The Mountain Divide Part 6

But they had lost their great advantage. The dry watercourse proved unexpectedly good riding for the fleeing railroad men. It was a downhill run, with their hopes rising every moment. Moreover, the draw soon turned sharply to the south and put a big shoulder of granite between the pursuers and the pursued. The horses of the latter were now relieved, and the wary Stanley, riding with some reserve speed, held his rifle ready for a stern shot should one become necessary. He found himself riding between two almost perpendicular walls washed by the same granite gravel into which they had plunged on the start, but with the course again turning, to his surprise, to the east. Once, Stanley checked the flight long enough to stop and listen, but the two heard the active Indians clattering down the canyon after them, and rode on and on.

As they could see by the lengthening shadow on the mountain-sides far above them, the sun was setting.

"Cheer up," cried Stanley, who had put his companion ahead of him.

"We've got the best of them. All we need is open country."

He did not mention the chances of disaster, which were that they might encounter an obstacle that would leave them at bay before their tireless pursuers. Mile after mile they galloped without halting again to see whether they were being chased. Indeed, no distance seemed too considerable to put between them and the active war-paint in the saddles behind.

A new turn in the canyon now revealed a wide valley opening between the hills before them. Far below, golden in the light of the setting sun, they saw the great eastern slope of the Black Hills spreading out upon a beautiful plain.

Stanley swung his hat from his head with an exulting cry, and Bucks, without quite understanding why, but a.s.suming it the right thing to do, yelled his loudest. On and on they rode, down a broad, spreading ridge that led without a break from the tortuous hills behind them into the open country far below. Stanley put full ten miles between himself and the canyon they had ridden out of before he checked his speed. The Indians had completely disappeared and, disappointed in their venture, had no doubt ridden back to their fastnesses to wait for other unwary white men. Stanley chose a little draw with good water and gra.s.s, and night was just falling as they picketed their exhausted horses and stretched themselves, utterly used up, on the gra.s.s.

"We are safe until morning, anyway," announced Stanley as he threw himself down. "And this Indian chase may be the luckiest thing that has ever happened to me in the troublesome course of an unlucky life.

"You don't understand," continued the engineer, wiping the sweat and dust from his tired face. Bucks admitted that he did not.

"No matter," returned his companion; "it isn't necessary now. You will sometime. But I think I have done in the last hour something I have been trying to do for years. Many others have likewise failed in the same quest."

Bucks listened with growing interest.

"Yes, for years," Stanley went on, "incredible as it may sound, I have been searching these mountains for just such a crevice as we have this moment ridden down. You see how this range"--the exhausted engineer stretched flat on his back, but, with burning eyes, pointed to the formidable mountain wall that rose behind them in the dusk of the western sky--"rises abruptly from the plains below. Our whole grade climb for the continental divide is right here, packed into these few miles. Neither I nor any one else has ever been able to find such a pa.s.s as we need to get up into it. But if we have saved our scalps, my boy, you will share with me the honor of finding the pa.s.s for the Union Pacific Railroad over the Rocky Mountains."

They were supperless, but it was very exciting, and Bucks was extremely happy. Stanley watched that night until twelve. When he woke Bucks the moon was rising and the ghostly peaks in the west towered sentinel-like above the plains flooded with silver. The two were to move at one o'clock when the moon would be high enough to make riding safe. It was cold, but fire was forbidden.

The horses were grazing quietly, and Bucks, examining his revolver, which he had all the time felt he was wretchedly incompetent to shoot, sat down beside Stanley, already fast asleep, to stand his watch. He had lost Sublette's rifle in falling into the wash-out. At least he had found no leisure to pick it up and save his hair in the same instant, and he wondered now how much he should have to pay for the rifle.

When the sun rose next morning the two hors.e.m.e.n were far out of the foot-hills and bearing northeast toward camp--so far had their ride for life taken them from their hunting ground. They scanned the horizon at intervals, with some anxiety, for Indians, and again with the hope of sighting their missing guide. Once they saw a distant herd of buffalo, and Bucks experienced a shock until a.s.sured by Stanley that the suspicious objects were neither Cheyennes nor Sioux.

By nine o'clock they had found the transcontinental telegraph line and had a sure trail to follow until they discovered the grade stakes of the railroad, and soon descried the advance-guard of the graders busy with plough and shovel and sc.r.a.per. As they rode into camp the very first man to emerge from Cas.e.m.e.nt's tent, with his habitual smile, was Bob Scott.

Cas.e.m.e.nt himself, who had heard Scott's story when the latter had come in at daybreak, was awaiting Stanley's return with anxiety, but this was all forgotten in the great news Stanley brought. Sublette and Scott now returned to the hunting camp for the cavalry detail, and, reinforced by these, the two heroes of the long flight rode back to reconnoitre their escape from the mountains. Bucks rode close to Bob Scott and learned how the scout had outwitted his a.s.sailants at the canyon, and how after they had all ridden out of it, he had ridden into it and retraced with safety in the night the path that the hunters had followed in riding into the hill country.

