foot by foot.
It was windy and the dust blew up from under the wall. Black canonswifts, like swallows, darted out with rustling wings, utteringfrightened twitterings. The engineers leaned over, watching Neale'sprogress. Larry King did not look over the precipice. He watched theslowly slipping rope as knot by knot it passed over. It fascinated him.
"He's reached the bulge of rock," called Baxter, craning his neck.
"There, he's down--out of sight!" exclaimed Henney.
Casey, the flagman, leaned farther out than any other. "Phwat a dom'sthrange way to build a railroad, I sez," he remarked.
The gorge lay asleep in the westering sun, silent, full of blue haze.Seen from this height, far above the break where the engineers had firsthalted, it had the dignity and dimensions of a canon. Its walls hadbegun to change color in the sunset light.
Foot by foot the soldiers let the rope slip, until probably two hundredhad been let out, and there were scarcely a hundred feet left. By thistime all that part of the cable which had been made of lassoes hadpassed over; the remainder consisted of pieces of worn and knotted andfrayed rope, at which the engineers began to gaze fearfully.
"I don't like this," said Henney, nervously. "Neale surely ought to havefound a ledge or bench or slope by now."
Instinctively the soldiers held back, reluctantly yielding inches wherebefore they had slacked away feet. But intent as was their gaze, itcould not rival that of the cowboy.
"Hold!" he yelled, suddenly pointing to where the strained rope curvedover the edge of the wall.
The troopers held hard. The rope ceased to pay out. The strain seemed toincrease. Larry King pointed with a lean hand.
"It's a-goin' to break!"
His voice, hoarse and swift, checked the forward movement of theengineers. He plunged to his knees before the rope and reachedclutchingly, as if he wanted to grasp it, yet dared not.
"Ropes was my job! Old an' rotten! It's breakin'!"
Even as he spoke the rope snapped. The troopers, thrown off theirbalance, fell backward. Baxter groaned; Boone and Henney cried out inhorror; General Lodge stood aghast, dazed. Then they all froze rigid inthe position of intense listening.
A dull sound puffed up from the gorge, a low crash, then a slow-risingroar and rattle of sliding earth and rock. It diminished and ceased withthe hollow cracking of stone against stone.
Casey broke the silence among the listening men with a curse. Larry RedKing rose from his knees, holding the end of the snapped rope, whichhe threw from him with passionate violence. Then with action just asviolent he unbuckled his belt and pulled it tighter and buckled itagain. His eyes were blazing with blue lightning; they seemed to accusethe agitated engineers of deliberate murder. But he turned away withoutspeaking and hurried along the edge of the gorge, evidently searchingfor a place to go down.
General Lodge ordered the troopers to follow King and if possiblerecover Neale's body.
"That lad had a future," said old Henney, sadly. "We'll miss him."
Boone's face expressed sickness and horror.
Baxter choked. "Too bad!" he murmured, "but what's to be done?"
The chief engineer looked away down the shadowy gorge where the sun wasburning the ramparts red. To have command of men was hard, bitter. Deathstalked with his orders. He foresaw that the building of this railroadwas to resemble the war in which he had sent so many lads and men tobloody graves.
The engineers descended the long slope and returned to camp, a mile downthe narrow valley. Fires were blazing; columns of smoke were curlingaloft; the merry song and reckless laugh of soldiers were ringing out,so clear in the still air; horses were neighing and stamping.
Colonel Dillon reported to General Lodge that one of the scouts hadsighted a large band of Sioux Indians encamped in a valley not fardistant. This tribe had gone on the war-path and had begun to harass theengineers. Neale's tragic fate was forgotten in the apprehension ofwhat might happen when the Sioux discovered the significance of thatsurveying expedition.
"The Sioux could make the building of the U. P. impossible," saidHenney, always nervous and pessimistic.
"No Indians--nothing can stop us!" declared his chief.
The troopers sent to follow Larry King came back to camp, saying thatthey had lost him and that they could not find any place where it waspossible to get down into that gorge.
In the morning Larry King had not returned.
Detachments of troopers were sent in different directions to try again.And the engineers went out once more to attack their problem. Successdid not attend the efforts of either party, and at sunset, when all hadwearily returned to camp, Larry King was still absent. Then he was givenup for lost.
