The U. P. Trail by Zane Grey (historical books to read TXT) 📗

“Son, mebbe you ought to wait awhile. You’re packin’ a bullet somewhar in your carcass.”

“It’s here,” said 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.