The second ride through the long defile, which itself was now the object of so much intense inspection, Bucks found much less exciting than the first. The party even rode up to where the first flying leap had been made, and to Bucks's joy found Sublette's rifle still in the wash; it had been overlooked by the Indians.

What surprised Bucks most was to find how many hours it took to cover the ground that Stanley and he had negotiated in seemingly as many minutes.

CHAPTER VI

After a week in Cas.e.m.e.nt's camp, Stanley and his cavalrymen, accompanied by Dancing, Scott, and Bucks, struck north and east toward the Spider Water River to find out why the ties were not coming down faster. Rails had already been laid across the permanent Spider Water Bridge--known afterward as the first bridge, for the big river finished more than one structure before it was completely subdued--and the rail-laying was hampered only by the lack of ties.

The straggling bands of Cheyennes had in the interval been driven out of the foot-hills by troops sent against them, and Stanley and his little escort met with no trouble on his rapid journey.

Toward evening of the second day a broad valley opened on the plain before them, and in the sunset Bucks saw, winding like a silver thread far up toward the mountains, the great stream about which he had already heard so much. Camp was pitched on a high bluff that commanded the valley in both directions for many miles, and after supper Scott and Bucks rode down to the river.

In its low-water stage nothing could have looked more sluggish or more sleepily deceptive than the mighty and treacherous stream. Scott and his companions always gave the river the name the Sioux had long ago given it because of its sudden, ravening floods and its deadly traps laid for such unwary men or animals as trusted its peaceful promise and slept within reach of its cruel power.

Standing in the glow of the evening sky in this land where the clear, bright light seemed to lift him high above the earth, Bucks looked at the yellow flood long and thoughtfully--as well he might--for the best of his life was to be spent within ken of its flow and to go in doing battle with it himself, or in sending faithful men to its battling, sometimes to perish within its merciless currents.

Next morning as the party, following a trail along the bluffs, rode up in the direction of the contractors' camps they discerned out on the river bottom a motley cl.u.s.ter of tents and shanties pitched under a hill. A number of flatboats lay in the backwater behind the bend and a quant.i.ty of ties corded along the bank indicated a loading-place, but no one seemed to be doing any loading. The few men that could be seen in the distance appeared to be loafing in the sunshine along the straggling street-way that led to the river. Stanley checked his horse.

"What place is that?" he demanded of Scott.

"That," returned the guide, "is Sellersville."

"Sellersville," echoed Stanley. "What is Sellersville?"

"Sellersville is where they bring most of the ties for the boats."

"Have they started a town down there on the bottoms?"

"They have started enough saloons and gambling dens to get the money from the men that are chopping ties."

Stanley contemplated for a moment the ill-looking settlement. A mile farther on they encountered a number of men following the trail up the river.

A small dog barked furiously at the Stanley party as they came up, and acted as if he were ready to fight every trooper in the detail. He dashed back and forth, barking and threatening so fiercely that every one's attention was drawn to him.

Stanley stopped the leader and found he was a tie-camp foreman from up-river taking men to camp. "Is that your dog?" demanded Stanley, indicating the belligerent animal who seemed set upon eating somebody alive.

"Why, yes," admitted the foreman philosophically. "He sort o' claims me, I guess."

"What do you keep a cur like that around for?"

"Can't get rid of him," returned the foreman. "He is no good, but the boys like his impudence. Down, Scuffy!" he cried, looking for a stick to throw at his pet.

Bucks surveyed the company of men. They were a sorry-looking lot. The foreman explained that he had dragged them out of the dens at Sellersville to go back to work. When remonstrated with for the poor showing the contractors were making, the foreman pointed to the plague-spot on the bottoms.

"There's the reason you are not getting any ties," said he lazily.

"We've got five hundred men at work up here; that is, they are supposed to be at work. These whiskey dives and faro joints get them the minute they are paid, and for ten days after pay-day we can't get a hundred men back to camp."

The foreman as he spoke looked philosophically toward the canvas shanties below. "I spend half my time chasing back and forth, but I can't do much. They hold my men until they have robbed them, and then if they show fight they chuck them into the river. It's the same with the flatboat men." He turned, as he continued, to indicate two particularly wretched specimens. "These fellows were drugged and robbed of every dollar they brought here before they got to work at all."

Stanley likewise gazed thoughtfully upon the cl.u.s.ter of tents and shacks along the river landing. He turned after a moment to Scott.

"Bob," said he, looking back again toward the river, "what gang do you suppose this is?"

Scott shook his head. "That I couldn't say, Colonel Stanley."

"Suppose," continued Stanley, still regarding the offending settlement, "you and Dancing reconnoitre them a little and tell me who they are. We will wait for you."

Scott and the lineman swung into their saddles and started down the trail that led to the landing. Stanley spoke again to the foreman.

"Can those men use an axe?" he demanded, indicating the two men that the foreman a.s.serted had been robbed.

"They are both old choppers--but this gang at Sellersville stole even their axes."

"Leave these two men here with me," directed Stanley as he watched Scott and Dancing ride down toward Sellersville. "I may have something for them to chop after a while."