29
Casey left Benton on the work-train. It was composed of a long stringof box--and flat-cars loaded with stone, iron, gravel, ties--allnecessaries for the up-keep of the road. The engine was at the rear end,pushing instead of pulling; and at the extreme front end there was aflat-car loaded with gravel. A number of laborers rode on this car,among whom was Casey. In labor or fighting this Irishman alwaysgravitated to the fore.
All along the track, from outside of Benton to the top of a long, slowrise of desert were indications of the fact that Indians had torn up thetrack or attempted to derail trains.
The signs of Sioux had become such an every-day matter in the lives ofthe laborers that they were indifferent and careless. Thus isolated,unprotected groups of men, out some distance from the work-train, oftenwere swooped down upon by Indians and massacred.
The troopers had gone on with the other trains that carried Benton'sinhabitants and habitations.
Casey and his comrades had slow work of it going westward, as it wasnecessary to repair the track and at the same time to keep vigilantwatch for the Sioux. They expected the regular train from the east toovertake them, but did not even see its smoke. There must have been awreck or telegraph messages to hold it back at Medicine Bow.
Toward sunset the work-train reached the height of desert land thatsloped in long sweeping lines down to the base of the hills.
At this juncture a temporary station had been left in the shape ofseveral box-cars where the telegraph operators and a squad of trooperslived.
As the work-train lumbered along to the crest of this heave of barrenland Casey observed that some one at the station was excitedly waving aflag. Thereupon Casey, who acted as brakeman, signaled the engineer.
"Dom' coorious that," remarked Casey to his comrade McDermott. "Thimoperators knowed we'd stop, anyway."
That was the opinion of the several other laborers on the front car. Andwhen the work-train halted, that car had run beyond the station a fewrods. Casey and his comrades jumped off.
A little group of men awaited them. The operator, a young fellow namedCollins, was known to Casey. He stood among the troopers, pale-faced andshaking.
"Casey, who's in charge of the train?" he asked, nervously.
The Irishman's grin enlarged, making it necessary for him to grasp hispipe.
"Shure the engineer's boss of the train an' I'm boss of the gang."
More of the work-train men gathered round the group, and the engineerwith his fireman approached.
"You've got to hold up here," said Collins.
Casey removed his pipe to refill it. "Ah-huh!" he grunted.
"Wire from Medicine Bow--order to stop General Lodge's train--threehundred Sioux in ambush near this station--Lodge's train between hereand Roaring City," breathlessly went on the operator.
"An' the message come from Medicine Bow!" ejaculated Casey, while hismen gaped and muttered.
"Yes. It must have been sent here last night. But O'Neil, the nightoperator, was dead. Murdered by Indians while we slept."
"Thot's hell!" replied Casey, seriously, as he lit his pipe.
"The message went through to Medicine Bow. Stacey down there sent itback to me. I tried to get Hills at Roaring City. No go! The wire'scut!"
"An' shure the gineral's train has left--wot's that new camp--Roarin'wot?"
"Roaring City.... General Lodge went through two days ago with a privatetrain. He had soldiers, as usual. But no force to stand off threehundred Sioux, or even a hundred."
"Wal, the gineral must hev lift Roarin' City--else thot message niverwould hev come."
"So I think.... Now what on earth can we do? The engineer of his traincan't stop for orders short of this station, for the reason that thereare no stations."
"An' thim Sooz is in ambush near here?" queried Casey, reflectively."Shure thot could only be in wan place. I rimimber thot higher, narrerpass."
"Right. It's steep up-grade coming east. Train can be blocked. GeneralLodge with his staff and party--and his soldiers--would be massacredwithout a chance to fight. That pass always bothered us for fear ofambush. Now the Sioux have come west far enough to find it.... No chanceon earth for a train there--not if it carried a thousand soldiers."
"Wal, if the gineral an' company was sthopped somewhere beyond thotpass?" queried Casey, shrewdly, as he took a deep pull at his pipe.
"Then at least they could fight. They have stood off attacks before.They might hold out for the train following, or even run back."
"Thin, Collins, we've only got to sthop the gineral's train before itreaches thot dom' trap."
"But we can't!" cried Collins. "The wire is cut. It wouldn't helpmatters if it weren't. I thought when I saw your train we might risksending the engine on alone. But your engine is behind all these loadedcars. No switch. Oh, it is damnable!"
"Collins, there's more domnable things than yez ever heerd of.... I'llsthop Gineral Lodge!"
