The U. P. Trail by Zane Grey (e book reader pc .TXT) đź“–
- Author: Zane Grey
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Pat regarded his comrade with considerable respect. “Mac, shure yez is intilligint,” he granted. “The Irish lived on whisky an’ the Chinamons on tay.... Wal, yez is so dom’ orful smart, mebbe yez can tell me who got the money for thot worrk.”
“B’gorra, I know where ivery dollar wint,” replied McDermott.
And so they argued on, oblivious to the impressive last stage.
Neale sensed the rest, the repose in the attitude of all the laborers present. Their hour was done. And they accepted that with the equanimity with which they had met the toil, the heat and thirst, the Sioux. A splendid, rugged, loquacious, crude, elemental body of men, unconscious of heroism. Those who had survived the five long years of toil and snow and sun, and the bloody Sioux, and the roaring camps, bore the scars, the furrows, the gray hairs of great and wild times.
A lane opened up in the crowd to the spot where the rails had met.
Neale got a glimpse of his associates, the engineers, as they stood near the frock-coated group of dignitaries and directors. Then Neale felt the stir and lift of emotion, as if he were on a rising wave. His blood began to flow fast and happily. He was to share their triumphs. The moment had come. Some one led him back to his post of honor as the head of the engineer corps.
A silence fell then over that larger, denser multitude. It grew impressive, charged, waiting.
Then a man of God offered up a prayer. His voice floated dreamily to Neale. When he had ceased there were slow, dignified movements of frock-coated men as they placed in position the last spike.
The silver sledge flashed in the sunlight and fell. The sound of the driving-stroke did not come to Neale with the familiar spang of iron; it was soft, mellow, golden.
A last stroke! The silence vibrated to a deep, hoarse acclaim from hundreds of men—a triumphant, united hurrah, simultaneously sent out with that final message, “Done!”
A great flood of sound, of color seemed to wave over Neale. His eyes dimmed with salt tears, blurring the splendid scene. The last moment had passed—that for which he had stood with all faith, all spirit—and the victory was his. The darkness passed out of his soul.
Then, as he stood there, bareheaded, at the height of this all-satisfying moment, when the last echoing melody of the sledge had blended in the roar of the crowd, a strange feeling of a presence struck Neale. Was it spiritual—was it divine—was it God? Or was it only baneful, fateful—the specter of his accomplished work—a reminder of the long, gray future?
A hand slipped into his—small, soft, trembling, exquisitely thrilling. Neale became still as a stone—transfixed. He knew that touch. No dream, no fancy, no morbid visitation! He felt warm flesh—tender, clinging fingers; and then the pulse of blood that beat of hope—love—life—Allie Lee!
36
Slingerland saw Allie Lee married to Neale by that minister of God whose prayer had followed the joining of the rails.
And to the old trapper had fallen the joy and the honor of giving the bride away and of receiving her kiss, as though he had been her father. Then the happy congratulations from General Lodge and his staff; the merry dinner given the couple, and its toasts warm with praise of the bride’s beauty and the groom’s luck and success; Neale’s strange, rapt happiness and Allie’s soul shining through her dark-blue eyes—this hour was to become memorable for Slingerland’s future dreams.
Slingerland’s sight was not clear when, as the train pulled away, he waved a last good-bye to his young friends. Now he had no hope, no prayer left unanswered, except to be again in his beloved hills.
Abruptly he hurried away to the corrals where his pack-train was all in readiness to start. He did not speak to a man. He had packed a dozen burros—the largest and completest pack-train he had ever driven. The abundance of carefully selected supplies, tools, and traps should last him many years—surely all the years that he would live.
Slingerland did not intend to return to civilization, and he never even looked back at that blotch on the face of the bluff—that hideous Roaring City.
He drove the burros at a good trot, his mind at once busy and absent, happy with the pictures of that last hour, gloomy with the undefined, unsatisfied cravings of his heart. Friendship with Neale, affection for Allie, acquainted him with the fact that he had missed something in life—not friendship, for he had had hunter friends, but love, perhaps of a sweetheart, surely love of a daughter.
For the rest the old trapper was glad to see the last of habitations, and of men, and of the railroad. Slingerland hated that great, shining steel band of progress connecting East and West. Every ringing sledge-hammer blow had sung out the death-knell of the trapper’s calling. This railroad spelled the end of the wilderness. What one group of greedy men had accomplished others would imitate; and the grass of the plains would be burned, the forests blackened, the fountains dried up in the valleys, and the wild creatures of the mountains driven and hunted and exterminated. The end of the buffalo had come—the end of the Indian was in sight—and that of the fur-bearing animal and his hunter must follow soon with the hurrying years.
Slingerland hated the railroad, and he could not see as Neale did, or any of the engineers or builders. This old trapper had the vision of the Indian—that far-seeing eye cleared by distance and silence, and the force of the great, lonely hills. Progress was great, but nature undespoiled was greater. If a race could not breed all stronger men, through its great movements, it might better not breed any, for the bad over-multiplied the good, and so their needs magnified into greed. Slingerland saw many shining bands of steel across the plains and mountains, many stations and hamlets and cities, a growing and marvelous prosperity from timber, mines, farms, and in the distant end—a gutted West.
He made his first camp on a stream watering a valley twenty miles from the railroad. There were Indian tracks on the trails. But he had nothing to fear from Indians. That night, though all was starry and silent around him as he lay, he still held the insupportable feeling.
Next day he penetrated deeper into the foothills, and soon he had gained the fastnesses of the mountains. No longer did he meet trails except those of deer and wildcat and bear. And so day after day he drove his burros, climbing and descending the rocky ways, until he had penetrated to the very heart of the great wild range.
In all his roaming over untrodden lands he had never come into such a wild place. No foot, not—even an Indian’s, had ever desecrated this green valley with its clear, singing stream, its herds of tame deer, its curious beaver, its pine-covered slopes, its looming, gray, protective peaks. And at last he was satisfied to halt there—to build his cabin and his corral.
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