“Neale, air you still dreamin’?” asked Larry, incredulously.

“Will you do that much for me?”

“Shore.”

“Thank you, old friend.  Good-by now.  I’ve got to rustle.”  He left Larry sitting on his cot, staring at nothing.  On the way to the station Neale encountered the gambler, Place Hough, who, despite his nocturnal habits, was an early riser.  In the excitement of the hour Neale gave way to an impulse.  Briefly he told Hough about Allie—­her disappearance and probable hidden presence in Benton, and he asked the gambler to keep his eyes and ears open.  Hough seemed both surprised and pleased with the confidence, and he said he would go out of his way to help Neale.

Neale had to run to catch the train.  A brawny Irishman extended a red-sleeved arm to help him up.

“Up wid yez.  Thor!”

Neale found himself with bag and rifle and blanket sprawling on the gravel-covered floor of a flat car.  Casey, the old lineman, grinned at him over the familiar short, black pipe.

“B’gorra, it’s me ould fri’nd Neale.”

“It sure is.  How’re you Casey?”

“Pritty good fur an ould soldier....  An’ it’s news I hear of yez, me boy.”

“What news?”

“Shure yez hed a boost.  Gineral Lodge hisself wor tellin’ Grady, the boss, that yez had been given charge of Number Ten.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“I’m dom’ glad to hear ut,” declared the Irishman.  “But yez hev a hell of a job in thot Number Ten.”

“So I’ve been told.  What do you know about it, Casey?”

“Shure ut ain’t much.  A fri’nd of mine was muxin’ mortor over there.  An’ he sez whin the crick was dry ut hed a bottom, but whin wet ut shure hed none.”

“Then I have got a job on my hands,” replied Neale, grimly.

Those days it took the work-train several hours to reach the end of the rails.  Neale rode by some places with a profound satisfaction in the certainty that but for him the track would not yet have been spiked there.  Construction was climbing fast into the hills.  He wondered when and where would be the long-looked-for meeting of the rails connecting East with West.  Word had drifted over the mountains that the Pacific division of the construction was already in Utah.

At the camp Colonel Dillon offered Neale an escort of troopers out to Number Ten, but Neale decided he could make better time alone.  There had been no late sign of the Indians in that locality and he knew both the road and the trail.

Early next morning, mounted on a fast horse, he set out.  It was a melancholy ride.  Several times he had been over that ground, once traveling west with Larry, full of ardor and joy at the prospect of soon seeing Allie Lee, and again on the return, in despair at the loss of her.

He rode the twenty miles in three hours.  The camp of dirty tents was clustered in a hot valley surrounded by hills sparsely fringed with trees.  Neale noted the timber as a lucky augury to his enterprise.  It was an idle camp full of lolling laborers.