The brawny Irishman wheeled and strode back toward the front car of thetrain. All the crowd,--to a man, muttering and gaping, followed him.Casey climbed up on the gravel-car.
"Casey, wot in hell would yez be afther doin'?" demanded McDermott.
Casey grinned at his old comrade. "Mac, yez do me a favor. Uncouple thecar."
McDermott stepped between the cars and the rattle and clank of iron toldthat he had complied with Casey's request. Collins, with all the men onthe ground, grasped Casey's idea.
"By God! Casey can you do it? There's down-grade for twenty miles. Oncestart this gravel-car and she'll go clear to the hills. But--but--"
"Collins, it'll be aisy. I'll slip through thot pass loike oil. ThimSooz won't be watchin' this way. There's a curve. They won't hear tilltoo late. An' shure they don't niver obsthruct a track till the lastminute."
"But, Casey, once through the pass you can't control that gravel-car.The brakes won't hold. You'll run square into the general's train--wreckit!"
"Naw! I've got a couple of ties, an' if thot wreck threatens I'll heavea tie off on the track an' derail me private car."
"Casey, it's sure death!" exclaimed Collins. His voice and the pallor ofhis face and the beads of sweat all proclaimed him new to the U. P. R.
"Me boy, nothin's shure whin yez are drillin' with the Paddies."
Casey was above surprise and beyond disdain. He was a huge,toil-hardened, sun-reddened, hard-drinking soldier of the railroad, aloquacious Irishman whose fixed grin denied him any gravity, aforeman of his gang. His chief delight was to outdo his bosom comrade,McDermott. He did not realize that he represented an unconquerable andunquenchable spirit. Neither did his comrade know. But under Casey'sgrin shone something simple, radiant, hard as steel.
"Put yer shoulders ag'in' an' shove me off," he ordered.
Like automatons the silent laborers started the car.
"Drill, ye terriers, drill! Drill, ye terriers, drill!" sang Casey, ashe stood at the wheel-brake.
The car gathered momentum. McDermott was the last to let go.
"Good luck to yez!" he shouted, hoarsely.
"Mac, tell thim yez saw me!" called Casey. Then he waved his hand ingood-by to the crowd. Their response was a short, ringing yell. Theywatched the car glide slowly out of sight.
For a few moments Casey was more concerned with the fact that a breezehad blown out his pipe than with anything else. Skilful as years hadmade him, he found unusual difficulty in relighting it, and he would nothave been beyond stopping the car to accomplish that imperative need.When he had succeeded and glanced back the station was out of sight.
Casey fixed his eyes upon the curve of the track ahead where itdisappeared between the sage-covered sandy banks. Here the grade wasscarcely perceptible to any but experienced eyes. And the gravel-carcrept along as if it would stop any moment. But Casey knew that it wasnot likely to stop, and if it did he could start it again. A heavy-ladencar like this, once started, would run a long way on a very littlegrade. What worried him was the creaking and rattle of wheels,
soundsthat from where he stood were apparently very loud.
He turned the curve into a stretch of straight track where there camea perceptible increase in the strength of the breeze against his face.While creeping along at this point he scooped out a hole in the gravelmound on the car, making a place that might afford some protection fromIndian bullets and arrows. That accomplished, he had nothing to do buthold on to the wheel-brake, and gaze ahead.
It seemed a long time before the speed increased sufficiently to insurehim against any danger of a stop. The wind began to blow his hair andwhip away the smoke of his pipe. And the car began to cover distance.Several miles from the station he entered the shallow mouth of a gullywhere the grade increased. His speed accelerated correspondingly untilhe was rolling along faster than a man could run. The track had beenbuilt on the right bank of the gully which curved between low barehills, and which grew deeper and of a rougher character. Casey hadspiked many of the rails over which he passed.
He found it necessary to apply the brake so that he would not take thesharp curves at dangerous speed. The brake did not work well and gaveindications that it would not stand a great deal. With steady, rattlingcreak, and an occasional clank, the car rolled on.
If Casey remembered the lay of the land, there was a long, straightstretch of track, ending in several curves, the last of which turnedsharply into the narrow cut where the Sioux would ambush and obstructthe train. At this point it was Casey's intention to put off the brakeand let his car run wild.
It seemed an endless time before he reached the head of that stretch.Then he let go of the wheel. And the gravel-car began to roll on faster.
