hat
the Pacific Construction Company was reputed to be crossing the Sierra
Nevada, that there were ten thousand Chinamen at work on the road, that
the day when East and West were to meet was sure to come. Eagerly she
searched, her heart thumping, for the name of Neale, but she did not
find it. She read in one paper that the Sioux were active along the line
between Medicine Bow and Kearney. Every day the workmen would sight a
band of Indians, and, growing accustomed to the sight, they would become
careless, and so many lost their lives. A massacre had occurred out on
the western end of the road, where the construction gangs were working.
Day after day the Sioux had prowled around without attacking, until
the hardy and reckless laborers lost fear and caution. Then, one day,
a grading gang working a mile from the troops was set upon by a band of
swiftly riding warriors, and before they could raise a gun in defense
were killed and scalped in their tracks.

Allie read on. She devoured the news. Manifestly the world was awakening
to the reality of the great railroad. How glad Neale must be! Always he
had believed in the greatness and the reality of the U. P. R. Somewhere
along that line he was working--perhaps every night he rode into Benton.
Her emotions overwhelmed her as she thought of him so near, and for a
moment she could not see the print. Neale would never again believe she
was dead. And indeed she did live! She breathed--she was well, strong,
palpitating. She was sitting here in Benton, reading about the building
of the railroad. She wondered with a pang what her disappearance would
mean to Neale. He had said his life would be over if he lost her again.
She shivered.

Suddenly her eye rested on printed letters, familiar and startling.
Allison Lee!

"Allison Lee!" she breathed, very low. "MY FATHER!" And she read that
Allison Lee, commissioner of the U. P. R. and contractor for big jobs
along the line, would shortly leave his home in Council Bluffs, to meet
some of the directors in New York City in the interests of the railroad.
"If Durade and he ever meet!" she whispered. And in that portent she saw
loom on the gambler's horizon another cloud. In his egotism and passion
and despair he was risking more than he knew. He could not hope to keep
her a prisoner for very long. Allie felt again the gathering surety of
an approaching climax.

"My danger is, he may harm me, use me for his gambling lure, or kill
me," she m