Trouble Shooter (Musaicum Vintage Western). Ernest Haycox

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      IV

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      Peace left Fort Sanders early the next morning with Lieutenant Archie Millard and six troopers, bound south for the old Virginia Dale stage station, Overmile went along, but Morgan decided to wait for Peace in Laramie.

      There was a sun shining and a soft wind running out of the west. All the Laramie plain was wet and fresh, with its occasional patches of forage grass turned brilliantly green. Northward and eastward the land rose into the rolling, broken contours of the Black Hills; off to the south lay the heavy peaks of the Medicine Bow range. Less than a mile ahead of them the stacks of the Union's construction engines funneled up a black smoke.

      "Mormon Charley will be there all right," said Millard. "But I doubt if you'll get any help out of him. He doesn't like to see the road cross this country."

      "Talked with him recently?" asked Peace.

      Millard said: "I was down that way last week."

      Overmile cast Peace a glance of amused understanding.

      Millard caught that and flushed a little. He was an ideal figure, hale and robust and ruddy with the typical cavalryman's flair for the picturesque. Beneath a rakish hat the edges of his hair showed a tawny color and his long mustache was of the same shade, It was easy for him to blush, his complexion being as fair as a woman's; but he had a strong, sweeping chin. "Damn you, Leach," he muttered.

      "Well," drawled Overmile, "how is the mountain beauty?"

      "We're not discussing that," said Millard briefly.

      They trotted brisklyalong the open plain, passing a solid stream of six-mule freighters lumbering from end of track toward Laramie and toward Salt Lake. The yellow embankment of the right of way was directly beside them, on which Casement's Irishmen were dropping ties methodically, They came to a small rise and stopped at Peace's command near the end of steel, For the space of a quarter mile here Casement's ambulating construction town littered the plain—his enormous portable warehouse, his collapsible shops, his great horse-and-mule compounds. The boarding train lay on a siding, the drying clothes of the Irish Paddies hanging out from bunk cars like so much festival bunting. A solid string of supply trains stood on the main line, waiting their turn to feed the endless line of freighting wagons bound away for the grading camps and bridge crews flung like a thin skirmish line fifty and a hundred miles ahead.

      A thousand men worked at this immediate spot, the interplay of all that human traffic setting up a restless, ant-like scene of confusion under the sun. In the foreground end of track surged forward thirty feet at a time, like a dull brown inchworm.

      Peace watched that operation with a full, satisfying interest. An engine pushed a load of rails forward, dumping them in an avalanche of sound. Men lifted these rails to a small iron truck pulled by a single white horse. The horse, disciplined in this business all the way from Fremont, heaved forward and came on at a dead gallop to the exact end of track. What followed was smooth and fast. The steel gang trotted to the truck, four men to each rail—lifted two rails and ran them forward. A foreman yelled, "Down!" and the steel clanged on the waiting ties. The gauger knelt, and jumped aside; the spikers swung their sledges with a battering rhythm and withdrew; the bolters bent over and bent back, and the white horse lunged on to the new end of track. In the interval the Union Pacific moved toward Laramie as fast as a man might comfortably walk.

      "Pretty," said Lieutenant Millard.

      The little column of men pushed forward, leaving behind the crack of all those sledges, the groaning of the freighters, the lash of men's strident voices, and the nervous chuffing of the engines. A trail led up the gentle grade in the direction of Sherman Summit, soon turning aside to enter a narrow pass pointing toward the peaks of the Medicine Bow. The last echo of the engines died behind and then there was only a long, riding calm, with the soft squeal of leather breaking the drone of a warming day. Millard's men sat relaxed in their saddles, all old troopers whose skins were as weathered as the leather gear beneath them. Their Spencer carbines lay tucked in saddle boots; their revolvers hung at their hips, and they kept watching the higher ground around them with a taciturn attention. Later in the morning they stopped to roll their coats and went on again in shirt sleeves.

      Millard said: "We got a wire from Sidney this morning. A band of Dog soldiers of the Sioux tribe raided Elm Creek Station and killed five section hands."

      "Bad year coming up," said Peace.

      "How's Eileen?" asked Millard.

      Peace said; "Good," and let it go like that.

      Millard had known him too long not to understand the clipped finality of that single word. He appraised Peace carefully. "Seen Latimer lately?"

      "Last night in Cheyenne."

      Millard said, in a rather quick way: "He's smart. Seems to smell the grading jobs that won't make money for him. Twenty years from now when this Country settles up he'll have his interest in it—coal and cattle and land. Some men draw money to them. He's that kind."

      "Watch me," broke in Overmile.

      "What?"

      "I know cows and I know grass. Been lookin' at this territory. When I'm through workin' for the railroad next year this is where I squat. I got an eye on a pretty spot across the hump there in the valley of the Little Laramie. Come back in twenty years and see my beef roamin' these hills with me under my fig tree."

      They rode like this for a good while, each man contemplative and silent. They were young and the ferment of ambition was in them. But Archie Millard's face held a set, dismal expression. He said: "Twenty years? Well, men pray, but there are no answers. Twenty years is a black tunnel, Who knows if it's daylight at the other end?"

      At noon they stopped for water and a long rest. СКАЧАТЬ