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 grass, and night was just falling as they picketed their exhausted horses and stretched themselves, utterly used up, on the grass.
“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 pass 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 pass 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 horsemen 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 assured 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 scraper. As they rode into camp the very first man to emerge from Casement’s tent, with his habitual smile, was Bob Scott.
Casement 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 assailants 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 Casement’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.
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