Fresno. This
search was likewise fruitless.

The following hours were a hideous, slow nightmare for Neale. He had
left one hope--that daylight would disclose Allie somewhere.

Day eventually dawned. It disclosed many facts. The Sioux had departed,
and if they had suffered any loss there was no evidence of it. The
engineers' quarters, cabin, and tents had burned to the ground.
Utensils, bedding, food, grain, tools, and instruments--everything
of value except the papers Neale had saved--had gone up in smoke. The
troopers who had rescued the work-train must now depend upon that train
for new supplies. Many of the graders had been wounded, some seriously,
but none fatally. Nine of them were missing, as was Allie Lee.

The blow was terrible for Neale. Yet he did not sink under it. He did
not consider the opinion of his sympathetic friends that Allie had
wildly run out of the burning cabin to fall into the hands of the Sioux.
He returned with the graders to their camp; and it was no surprise to
him to find the wagon-train, that had tarried near, gone in the night.
He trailed that wagon-train to the next camp, where on the busy road
he lost the wheel-tracks. Next day he rode horseback all the way in
to Benton. But all his hunting and questioning availed nothing. Gloom,
heartsickness, and despair surged in upon him, but he did not think of
giving up. He remembered all Allie had told him. Those fiends had
gotten her again. He believed now all that she had said; and there was
something of hope in the thought that if Durade had found her again she
would at least not be at the mercy of ruffians like Fresno. But this was
a forlorn hope. Still, it upheld Neale and determined him to seek her
during the time in which his work did not occupy him.

And thus it came about that Neale plodded through his work along the
line during the day, and late in the afternoon rode back with the
laborers to Benton. If Allie Lee lived she must be in Benton.

20

Neale took up lodgings with his friend Larry. He did not at first tell
the cowboy about his recovery of Allie Lee and then her loss for the
second time; and when finally he could not delay the revelation any
longer he regretted that he had been compelled to tell.

Larry took the news hard. He inclined to the idea that she had fallen
again into the hands of the Indians. Nevertheless, he showed himself
terribly bitter against men of the Fresno stamp, and in fact against all
the outl