Opening the iron trail

End o’ track, again! With the secret of the Home Cooking restaurant kept close from Engine Driver Richards; with Pat Miles urging the work, and the red-shirted, gray-shirted, blue-shirted Irish track-layers and spikers and ballasters sweating, and the sledges whanging, and the truck-loads of rails hauled by Jimmie Muldoon and brother astride horse and yellow mule rumbling up, and the puffing construction-train constantly elbowing the boarding-train out of the way, and the cheery song breaking forth ever and anon:

“So it’s fur out into the desert yez have been, is it?” asked Pat, at lay-off the first evening.

“That’s what, Pat.”

“An’ nigh died, one o’ yez. Well, well! Is that the kind o’country? But no matter. Yez didn’t see anything o’ the Cintral, did yez?”

“We should say not! They’re still in California, more than a thousand miles west.”

“Sure, what’s a thousand miles, to a U. Pay. man? First thing they know, we’ll be bumpin’ their Chiny dagoes off’n the right o’ way. Is it true they got 10,000 of ’em a-workin’ wid white man’s picks an’ shovels?”

“Shouldn’t wonder, Pat.”

Pat sighed.

“Ah, well. Nobody but an Irishman can handle a pick—yes, an’ a shillaly, too. Wid them two weapons we’ll dig to Chiny itself. We’ve had a hard time wid the Injuns, since you left, Terry, me boy; but now we’re hittin’ our stride ag’in an’ we’ll not stop till we’re atop them Black Hills yonder, where we can take a squint over at the country beyant.”

The rails went forward, but Terry had found himself promoted from rail-hauler on the back of old yellow Jenny (and he did hate to leave Jenny) to time-checker on the back of a horse: his business to ride along among the work-gangs and get their time, for report to the Casement pay-master.

And George was settled as a clerk in the pay-car that weekly trundled up and back.

The Indian troubles were thought to be quieted. A big treaty council had been held, and another was to follow, between the Sioux and Cheyennes and the United States. At any rate, the job of riding the line and visiting the near grading-camps was not so dangerous as it might have been earlier in the season. Also, it was very pleasant, when Cheyenne and the Home Cooking restaurant drew nearer to end o’ track.

The rails were marching on. Thirty miles to Cheyenne, twenty miles to Cheyenne, fifteen miles to Cheyenne, and ten, and five and two—and one more day’s work and there they’d be.

There they were, on November 13, this 1867: planting mile-post 517, and welcomed by a great crowd, and a band, and a lot of flags and bunting, with the Lincoln car carrying the Government inspectors pressing after and accepting the track as far as mile-post 490, only some twenty-five miles behind. Yes, it was a well-built road.

This evening Terry guided his father up-town, and another reunion occurred, celebrated with plenty of pie and hot doughnuts.

Into the new terminal station the telegraph poles advanced. The pay-car moved up, bringing the eager George. Then came the procession: Casement Brothers’ take-down warehouse and offices, and the gamblers’ tents and the side-shows and saloons, which had been only waiting, at Julesburg. Cheyenne rapidly swelled to 3,000 people, for now the news had passed that it was to be the winter quarters of the railroad. The Overland Stage changed its terminal, also, to keep with the gang, and put on a run between Denver and Cheyenne.

There was nothing but the station left at Julesburg, the five months “wickedest town in America”: nothing but the station and a mess of cans and other rubbish. Cheyenne, the “Magic City of the Plains,” had swallowed it.

On the very next day after the arrival of end o’ track, the passenger trains began to roll in. The first brought a brimming excursion from the East. This meant another jollification, with speeches by the mayor and by Mr. Sidney Dillon, president of the U. P. board of directors, and by little General Casement, “champion track-layer of the continent,” and others. Town lots that the company had sold for $150 were being resold for as high as $2,500.

The end o’ track did not pause here long. As soon as switches and side-tracks enough had been laid the rails hastened onward, for the Black Hills.

“We’ll ate our Christmas dinner atop, boys,” Pat cheered. “An’ from yon, 8,000 feet in the air, we’ll shake our fists at the Cintral haythen, over beyant in Californy. ’Twill be better that, than shakin’ ’em under each other’s noses here in this new roarin’ town which is like to be the greediest yet after your money.”

The work grew harder. The winds of November and December blew fiercely, sweeping the sand and gravel and snow into the men’s faces; Crow Creek froze, the water had to be hauled from holes chopped through the ice, there were days when the laying had to quit entirely, until the grade was scraped clear. And the climb and curves and cuts would have slowed the march even in summer.

General Dodge was back from his exploring trip into the far west. He had taken his company through to Salt Lake, and then east again by a northern route. He had found no survey better than the Percy Browne lines; the road was to run through the Red Basin.

