ider tied in the saddle.

It was not a sight to interest any except the lazy or the curious,
for in that day such things were common in North Platte. The horse had
bullet creases on his neck; the rider wore a bloody shirt; the gaunt
pedestrian had a bandaged arm.

Neale lay ill of a deeper wound while the bullet-hole healed in his
side. Day and night Larry tended him or sat by him or slept near him
in a shack on the outskirts of the camp. Shock, grief, starvation,
exhaustion, loss of blood and sleep--all these brought Warren Neale
close to death. He did not care to live. It was the patient, loyal
friend who fought fever and heartbreak and the ebbing tide of life.

Baxter and Henney visited North Platte and called to see him, and later
the chief came and ordered Larry to take Neale to the tents of the
corps. Every one was kind, solicitous, earnest. He had been missed. The
members of his corps knew the strange story of Allie Lee; they guessed
the romance and grieved over the tragedy. They did all they could do,
and the troop doctor added his attention; but it was the nursing, the
presence, and the spirit of Larry King that saved Neale.

He got well and went back to work with the cowboy for his helper.

In that camp of toil and disorder none but the few with whom Neale was
brought in close touch noted anything singular about him. The engineers,
however, observed that he did not work so well, nor so energetically,
nor so accurately. His enthusiasm was lacking. The cowboy, always with
him, was the one who saw the sudden spells of somber abstraction and
the poignant, hopeless, sleepless pain, the eternal regret. And as Neale
slackened in his duty Larry King grew more faithful.

Neale began to drink and gamble. For long the cowboy fought, argued,
appealed against this order of things, and then, failing to change or
persuade Neale, he went to gambling and drinking with him. But then it
was noted that Neale never got under the influence of liquor or lost
materially at cards. The cowboy spilled the contents of Neale's glass
and played the game into his hands.

Both of them shrank instinctively from the women of the camp. The sight
of anything feminine hurt.

North Platte stirred with the quickening stimulus of the approach
of the rails and the trains, and the army of soldiers whose duty was to
protect the horde of toilers, and the army of tradesmen and parasites
who lived off them.

The construction camp of the graders