assed there in months. He spent another wretched
night, and next day awoke to the necessities of life. Except for his
rifle, and his horses, and a few traps back up in the hills, he had
nothing to show for years of hard and successful work. But that did not
matter. He had begun with as little and he could begin again. He killed
meat, satisfied his hunger, and cooked more that he might carry with
him. Then he spent two more days in that locality, until he had crossed
every outlet from his valley. Not striking a track, he saw nothing but
defeat.

That moment was bitter. "If Neale'd happen along hyar now he'd kill
me--an' sarve me right," muttered the trapper.

But he believed that Neale, too, had gone the way of so many who had
braved these wilds. Slingerland saw in the fate of Neale and Allie the
result of civilization marching westward. If before he had disliked the
idea of the railroad entering his wild domain, he hated it now. Before
that survey the Indians had been peaceful; no dangerous men rode the
trails. What right had the Government to steal land from the Indians,
to break treaties, to run a steam track across the plains and mountains?
Slingerland foresaw the bloodiest period ever known in the West, before
that work should be completed. It had struck him deep--this white-man
movement across the Wyoming hills, and it was not the loss of all he had
worked for that he minded. For years his life had been lonely, and then
suddenly it had been full. Never again would it be either.

Slingerland turned his back to the trail made by the advancing march of
the empire-builders, and sought the seclusion of the more inaccessible
hills.

"Some day I'll work out with a load of pelts," he said, "an' then mebbe
I'll hyar what become of Neale--an' her."

He found, as one of his kind knew how to find, the valleys where no
white man had trod--where the game abounded and was tame--where if the
red man came he was friendly--where the silent days and lonely nights
slowly made more bearable his memory of Allie Lee.

12

Allie Lee possessed a mind at once active and contemplative. While she
dreamed of Neale and their future she busied herself with many tasks,
and a whole year flew by without a lagging or melancholy hour.

Neale, she believed, had been detained or sent back to Omaha, or given
more important work than formerly. She divined Slingerland's doubt, but
she would not give it room in her consciousness. Her heart t