ried out in
horror; General Lodge stood aghast, dazed. Then they all froze rigid in
the position of intense listening.

A dull sound puffed up from the gorge, a low crash, then a slow-rising
roar and rattle of sliding earth and rock. It diminished and ceased with
the hollow cracking of stone against stone.

Casey broke the silence among the listening men with a curse. Larry Red
King rose from his knees, holding the end of the snapped rope, which
he threw from him with passionate violence. Then with action just as
violent he unbuckled his belt and pulled it tighter and buckled it
again. His eyes were blazing with blue lightning; they seemed to accuse
the agitated engineers of deliberate murder. But he turned away without
speaking and hurried along the edge of the gorge, evidently searching
for a place to go down.

General Lodge ordered the troopers to follow King and if possible
recover Neale's body.

"That lad had a future," said old Henney, sadly. "We'll miss him."

Boone's face expressed sickness and horror.

Baxter choked. "Too bad!" he murmured, "but what's to be done?"

The chief engineer looked away down the shadowy gorge where the sun was
burning the ramparts red. To have command of men was hard, bitter. Death
stalked with his orders. He foresaw that the building of this railroad
was to resemble the war in which he had sent so many lads and men to
bloody graves.

The engineers descended the long slope and returned to camp, a mile down
the narrow valley. Fires were blazing; columns of smoke were curling
aloft; the merry song and reckless laugh of soldiers were ringing out,
so clear in the still air; horses were neighing and stamping.

Colonel Dillon reported to General Lodge that one of the scouts had
sighted a large band of Sioux Indians encamped in a valley not far
distant. This tribe had gone on the war-path and had begun to harass the
engineers. Neale's tragic fate was forgotten in the apprehension of
what might happen when the Sioux discovered the significance of that
surveying expedition.

"The Sioux could make the building of the U. P. impossible," said
Henney, always nervous and pessimistic.

"No Indians--nothing can stop us!" declared his chief.

The troopers sent to follow Larry King came back to camp, saying that
they had lost him and that they could not find any place where it was
possible to get down into that gorge.

In the morning Larry King had not returned.

Detachments of troope