The U.P. Trail | Page 8

Boone, another of the engineers.
"The opposite wall is just that," added Henney. "A straight stone wall."
General Lodge gazed at the baffling gorge. His face became grimmer,
harder. "It seems impossible to go on, but we must go on!" he said.
A short silence ensued. The engineers faced one another like men
confronted by a last and crowning hindrance. Then Neale laughed. He

appeared cool and confident.
"It only looks bad," he said. "We'll climb to the top and I'll go down
over the wall on a rope."
Neale had been let down over many precipices in those stony hills. He
had been the luckiest, the most daring and successful of all the men
picked out and put to perilous tasks. No one spoke of the accidents that
had happened, or even the fatal fall of a lineman who a few weeks
before had ventured once too often. Every rod of road surveyed made
the engineers sterner at their task, just as it made them keener to attain
final success.
The climb to the top of the bluff was long and arduous. The whole
corps went, and also some of the troopers.
"I'll need a long rope," Neale had said to King, his lineman.
It was this order that made King take so much time in ascending the
bluff. Besides, he was a cowboy, used to riding, and could not climb
well.
"Wal--I--shore--rustled--all the line--aboot heah," he drawled,
pantingly, as he threw lassoes and coils of rope at Neale's feet.
Neale picked up some of the worn pieces. He looked dubious. "Is this
all you could get?" he asked.
"Shore is. An' thet includes what Casey rustled from the soldiers."
"Help me knot these," went on Neale.
"Wal, I reckon this heah time I'll go down before you," drawled King.
Neale laughed and looked curiously at his lineman. Back somewhere in
Nebraska this cowboy from Texas had attached himself to Neale. They
worked together; they had become friends. Larry Red King made no
bones of the fact that Texas had grown too hot for him. He had been
born with an itch to shoot. To Neale it seemed that King made too

much of a service Neale had rendered--the mere matter of a helping
hand. Still, there had been danger.
"Go down before me!" exclaimed Neale.
"I reckon," replied King.
"You will not," rejoined the other, bluntly. "I may not need you at all.
What's the sense of useless risk?"
"Wal, I'm goin'--else I throw up my job."
"Oh, hell!" burst out Neale as he strained hard on a knot. Again he
looked at his lineman, this time with something warmer than curiosity
in his glance.
Larry Red King was tall, slim, hard as iron, and yet undeniably graceful
in outline--a singularly handsome and picturesque cowboy with
flaming hair and smooth, red face and eyes of flashing blue. From his
belt swung a sheath holding a heavy gun.
"Wal, go ahaid," added Neale, mimicking his comrade. "An' I shore
hope thet this heah time you-all get aboot enough of your job."
One by one the engineers returned from different points along the wall,
and they joined the group around Neale and King.
"Test that rope," ordered General Lodge.
The long rope appeared to be amply strong. When King fastened one
end round his body under his arms the question arose among the
engineers, just as it had arisen for Neale, whether or not it was needful
to let the lineman down before the surveyor. Henney, who
superintended this sort of work, decided it was not necessary.
"I reckon I'll go ahaid," said King. Like all Texans of his type, Larry
King was slow, easy, cool, careless. Moreover, he gave a singular
impression of latent nerve, wildness, violence.

There seemed every assurance of a deadlock when General Lodge
stepped forward and addressed his inquiry to Neale.
"Larry thinks the rope will break. So he wants to go first," replied
Neale.
There were broad smiles forthcoming, yet no one laughed. This was
one of the thousands of strange human incidents that must be enacted in
the building of the railroad. It might have been humorous, but it was
big. It fixed the spirit and it foreshadowed events.
General Lodge's stern face relaxed, but he spoke firmly. "Obey orders,"
he admonished Larry King.
The loop was taken from Larry's waist and transferred to Neale's. Then
all was made ready to let the daring surveyor with his instrument down
over the wall.
Neale took one more look at the rugged front of the cliff. When he
straightened up the ruddy bronze had left his face.
"There's a bulge of rock. I can't see what's below it," he said. "No use
for signals. I'll go down the length of the rope and trust to find a footing.