“To Fort Sanders was the plan o’ him an’ Gin’ral Casement,” said Pat. “Two hundred an’ eighty-eight miles for the year, that is. But we’re like to fall short o’ that an’ we’ll rist content when we’ve planted post 540 at the top o’ the grade. ’Twill be 500 miles o’ track laid in two seasons o’ twelve months altogether—near sixty miles a month—two miles a workin’ day, ain’t it, week in an’ week out? B’ gorry, I call that purty good, meself, an’ the Cintral bunch o’ pig-tails can put the figgers in their pipes an’ smoke ’em.”

Therefore at the close of December the track and grading gangs knocked off for the winter, with end o’ track almost to the top, and only ten miles this side of Sherman Summit.

The pay-car pulled in, to pay off the men. General Dodge, General Casement, Superintendent Reed, and other officials came, for the last inspection of the year. While the men were gathering their tools, to board their train and “leave the job,” Terry and George and Pat rode horseback up the grade to the top, for a view.

Snow whitened the pass, changing the Black Hills to white; a wind always blew, up here, and the air was cutting cold. The curves of the roadbed hid the boarding-train and end o’ track, behind, but farther in the east, and below, might be seen Cheyenne, sprawling on the drear plains, with the rails apparently spanning the distance to it. Southwest seventy-five miles there uplifted hoary Long’s Peak, the northernmost sentinel of the Colorado Rockies; ’twas claimed that on a clear day you could see even the celebrated Pike’s Peak, the southernmost sentinel, 150 miles by air-line. Northwest, about 100 miles, beckoned the great, lone Elk Mountain, at the western end of the Laramie Plains.

In that direction Pat gazed—they all gazed, with watering eyes. Pat sighed.

“Sure,” he said, “’tis a weary march, yet, rail by rail, twenty-eight feet by twenty-eight feet, across them plains, an’ across the waterless desert, an’ across the snow mountains, and down to Salt Lake, an’ on, ever on, into the west, for twice the distance we’ve come already. But we’ll make it, lads. Aye, we’ll make it, if we finish on our hands an’ knees. I hear tell there be folks back in the States who say that no head of a daycent-size family will live to see the iron horse crossin’ continent from the Atlantic to the Paycific. They say he’ll die of old age, before. But I, Paddy Miles, construction foreman o’ Casement Brothers, a-layin’ the U. Pay. tracks, say that afore the Irishmen on the right o’ way have grown whiskers, the smart-alicks themselves’ll be ridin’ on passes (if they can get ’em) from Chicago to ’Frisco widout change o’ cars.” He turned his horse. “Come on back now. We’ll winter in Cheyenne, an’ be ready to start in fresh on the job by the time the wild geese are flyin’, in the spring.”

“Hurrah for the U. P.!” uttered George. “But what I want to know next is, what has the C. P. done?”

“Well, they ain’t been loafin’, b’ gorry,” Pat assured. “They’ve been workin’, whilst hangin’ on by their toes.”

And that was so. In 1866 the U. P. had laid 260 miles of track; the C. P. only thirty-eight. This year the U. P.’s record was 240 miles—“an’ ivery mile a fight,” as Pat said; the C. P. record was only forty-six miles—but such miles, according to the California and Salt Lake newspapers!

It was a thrilling story. The Central Pacific people had started in 7,000 feet up, at the top of the Sierra Nevada Range. They had had to haul their rails and other supplies over snowy grades of ninety and 100 feet to the mile—one grade was the limit of 116 feet to the mile! It took two of the most powerful engines yet built, to each construction-train; the snow was fifteen feet deep on the level, and half of the graders had to spend their time shoveling it off the roadbed. The track could not get over the top, on account of the grade, and the snow there twenty to 100 feet deep, so it went through, by a tunnel a third of a mile long, drilled into solid granite rock, and blasted out with powder. Some of the charges blew 3,000 tons of rock into fragments at one whack—and rocks weighing over 200 pounds were sent flying over half a mile. The powder expense for one month was $54,000.

The company could not wait to get their engines and rails by ship around Cape Horn, so they were ordering them by the railroad across the Isthmus of Panama—a shortcut. The freight bill on one locomotive was $8,100; and two of the giant engines had cost the company, when delivered, $70,752!

Forty miles of snow-sheds, of heavy timber, were necessary, so that the road should not be snowed under completely. There was to be one snow-shed over twenty miles long! There was a tremendous amount of high trestles, as well as a tremendous amount of chiseling and blasting to make a roadbed in the faces of the precipices.

Twenty-five saw-mills were busy, turning out timbers and ties. Ten thousand Chinamen had been engaged, as graders and track-layers. They were paid $30 a month—or a dollar a day, including Sundays—and furnished their own meals. They worked so close and with such system that in a space of 250 feet there sometimes were thirty carts and 250 graders, all as busy as bees. White men could not be depended upon; the white laborers were always being tempted away, to the gold and silver mines.

The Central Pacific Company had not waited to finish the big tunnel, or shovel off the snow. They had sent several thousand men on ahead, in wagons, twenty miles over and down, to work where the snow was lighter. They had loaded a locomotive, taken apart, and forty miles of rails and bolts and spikes, upon wagons, and sent them over, too.

