Smith grew hot and profane. The cowboy
promptly slapped his face. Then Smith, like the fool he was, went
after his gun. He never got it out.
It distressed Neale greatly that Larry had shot up a man--and a
railroad man at that. No matter what Larry said, Neale knew the
shooting was on his account. This deed made the cowboy a marked man.
It changed him, also, toward Neale, inasmuch as that he saw his
wildness, was making small Neale's chances of returning to work.
Larry never ceased importuning Neale to go back to his job. After
shooting Smith the cowboy made one more eloquent appeal to Neale and
then left for Cheyenne. Neale followed him.
Cheyenne was just sobering up after its brief and tempestuous reign
as headquarters town, and though depleted and thin, it was now
making a bid for permanency. But the sting and wildness of life had
departed with the construction operations, and now Benton had become
the hub of the railway universe.
Neale boarded a train for Benton and watched with bitterness the
familiar landmarks he had learned to know so well while surveying
the line. He was no longer connected with the great project--no more
a necessary part of the great movement.
Beyond Medicine Bow the grass and the green failed and the immense
train of freight-cars and passenger-coaches, loaded to capacity,
clattered on into arid country.
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