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Updated: June 18, 2025
"Son, what'd you expect?" demanded Slingerland. "She got shot or cut, an' in her fright she crawled in thar. Come, over with her. Let's see. She might live." This practical suggestion acted quickly upon Neale. He turned the girl over so that her head lay upon his knees. The face thus exposed was deathly pale, set like stone in horror.
Presently Fresno reappeared carrying a buckskin sack in which Slingerland kept his money and few valuables, and the others followed, quarreling over a cane-covered demijohn in which there had once been liquor. "Nary a drop!" growled the one who got possession of it. And with rage he threw the thing back into the cabin, where it crashed into the fire.
They might intend to reserve her for torture, but more likely their object was to make her a captive in the tribe. In that case Slingerland would surely find her and get her freedom. Rain began to fall more steadily. Allie smelled smoke and saw the reflection of fires on the wall of the tent. Presently a squaw entered. She was a huge woman, evidently old, very dark of face, and wrinkled.
Slingerland laid her on the grass in a shady spot. The three men gazed down upon her, all sober, earnest, doubtful. "I reckon we can't do nothin' but wait," said the trapper. Red King shook his head as if the problem were beyond him. Neale did not voice his thought, yet he wanted to be the first person her eyes should rest upon when she did return to consciousness.
"Lass, listen!" began Slingerland. "After you left Roarin' City Neale went at hard work. Began by heavin' ties an' rails, an' now he's slingin' a sledge.... This was amazin' to me. I seen him only onct since, an' thet was the other day. But I heerd about him. I rode over to Roarin' City several times. An' I made it my bizness to find out about Neale.... He never came into the town at all.
The reply brought Slingerland sliding out of his saddle. Neale hesitated a moment, then reaching into the aperture, he got his hands under the girl's arms and carefully drew her out upon the grass. She lay face down, her hair a tumbled mass, her body inert. Neale's quick eye searched for bloodstains, but found none. "I remember thet hair," said Slingerland. "Turn her over."
Some ten miles from the scene of the massacre and perhaps fifteen from the line surveyed by the engineers, Slingerland lived in a wild valley in the heart of the Wyoming hills. The ride there was laborsome and it took time, but Neale scarcely noted either fact.
Bluebells showed in the grass along the trail; there grew lavender and yellow flowers unfamiliar to Neale; trout rose and splashed on the surface of the pools; and the way was melodious with the humming of bees and the singing of birds. Slingerland saw them coming and strode out to meet them with hearty greeting. "Is she all right?" queried Neale, abruptly.
The sunset that night struck him as singularly dull, pale, menacing. He understood its meaning later, when Slingerland said they were in for another storm. Before dark the wind began to moan through the trees like lost spirits. The trapper shook his shaggy head ominously. "Reckon thet sounds bad to me," he said. And from moan it rose to wail, and from wail to roar. That alarmed Neale.
"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.
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