So that while the tunnel was being drilled and blasted, and the grading done beyond, the advance gangs were building, also. On December 13 the tracks had descended the mountain as far as the Nevada line; were getting down into the foothills, and early in the spring would be amidst the sage-brush of the Nevada desert, with an open way to Salt Lake!

“Gee! We fellows’ll have to hustle,” George remarked, after he and Terry had succeeded in reading the tattered newspapers, passed around at Cheyenne. “They’ve got 600 miles yet to go, but it’s level; we’ve got 500 miles, and we’re just starting in on the mountains.”

“That Nevada desert country is fierce, though. No good water for miles and miles, and lots of loose sand and soda and alkali. Injuns, too—the Diggers and Snakes. Our engineers have been across it surveying.”

“Can’t be worse than our Red Desert,” retorted George—who had been there, himself. “And we’ve got the Wasatch Mountains, besides.”

“Just the samee, I’ll bet on the Irish. We’ll beat the Chinks into Salt Lake, and we’ll meet ’em while they’re still coming,” Terry answered hopefully. “You watch our smoke, boy, as soon as spring opens. The Northwestern Railway is into Council Bluffs across from Omaha, you know; we don’t have to haul our stuff by wagon and boat any more—we get the rails quick, right off the cars. We’ve got plenty timber close to the line, in the Black Hills, for ties, and the tie-camps are cutting and sawing now. We’re graded already clear ahead to Sanders on the other side of the Black Hills, and the surveys are about finished from here to Salt Lake. Do you know how many miles those engineers have covered since April? Three thousand, three hundred and ten! I reckon General Dodge has everything mapped, and sees just what he’s going to do.”

“They say the company’s plumb out of money. We lost, at only $16,000 a mile across the plains. Had to do too much hauling at long distance.”

“Well, I guess the Central didn’t make much money, at $48,000 a mile in those mountains; and look at the freight bills they’ve been paying. Now we get our $48,000 a mile, for easy grading; and after that, $32,000 a mile. The U. P.’ll raise enough to start on again.”

And evidently this was to be the case. General Dodge went to New York, for a company meeting. After he had explained the route, and had shown the maps of the surveys, the company told him to go ahead as fast as he could.

It was a busy winter in Cheyenne. Supplies of rails and spikes and bolts and other iron ammunition poured in as rapidly as the trains could bring them. Tons and tons—thousands of tons—were stacked in the Casement Bros.’ warehouses. And out along the line over the Black Hills, and down, and away into the Laramie Plains huge piles of ties and culvert and bridge timbers were being collected.

Cheyenne boomed. It had 3,000 buildings and 6,000 people; and what with the graders and track-layers who wintered there, several of the business firms were selling goods to the amount of $30,000 a month! The Home Restaurant did a fine business, besides feeding its “men folks.”

Early in the spring General Dodge called all the chiefs of departments to meet him at Omaha, the U. P. headquarters. At the close of the meeting the word was spread:

The trail had been decided upon. There was no good route through Salt Lake City, and around the south end of the Great Salt Lake. Ogden, at the north end of the lake, thirty-six miles north of Salt Lake City, was to be the Utah terminal point. But the engineers were to set out at once, snow or no snow, mountains or no mountains, and run their stakes from the Laramie Plains to Humboldt Wells over 200 miles west of Ogden!

The graders were to start in as soon as the frost was out of the ground so that they could dig.

The track-layers were expected to lay 500 miles of track in eight months—and then keep going the 220 miles farther, so as to meet the C. P. at Humboldt Wells in the next year, 1869!

“For th’ love o’ Hiven!” Pat Miles gasped, reading the orders. “To Ogden, is it, 500 miles, t’other side the snow range, at one jump—an’ 220 miles across the desert, at another? Oh, well! Faith an’ we’ll do it. The Cintral have their 10,000 Chinks, but the U. Pay.’ll have 15,000 white men. That’s all we nade: men, men, an’ more men—an’ a bit o’ money to pay ’em wid.”

The additional men poured into Cheyenne, like the iron was pouring in. They raised the population to 10,000. An army of picks and spades, sledges, ploughs and scrapers only awaited the word: “Forward!” The surveying parties had gone at once. From Omaha the chiefs had passed through, picking up their squads on their way. Some were camped on the Laramie Plains; some were camped at Rawlins Springs of the high plateau; some were into the Red Desert; some were crossing the Wasatch Range of Utah with sleds, over snow to the tops of the telegraph poles; some were in the Nevada desert beyond the Salt Lake, and facing the Central engineers. That was George’s father’s job. He had not come in at all, but had wintered at Salt Lake and Ogden.

It was to be the greatest race ever run on the American continent. Every mile gained meant $48,000 or $32,000; it meant also a grant of land twenty miles deep on either side of the tracks; and it meant beating the other fellow.