Casey appeared to be grimly and conscientiously concerned over his task,and he was worried about the outcome. He must get his car beyond thatnarrow cut. If it jumped the track or ran into an obstruction, or ifthe Sioux spied him in time, then his work would not be well done. Hewelcomed the gathering momentum, yet was fearful of the curve he saw along distance ahead. When he reached that he would be going at a highrate of speed--too fast to take the curve safely.
A little dimness came to Casey's eyes. Years of hot sun and dust anddesert wind had not made his eyes any stronger. The low gray walls, thewhite bleached rocks, the shallow stream of water, the fringe of brush,and the long narrowing track--all were momentarily indistinct in hissight. His breast seemed weighted. Over and over in his mind revolvedthe several possibilities that awaited him at the cut, and every rod ofthe distance now added to his worry. It grew to be dread. Chances wereagainst him. The thing intrusted to him was not in his control. Caseyresented this. He had never failed at a job. The U. P. R. had to bebuilt--and who could tell?--if the chief engineer and all his staffand the directors of the road were massacred by the Sioux, perhaps thatmight be a last and crowning catastrophe.
Casey had his first cold thrill. And his nerves tightened for thecrisis, while his horny hands gripped on the brake. The car was runningwild, with a curve just ahead. It made an unearthly clatter. The Indianswould hear that. But they would have to be swift, if he stayed on thetrack. Almost before he realized it the car lurched at the bend. Caseyfelt the off-side wheels leave the rail, heard the scream of the insidewheels grinding hard. But for his grip on the wheel he would have beenthrown. The wind whistled in his ears. With a sudden lurch the carseemed to rise. Casey thought it had jumped the track. But it bangedback, righted itself, rounded the curve.
Here the gully widened--sent off branches. Casey saw hundreds ofhorses--but not an Indian. He rolled swiftly on, crossed a bridge, andsaw more horses. His grim anticipation became a reality. The Sioux werein the ambush. What depended on him and his luck! Casey's red cheekblanched, but it was not with fear for himself. Not yet on this ride hadhe entertained one thought concerning his own personal relation to itsfragile possibilities.
To know the Sioux were there made a tremendous difference. A dark andterrible sternness actuated Casey. He projected his soul into thatclattering car of iron and wood. And it was certain he prayed. His hairstood straight up. There! the narrow cut in the hill! the curve of thetrack! He was pounding at it. The wheels shrieked. Looking up, he sawonly the rocks and gray patches of brush and the bare streak of earth.No Indian showed.
His gaze strained to find an obstruction on the track. The car rode thecurve on two wheels. It seemed alive. It entered the cut with hollow,screeching roar. The shade of the narrow place was gloomy. Here! It musthappen! Casey's heart never lifted its ponderous weight. Then, shootinground the curve, he saw an open track and bright sunlight beyond.
Above the roar of wheels sounded spatting reports of rifles. Caseyforgot to dodge into his gravel shelter. He was living a strange,dragging moment--an age. Out shot the car into the light. LikewiseCasey's dark blankness of mind ended. His heart lifted with a mightythrob. There shone the gray endless slope, stretching out and down tothe black hills in the distance. Shrill wild yells made Casey wheel.The hillside above the cut was colorful and spotted with moving objects.Indians! Puffs of white smoke arose. Casey felt the light impact oflead. Glancing bright streaks darted down. They were arrows. Twothudded into the gravel, one into the wood. Then something tugged athis shoulder. Another arrow! Suddenly the shaft was there in his sight,quivering in his flesh. It bit deep. With one wrench he tore it outand shook it aloft at the Sioux. "Oh bate yez dom' Sooz!" he yelled,in fierce defiance. The long screeching clamor of baffled rage and thescattering volley of rifle-shots kept up until the car passed out ofrange.
Casey faced ahead. The Sioux were behind him. He had a free track. Fardown the gray valley, where the rails disappeared, were low streaks ofblack smoke from a locomotive. The general's train was coming.
The burden of worry and dread that had been Casey's was now nomore--vanished as if by magic. His job had not yet been completed, buthe had won. He never glanced back at the Sioux. They had failed intheir first effort at ambushing the cut, and Casey knew the troops wouldprevent a second attempt. Casey faced ahead. The whistle of wind filledhis ears, the dry, sweet odor of the desert filled his nostrils. His carwas on a straight track, rolling along down-grade, half a mile a minute.And Casey, believing he might do well to slow up gradually, lightly puton the brake. But it did not hold. He tried again. The brake had broken.
