Trail's End

by George W. Ogden

The train was picking up speed rapidly, taxing Morgan's strength to hold pace with it trussed up as he was, the strain of the hauling rope feeling as if it would cut his arms to the bone. The man who labored to hold abreast of Morgan was slashing at the rope. Morgan felt the blade strike it, the tension yield for a second as if several strands had been cut. But not severed, not weakened enough to break it. It stiffened again immediately and the man, clinging desperately to Morgan's shoulder to hold his place in the quickening race, struck at it again and missed.

There came more shots and shouts. Morgan's heroic friend stumbled, lost his hold on the shoulder of the man he was trying to save, fell behind out of sight.

Morgan's poor hope for release from present torture and impending death now rested in the breaking of the rawhide rope where it had been weakened by that one desperate slash of the knife. He tried lunging back against the rope, but the speed of the train was too great; he could not brace a foot, he could not pause. There were gravel and small boulders in the ditch here. Morgan feared he would lose his footing and be dragged to his miserable end.

But onward through the dark he struggled and stumbled, at a pace that would have taxed an unhampered man to maintain, the strain of the cutting rope about his body and arms like a band of hot iron. Should a brakeman appear now on top of the car to which he was tied, Morgan knew he had little chance of making himself heard through the noise of the train, spent as he was already, gasping short breaths which he seemed unable to drive into his burning lungs.

How long could human strength and determination to cling to life endure this punishment! how long until he must fall and drag, unable to regain his feet, to be pounded at that cruel rope's end into a mangled, abhorrent thing!

On, the grind of wheels, the jolt of loose-jointed cars over the clanking track drowning even the noise of the engine laboring up that merciful grade; on, staggering and swaying, flung like a pebble on a cord, shoulder now against the car, feet now flying, half lifted from the ground, among the stones of the ditch, over the uneven earth, across gullies, over crossings where there paused no traveler in the black despair of that night to give him the help for which he perished.

On, the breath that he drew in gasping stridulation like liquid fire in his throat; on, the calm stars of the unemotional universe above his head; on, the wind of the wide prairie lands striking his face with their indefinable sweet scents which even clutching death did not deny his turbulent senses; on, pain in every nerve; on, joints straining and starting in their sockets; on, dragged, whipped, lashed from ditch to ties' end, flung from rocking car to crumbling bank, where jagged rocks cut his face and freed his blood to streak coldly upon his cheek.

There was no likelihood that the train would stop in many miles—even now it was gaining speed, the engine over the crest of the grade. Only for a post that he might snub that stubborn strand of leather upon! only for a bridge where his swinging weight might break it!

Faster—the train was going faster! The pain of his torture dulling as overcharged nerves refused to carry the growing load, Morgan still clung to his feet, pounding along in the dark. He was growing numb in body and mind, as one overwhelmed by a narcotic drug, yet he clung to the desperate necessity of keeping on his feet.

How far he had come, how long he might yet endure, he had no thought to measure. He lived only for the insistent, tenacious purpose of keeping on his feet, rather than of keeping on his feet to live. He must run and pant, under the lash of nature that would not let him drop down and die, as long as a spark of consciousness remained or flying limbs could equal the speed of the train, helped on by the drag of that rawhide strand that would not break.