Western Union by Zane Grey

Author:Zane Grey [Grey, Zane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper & Brothers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

I almost leaped out of the wagon in my bitter disappointment and fury and I made my way at once to where the buckboard and driver were waiting for me. Mr. Sunderlund was not in sight. Climbing into the buckboard, I told the driver to take me back to the construction camp at once. And at a word we were off.

What a devil that girl was! It was unthinkable that there was any justice in her accusation of me, from my point of view. But yet, even in my bitter anger and resentment, there came the memory of her dark, proud eyes and her beauty which had been so enhanced by her agitation and the intimacy of the moment.

The drive back to Creighton’s camp seemed short, undoubtedly owing to my state of mind. I saw that Creighton was moving wagons and evidently the catastrophe of the night before was merely another obstacle surmounted. I saw Shaw pacing up and down beside our wagon and it was certain that he spied me long before I had seen him. As I alighted from the buckboard his piercing eyes took me in at one glance and I felt as if a searchlight had been turned on my emotions. Right then and there I gave him hurried but minute information of what had happened to me in Sunderlund’s camp. The cowboy made no comment but, as he faced across the river, there was a convulsive working of his throat. Outside that all the sign of agitation he betrayed was the steel-like clutch of his fingers on my arm.

We were set to work at once, our wagon and crew along with half a dozen others, at repairing the eastern portion of the telegraph line that had been burned, Creighton’s short order was imperative and yet it showed that he left our particular party without the services of a foreman. He said he would leave it to us, that he could not spare a man for that overseer duty.

Naturally we worked all the harder because of his faith. For three days we toiled with twisted wires and charred poles, camping along the line where darkness found us. On the fourth day, we had the line again in running order, and traveled westward out of the blackened belt made by the fire. In the evening we came up with Creighton.

We pushed westward with all possible speed, sometimes erecting as much as seven miles of telegraph line in one day. A regiment of thirty dragoons met us out on the prairie, having come from Ft. Laramie. They reported an uprising of the Cheyennes and Sioux over in Wyoming. Sergeant Kinney said that Sunderlund’s wagon-train was about a score of miles ahead on the trail and that they had been able to round up only a few hundred of the Texas longhorns. This, I imagined, had proved a bitter blow to Colonel Sunderlund and I felt sorry for him.

We settled down to hard work from daylight till dark.

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