The U. P. Trail by Zane Grey (ebook reader play store .TXT) 📕

“Wal, who hasn’t?” retorted Larry.

“You haven’t! Don’t lie.”

“If you put it thet way, all right. Now what’re you-all goin’ to do aboot it?”

“I’ll lick you good,” declared Neale, hotly. He was angry with Larry, but angrier with himself that he had been the cause of the cowboy’s loss of work and of his splendid horses.

“Lick me!” ejaculated Larry. “You mean beat me up?”

“Yes. You deserve it.”

Larry took him in earnest and seemed very much concerned. Neale could almost have laughed at the cowboy’s serious predicament.

“Wal, I reckon I ain’t much of a fighter with my fists,” said Larry, soberly. “So come an’ get it over.”

“Oh, damn you, Red!... I wouldn’t lay a hand on you. And I am sick, I’m so glad to see you!... I thought you got here ahead of me.”

Neale’s voice grew full and trembling.

Larry became confused, his red face grew redder, and the keen blue flash of his eyes softened.

“Wal, I heerd what a tough place this heah Benton was—so I jest come.”

Larry ended this speech lamely, but the way he hitched at his belt was conclusive.

“Wal, by Gawd! Look who’s heah!” he suddenly exclaimed.

Neale wheeled with a start. He saw a scout, in buckskin, a tall form with the stride of a mountaineer, strangely familiar.

“Slingerland!” he cried.

The trapper bounded at them, his tanned face glowing, his gray eyes glad.

“Boys, it’s come at last! I knowed I’d run into you some day,” he said, and he gripped them with horny hands.

Neale tried to speak, but a terrible cramp in his throat choked him. He appealed with his hands to Slingerland. The trapper lost his smile and the iron set returned to his features.

Larry choked over his utterance. “Al-lie! What aboot—her?”

“Boys, it’s broke me down!” replied Slingerland, hoarsely. “I swear to you I never left Allie alone fer a year—an’ then—the fust time—when she made me go—I come back an’ finds the cabin burnt.... She’s gone! Gone!... No redskin job. That damned riffraff out of Californy. I tracked ‘em. Then a hell of a storm comes up. No tracks left! All’s lost! An’ I goes back to my traps in the mountains.”

“What—became—of—her?” whispered Neale.

Slingerland looked away from him.

“Son! You remember Allie. She’d die, quick!... Wouldn’t she, Larry?”

“Shore. Thet girl—couldn’t—hev lived a day,” replied Larry, thickly.

Neale plunged blindly away from his friends. Then the torture in his breast seemed to burst. The sobs came, heavy, racking. He sank upon a box and bowed his head. There Larry and Slingerland found him.

The cowboy looked down with helpless pain. “Aw, pard—don’t take it—so hard,” he implored.

But he knew and Slingerland knew that sympathy could do no good here. There was no hope, no help. Neale was stricken. They stood there, the elder man looking all the sadness and inevitableness of that wild life, and the younger, the cowboy, slowly changing to iron.

“Slingerland, you-all said some Californy outfit got Allie?” he queried.

“I’m sure an’ sartin,” replied the trapper. “Them days there wasn’t any travelin’ west, so early after winter. You recollect them four bandits as rode in on us one day? They was from Californy.”

“Wal, I’ll be lookin’ fer men with thet Californy brand,” drawled King, and in his slow, easy, cool speech there was a note deadly and terrible.

Neale slowly ceased his sobbing. “My nerve’s gone,” he said, shakily.

“No. It jest broke you all up to see Slingerland. An’ it shore did me, too,” replied Larry.

“It’s hard, but—” Slingerland could not finish his thought.

“Slingerland, I’m glad to see you, even if it did cut me,” said Neale, more rationally. “I’m surprised, too. Are you here with a load of pelts?”

“No. Boys, I hed to give up trappin’. I couldn’t stand the loneliness—after—after... An’ now I’m killin’ buffalo meat for the soldiers an’ the construction gangs. Jest got in on thet train with a car-load of fresh meat.”

“Buffalo meat,” echoed Neale. His mind wandered.

“Son, how’s your work goin’?”

Neale shook his head.

The cowboy, answering for him, said, “We kind of chucked the work, Slingerland.”

“What? Are you hyar in Benton, doin’ nothin’?”

“Shore. Thet’s the size of it.”

The trapper made a vehement gesture of disapproval and he bent a scrutinizing gaze upon Neale.

“Son, you’ve not gone an’—an’—”

“Yes,” replied Neale, throwing out his hands. “I quit. I couldn’t work. I CAN’T work. I CAN’T rest or stand still!”

A spasm of immense regret contracted the trapper’s face. And Larry King, looking away over the sordid, dusty passing throng, cursed under his breath. Neale was the first to recover his composure.

“Let’s say no more. What’s done is done,” he said. “Suppose you take us on one of your buffalo-hunts.”

Slingerland grasped at straws. “Wal, now, thet ain’t a bad idee. I can use you,” he replied, eagerly. “But it’s hard an’ dangerous work. We git chased by redskins often. An’ you’d hev to ride. I reckon, Neale, you’re good enough on a hoss. But our cowboy friend hyar, he can’t ride, as I recollect your old argyments.”

“My job was hosses,” drawled Larry.

“An’ besides, you’ve got to shoot straight, which Reddy hasn’t hed experience of,” went on Slingerland, with a broader smile.

“I seen you was packin’ a Winchester all shiny an’ new,” replied Larry. “Shore I’m in fer anythin’ with ridin’ an’ shootin’.”

Neale and Larry accepted the proposition then and there.

“You’ll need to buy rifles an’ shells, thet’s all,” said Slingerland. “I’ve hosses an’ outfit over at the work-camp, an’ I’ve been huntin’ east of thar. Come on, we’ll go to a store. Thet train’s goin’ back soon.”

“Wal, I come in on thet train an’ now I’m leavin’ on it,” drawled Larry. “Shore is funny. Without even lookin’ over this heah Benton.”

On the ride eastward Slingerland inquired if Neale and Larry had ever gone back to the scene of the massacre of the caravan where Horn had buried his