But before dark the tall cowboy limped into camp, dusty and torn,carrying Neale's long tripod and surveying instrument. It looked theworse for a fall, but apparently was not badly damaged. King did notgive the troopers any satisfaction. Limping on to the tents of theengineers, he set down the instrument and called. Boone was the firstto come out, and his summons brought Henney, Baxter, and the youngermembers of the corps. General Lodge, sitting at his campfire some rodsaway, and bending over his drawings, did not see King's arrival.
No one detected any difference in the cowboy, except that he limped.Slow, cool, careless he was, yet somehow vital and impelling. "Wal, werun the line around--four miles up the gorge whar the crossin' is easy.Only ninety-foot grade to the mile."
The engineers looked at him as if he were crazy.
"But Neale! He fell--he's dead!" exclaimed Henney.
"Daid? Wal, no, Neale ain't daid," drawled Larry.
"Where is he, then?"
"I reckon he's comin' along back heah."
"Is he hurt?"
"Shore. An' hungry, too, which is what I am," replied Larry, as helimped away.
Some of the engineers hurried out in the gathering dusk to meet Neale,while others went to General Lodge with the amazing story.
The chief received the good news quietly but with intent eyes. "BringNeale and King here--as soon as their needs have been seen to," heordered. Then he called after Baxter, "Ninety feet to the mile, yousaid?"
"Ninety-foot grade, so King reported."
"By all that's lucky!" breathed the chief, as if his load had beenimmeasurably lightened. "Send those boys to me."
Some of the soldiers had found Neale down along the trail and werehelping him into camp. He was crippled and almost exhausted. He madelight of his condition, yet he groaned when he dropped into a seatbefore the fire.
Some one approached Larry King to inform him that the general wanted tos
ee him.
"Wal, I'm hungry--an' he ain't my boss," replied Larry, and went on withhis meal. It was well known that the Southerner would not talk.
But Neale talked; he blazed up in eloquent eulogy of his lineman; beforean hour had passed away every one in camp knew that Larry had savedNeale's life. Then the loquacious Casey, intruding upon the cowboy'sreserve, got roundly cursed for his pains.
"G'wan out among thim Sooz Injuns an' be a dead hero, thin," retortedCasey, as the cowboy stalked off to be alone in the gloom. EvidentlyCasey was disappointed not to get another cursing, for he turned to hiscomrade, McDermott, an axman. "Say, Mac, phwot do you make of cowboys?"
"I tell ye, Pat, I make of thim thet you'll be full of bulletholesbefore this railroad's built."
"Thin, b'gosh, I'll hould drink fer a long time yit," replied Casey.
Later General Lodge visited Neale and received the drawings and figuresthat made plain solution of what had been a formidable problem.
"It was easy, once I landed under that bulge of cliff," said Neale."There's a slope of about forty-five degrees--not all rock. And fourmiles up the gorge peters out. We can cross. I got to where I could seethe divide--and oh! there is where our troubles begin. The worst is allto come."
"You've said it," replied the chief, soberly. "We can't follow the trailand get the grade necessary. We've got to hunt up a pass."
"We'll find one," said Neale, hopefully.
"Neale, you're ambitious and you've the kind of spirit that never givesup. I've watched your work from the start. You'll make a big positionfor yourself with this railroad, if you only live through the buildingof it."
"Oh, I'll live through it, all right," replied Neale, laughing. "I'mlike a cat--always on my feet--and have nine lives besides."
"You surely must! How far did you fall this time?"
"Not far. I landed in a tree, where my instrument stuck. But I crasheddown, and got a hard knock on the head. When Larry found me I wasunconscious and sliding for another precipice."
"That Texan seems attached to you."
"Well, if he wasn't before he will be now," said Neale, feelingly. "I'lltell you, General, Larry's red-headed, a droll, lazy Southerner,and he's made fun of by the men. But they don't understand him. Theycertainly can't see how dangerous he is. Only I don't mean that. I domean that he's true like steel."
"Yes, he showed that. When the rope snapped I was sure he'd pull a gunon us.... Neale, I would like to have had you and Larry Red King with methrough the war."
"Thank you, General Lodge.... But I like the prospects now."
"Neale, you're hungry for wild life?"
"Yes," replied Neale, simply.
"I said as much. I felt very much the same way when I was your age. Andyou like our prospects?... Well, you've thought things out. Neale, thebuilding of the U. P. will be hell!"
"General, I can see that. It sort of draws me--two ways--the wildness ofit and then to accomplish something."
"My lad, I hope you will accomplish something big without living out allthe wildness."
"You think I might lose my head?" queried Neale.
