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

Some ten miles from the scene of the massacre and perhaps fifteen from the line surveyed by the engineers, Slingerland lived in a wild valley in the heart of the Wyoming hills.

The ride there was laborsome and it took time, but Neale scarcely noted either fact. He paid enough attention to the trail to fix landmarks and turnings in his mind, so that he would remember how to find the way there again. He was, however, mostly intent upon the girl he was carrying.

Twice that he knew of her eyes opened during the ride. But it was to see nothing and only to grip him tighter, if that were possible. Neale began to imagine that he had been too hopeful. Her body was a dead weight and cold. Those two glimpses he had of her opened eyes hurt him. What should he do when she did come to herself? She would be frantic with horror and grief and he would be helpless. In a case like hers it might have been better if she had been killed.

The last mile to Slingerland’s lay through a beautiful green valley with steep sides almost like a cañon—trees everywhere, and a swift, clear brook running over a bed of smooth rock. The trail led along this brook up to where the valley boxed and the water boiled out of a great spring in a green glade overhung by bushy banks and gray rocks above. A rude cabin with a red-stone chimney and clay-chinked cracks between the logs, stuffed to bursting with furs and pelts and horns and traps, marked the home of the trapper.

“Wal, we’re hyar,” sung out Slingerland, and in the cheery tones there was something which told that the place was indeed home to him.

“Shore is a likely-lookin’ camp,” drawled Red, throwing his bridle. “Been heah a long time, thet cabin.”

“Me an’ my pard was the first white men in these hyar hills,” replied Slingerland. “He’s gone now.” Then he turned to Neale. “Son, you must be tired. Thet was a ways to carry a girl nigh onto dead.... Look how white! Hand her down to me.”

The girl’s hands slipped nervelessly and limply from their hold upon Neale. Slingerland laid her on the grass in a shady spot. The three men gazed down upon her, all sober, earnest, doubtful.

“I reckon we can’t do nothin’ but wait,” said the trapper.

Red King shook his head as if the problem were beyond him.

Neale did not voice his thought, yet he wanted to be the first person her eyes should rest upon when she did return to consciousness.

“Wal, I’ll set to work an’ clean out a place fer her,” said Slingerland.

“We’ll help,” rejoined Neale. “Red, you have a look at the horses.”

“I’ll slip the saddles an’ bridles,” replied King, “an’ let ‘em go. Hosses couldn’t be chased out of heah.”

Slingerland’s cabin consisted really of two adjoining cabins with a door between, one part being larger and of later construction. Evidently he used the older building as a storeroom for his pelts. When all these had been removed the room was seen to be small, with two windows, a table, and a few other crude articles of home-made furniture. The men cleaned this room and laid down a carpet of deer hides, fur side up. A bed was made of a huge roll of buffalo skins, flattened and shaped, and covered with Indian blankets. When all this had been accomplished the trapper removed his fur cap, scratched his grizzled head, and appealed to Neale and King.

“I reckon you can fetch over some comfortable-like necessaries—fixin’s fer a girl,” he suggested.

Red King laughed in his cool, easy, droll way. “Shore, we’ll rustle fer a lookin’-glass, an’ hair-brush, an’ such as girls hev to hev. Our camp is full of them things.”

But Neale did not see any humor in Slingerland’s perplexity or in the cowboy’s facetiousness. It was the girl’s serious condition that worried him, not her future comfort.

“Run out thar!” called Slingerland, sharply.

Neale, who was the nearest to the door, bolted outside, to see the girl sitting up, her hair disheveled, her manner wild in the extreme. At sight of him she gave a start, sudden and violent, and uttered a sharp cry. When Neale reached her it was to find her shaking all over. Terrible fear had never been more vividly shown, yet Neale believed she saw in him a white man, a friend. But the fear in her was still stronger than reason.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“My name’s Neale—Warren Neale,” he replied, sitting down beside her. He took one of the shaking hands in his. He was glad that she talked rationally.

“Where am I?”

“This is the home of a trapper. I brought you here. It was the best—in fact, the only place.”

“You saved me—from—from those devils?” she queried, hoarsely, and again the cold and horrible shade veiled her eyes.

“Yes—yes—but don’t think of them—they’re gone,” replied Neale, hastily. The look of her distressed and frightened him. He did not know what to say.

The girl fell back with a poignant cry and covered her eyes as if to shut out a hateful and appalling sight. “My—mother!” she moaned, and shuddered with agony. “They—murdered—her!... Oh! the terrible yells!... I saw—killed—every man—Mrs. Jones! My mother—she fell—she never spoke! Her blood was on me!... I crawled away—I hid!... The Indians—they tore—hacked—scalped—burned!... I couldn’t die!—I saw!... Oh!—Oh!—Oh!” Then she fell to moaning in inarticulate fashion.

Slingerland and King came out and looked down at