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

of the milder days, which were getting rarer in mid-December, Neale again visited his comrade on the summit. He found Service in bad shape. In falling down a slippery ledge he had injured or broken his lame leg. Neale, with great concern, tried to ascertain the nature and extent of the harm done, but he was unable to do so. Service was practically helpless, although not suffering any great pain. The two of them decided, at length, that he had not broken any bones, but that it was necessary to move him to where he could be waited upon and treated, or else some one must be brought in to take care of him. Neale deliberated a moment.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said, finally. “You can be moved down to Slingerland’s cabin without pain to you. I’ll get Slingerland and his sled. You’ll be more comfortable there. It’ll be better all around.”

So that was decided upon. And Neale, after doing all he could for Service, and assuring him that he would return in less than twenty-four hours, turned his steps for the valley.

The sunset that night struck him as singularly dull, pale, menacing. He understood its meaning later, when Slingerland said they were in for another storm. Before dark the wind began to moan through the trees like lost spirits. The trapper shook his shaggy head ominously.

“Reckon thet sounds bad to me,” he said. And from moan it rose to wail, and from wail to roar.

That alarmed Neale. He went outside and Slingerland followed. Snow was sweeping down-light, dry, powdery. The wind was piercingly cold. Slingerland yelled something, but Neale could not distinguish what. When they got back inside the trapper said:

“Blizzard!”

Neale grew distressed.

“Wal, no use to worry about Service,” argued the trapper. “If it is a blizzard we can’t git up thar, thet’s all. Mebbe this’ll not be so bad. But I ain’t bettin’ on thet.”

Even Allie couldn’t cheer Neale that night. Long after she and the others had retired he kept up the fire and listened to the roar of the wind. When the fire died down a little the cabin grew uncomfortably cold, and this fact attested to a continually dropping temperature. But he hoped against hope and finally sought his blankets.

Morning came, but the cabin was almost as dark as by night. A blinding, swirling snow-storm obscured the sun.

A blizzard raged for forty-eight hours. When the snow finally ceased falling the cold increased until Neale guessed the temperature might be forty degrees below zero. The trapper claimed sixty. It was necessary to stay indoors till the weather moderated.

On the fifth morning Slingerland was persuaded to attempt the trip to aid Service. Larry wanted to accompany them, but Slingerland said he had better stay with Allie. So, muffled up, the two men set out on snow-shoes, dragging a sled. A crust had frozen on the snow, otherwise traveling would have been impossible. Once up on the slope the north wind hit them square in the face. Heavily clad as he was, Neale thought the very marrow in his bones would freeze. That wind blew straight through him. There were places where it took both men to hold the sled to keep it from getting away. They were blown back one step for every two steps they made. On the exposed heights they could not walk upright. At last, after hours of desperate effort, they got over the ridge to a sheltered side along which they labored up to Service’s dugout.

Up there the snow had blown away in places, leaving bare spots, bleak, icy, barren, stark. No smoke appeared to rise above the dugout. The rude habitation looked as though no man had been there that winter. Neale glanced in swift dismay at Slingerland.

“Son, look fer the wust,” he said. “An’ we hain’t got time to waste.”

They pushed open the canvas framework of a door and, stooping low, passed inside. Neale’s glance saw first the fireplace, where no fire had burned for days. Snow had sifted into the dugout and lay in little drifts everywhere. The blankets on the bunk covered Service, hiding his face. Both men knew before they uncovered him what his fate had been.

“Frozen to death!” gasped Neale.

Service lay white, rigid, like stone, with no sign of suffering upon his face.

“He jest went to sleep—an’ never woke up,” declared Slingerland.

“Thank God for that!” exclaimed Neale. “Oh, why did I not stay with him?”

“Too late, son. An’ many a good man will go to his death before thet damn railroad is done.”

Neale searched for Service’s notes and letters and valuables which could be turned over to the engineering staff.

Slingerland found a pick and shovel, which Neale remembered to have used in building the dugout; and with these the two men toiled at the frozen sand and gravel to open up a grave; It was like digging in stone. At length they succeeded. Then, rolling Service in the blankets and tarpaulin, they lowered him into the cold ground and hurriedly filled up his grave.

It was a grim, gruesome task. Another nameless grave! Neale had already seen nine graves. This one was up the slope not a hundred feet from the line of survey.

“Slingerland,” exclaimed Neale, “the railroad will run along there! Trains will pass this spot. In years to come travelers will look out of the train windows along here. Boys riding away to seek their fortunes! Bride and groom on their honeymoon! Thousands of people—going, coming, busy, happy at their own affairs, full of their own lives—will pass by poor Service’s grave and never know it’s there!”

“Wal, son, if people must hev railroads, they must kill men to build them,” replied the trapper.

Neale conceived the idea that Slingerland did, not welcome the coming of the steel rails. The thought shocked him. But then, he reflected, a trapper would not profit by the advance of civilization.

With the wind in their backs Neale and Slingerland were practically blown home. They made it up between them to keep knowledge of the tragedy from Allie. So ended the coldest and hardest and grimmest day Neale had ever known.

The winter passed, the snows melted, the winds quieted, and spring came.

Long since Neale had decided to leave Allie with Slingerland that summer. She would be happy there, and she wished to stay until Neale could take her with him. That seemed out of the question for the present. A construction camp full of troopers and laborers was no place for Allie. Neale dreaded the idea of taking her to Omaha. Always in his mind were haunting fears of this Spaniard, Durade, who had ruined Allie’s mother, and of the father whom Allie had never seen. Neale instinctively felt that these men were to crop up somewhere in his life, and before they did appear he wanted to marry Allie. She was now little more than sixteen years old.

Neale’s plans for the summer could not be wholly known until he had reported to the general staff, which might be at Fort Fetterman or North Platte or all the way back in