When Redding spun his lariat for Preston's head--after he had ridden past him two or three times while the horsemen lined up like a company of cavalry and looked on--it landed around his shoulders. Redding planted a spur into his cow pony, there was a jump and Preston's body shot up and away from his mount and to the ground. [Illustration: Copyright by American Colortype Co., Chicago Track-Layers Fought Redskins--Chapter VIII.] CHAPTER VIII TRACK-LAYERS FOUGHT REDSKINS. When the Union Pacific Railroad was being built the Indians were wild and hostile. The appearance of the locomotive was unwelcome. Surveyors, track-layers, bridge-builders and others if not properly guarded by details of United States troops were attacked from ambush and often killed. It was indeed an adventurous calling to be a railroader in those days, no matter in what capacity; for if it wasn't Indians it was something else that made it so in the then wilderness. Towns were built in a day along the South Platte River and the populations were first made up largely by the scum of the earth, consisting of criminals of all kinds from all quarters of the globe, either engaged in gambling, highway robbery or running saloons that were the toughest ever known in America. Dance halls and dives followed the work of railroad building from Omaha to Ogden, and if the earth could speak it would tell a story of murder that would make one shudder. Hundreds of men were shot either in brawls or by robbers and their bodies buried in unmarked graves. At Julesburg alone, the story was told, after the temporary terminus was moved on west 100 miles, there were 417 graves in one sidehill, and among the lot not one grave in the so-called cemetery was filled by a man who died a natural death. This may be an exaggeration--perhaps it is--but it was not an uncommon thing for a man to be shot and killed in a brawl while a dance was in progress without for a moment stopping the festivities.