"You are excitable and quick-tempered. Do you drink?"
"Yes--a little," answered the young man. "But I don't care for liquor."
"Don't drink, Neale," said the chief, earnestly. "Of course it doesn'tmatter now, for we're only a few men out here in the wilds. But when ourwork is done over the divide, we must go back along the line. You knowground has been broken and rails laid west of Omaha. The work's begun.I hear that Omaha is a beehive. Thousands of idle men are flocking West.The work will be military. We must have the army to protect us, andwe will hire all the soldiers who apply. But there will be hordes ofothers--the dregs of the war and all the bad characters of the frontier.They will flock to the construction camp. Millions of dollars will goalong with the building. Gold!... Where it's all coming from I have noidea. The Government backs us with the army--that's all. But the goldwill be forthcoming. I have that faith.... And think, lad, what it willmean in a year or two. Ten thousand soldiers in one camp out herein these wild hills. And thousands of others--honest merchants anddishonest merchants, whisky men, gamblers, desperadoes, bandits, andbad women. Niggers, Greasers, Indians, all together moving from camp tocamp, where there can be no law."
"It will be great!" exclaimed Neale, with shining eyes.
"It will be terrible," muttered the elder man, gravely. Then, as he gotup and bade his young assistant good night, the somberness had returnedto his eyes and the weight to his shoulders. He did not underestimatehis responsibility nor the nature of his task, and he felt the coming ofnameless and unknown events beyond all divining.
Henney was Neale's next visitor. The old engineer appeared elated, butfor the moment he apparently forgot everything else in his solicitudefor the young man's welfare.
Presently, after he had been reassured, the smile came back to his face.
"The chief has promoted you," he said.
"What!" exclaimed Neale, starting up.
"It's a fact. He just talked it over with Baxter and me. This last jobof yours pleased him mightily... and so you go up."
"Go up!... To what?" queried Neale, eagerly.
"Well, that's why he consulted us, I guess," laughed Henney. "You see,we sort of had to make something to promote you to, for the present."
"Oh, I see! I was wondering what job there could be," replied Neale, andhe laughed, too. "What did the chief say?"
"He said a lot. Figured you'd land at the top if the U. P. is everbuilt.... Chief engineer!... Superintendent of maintenance of way!"
"Good Lord!" breathed Neale. "You're not in earnest?"
"Wal, I shore am, as your cowboy pard says," returned Henney. And thenhe spoke with real earnestness. "Listen, Neale. Here's the matter in anutshell. You will be called upon to run these particular and difficultsurveys, just as yesterday. But no more of the routine for you. Added tothat, you will be sent forward and back, inspecting, figuring. You canmake your headquarters with us or in the construction camps, as suitsyour convenience. All this, of course, presently, when we get fartheron. So you will be in a way free--your own boss a good deal of the time.And fitting yourself for that 'maintenance of way' job. In fact,the chief said that--he called you Maintenance-of-Way Neale. Well,I congratulate you. And my advice is keep on as you've begun--gostraight--look out for your wildness and temper.... That's all. Goodnight."
Then he went out, leaving Neale speechless.
Neale had many callers that night, and the last was Larry Red King. Thecowboy stooped to enter the tent.
"Wal, how aboot you-all?" he drawled.
"Not so good, Red," replied Neale. "My head's hot and I've got a lot ofpain. I think I'm going to be a little flighty. Would you mind gettingyour blankets and staying with me tonight?"
"I reckon I'd be glad," answered King. He put a hand on Neale's face."You shore have fever." He left the tent, to return presently with aroll of blankets and a canteen. Then he awkwardly began to bathe Neale'sface with cold water. There was a flickering camp-fire outside thatthrew shadows on the wall of the tent. By its light Neale saw thatKing's left hand was bandaged and that he used it clumsily.
"What's wrong with your hand?" he queried.
"I reckon nawthin'."
"Why is it bound up, then?"
"Wal, some one sent thet fool army doctor to me an' he said I had twobusted bones in it."
"He did! I had no idea you were hurt. You never said a word. And youcarried me and my instrument all day--with a broken hand!"
"Wal, I ain't so shore it's broke."
Neale swore at his friend and then he fell asleep. King watched besidehim, ever and anon rewetting the hot brow.
The camp-fire died out, and at length the quietness of late night setin. The wind mourned and lulled by intervals; a horse thudded his hoofsnow and then; there were the soft, steady footsteps of the sentry onguard, and the wild cry of a night bird.