He stood at the wheel, his eyes clear now, watching ahead. The traindown in the valley was miles away, not yet even a black dot in the gray.The smoke, however, began to lift.
Casey was suddenly struck by a vague sense that something was wrong withhim.
"Phwat the hell!" he muttered. Then his mind, strangely absorbed,located the trouble. His pipe had gone out! Casey stooped in the holehe had made in the gravel, and there, knocking his pipe in his palm, hefound the ashes cold. When had that ever happened before? Casey waggedhis head. For his pipe to go cold and he not to know! Things werehappening on the U. P. R. these days. Casey refilled his pipe, and, withthe wind whistling over him, he relit it. He drew deep and long, stoodup, grasped the wheel, and felt all his blood change.
"Me poipe goin' cold--that wor funny!" soliloquized Casey.
The phenomenon appeared remarkable to him. Indeed, it stood alone. Hemeasured the nature of this job by that forgetfulness. And memoriesthrilled him. With his eye clear on the track that split the grayexpanse, with his whole being permeated by the soothing influence ofsmoke, with his task almost done, Casey experienced an unprecedentedthing for him--he lived over past performances and found them vivid,thrilling, somehow sweet. Battles of the Civil War; the day he saved aflag; and, better, the night he saved Pat Shane, who had lived only tostop a damned Sioux bullet; many and many an adventure with McDermott,who, just a few minutes past, had watched him with round, shining eyes;and the fights he had seen and shared--all these things passed swiftlythrough Casey's mind and filled him with a lofty and serene pride.
He was pleased with himself; more pleased with what McDermott wouldthink. Casey's boyhood did not return to him, but his mountingexhilaration and satisfaction were boyish. It was great to ri
de thisway!... There! he saw a long, black dot down in the gray. The train!...General Lodge had once shaken hands with Casey.
Somebody had to do these things, since the U. P. R. must reach acrossto the Pacific. A day would come when a splendid passenger-train wouldglide smoothly down this easy grade where Casey jolted along on hisgravel-car. The fact loomed large in the simplicity of the Irishman'smind. He began to hum his favorite song. Facing westward, he saw theblack dot grow into a long train. Likewise he saw the beauty of thered-gold sunset behind the hills. Casey gloried in the wildness of thescene--in the meaning of his ride--particularly in his loneliness. Heseemed strangely alone there on that vast gray slope--a man and somehowaccountable for all these things. He felt more than he understood.His long-tried nerves and courage and strength had never yielded thiswonderful buoyancy and sense of loftiness. He was Casey--Casey who hadlet all the gang run for shelter from the Sioux while he had remainedfor one last and final drive at a railroad spike. But the cool,devil-may-care indifference, common to all his comrades as well as tohimself, was not the strongest factor in the Casey of to-day. Up out ofthe rugged and dormant soul had burst the spirit of a race embodiedin one man. Casey was his own audience, and the light upon him wasthe glory of the setting sun. A nightingale sang in his heart, and herealized that this was his hour. Here the bloody, hard years found theirreward. Not that he had ever wanted one or thought of one, but it hadcome--out of the toil, the pain, the weariness. So his nerves tingled,his pulses beat, his veins glowed, his heart throbbed; and all the new,sweet, young sensations of a boy wildly reveling in the success of hisfirst great venture, all the vague, strange, deep, complex emotions ofa man who has become conscious of what he is giving to the world--theseshook Casey by storm, and life had no more to give. He knew that,whatever he was, whatever this incomprehensible driving spirit in him,whatever his unknown relation to man and to duty, there had been givenhim in the peril just passed, in this wonderful ride, a gift splendidand divine.
Casey rolled on, and the train grew plain in his sight. When perhapsseveral miles of track lay between him and the approaching engine, heconcluded it was time to get ready. Lifting one of the heavy ties, helaid it in front where he could quickly shove it off with his foot.
Then he stood up. It was certain that he looked backward, but at noparticular thing--just an instinctive glance. With his foot on the tiehe steadied himself so that he could push it off and leap instantlyafter.
And at that moment he remembered the little book he had found on BeautyStanton's breast, and which contained the letter to his friend Neale.Casey deliberated in spite of the necessity for haste. Then he took thebook from his pocket.
"B'gorra, yez niver can tell, an' thim U. P. R. throopers hev been knownto bury a mon widout searchin' his pockets," he said.
And he put the little book between the teeth that held his pipe. Then heshoved off the tie and leaped.