Opening the iron trail

“Whew! Watch those tarriers ‘drill,’ will you!”

The fall of 1868 had vanished in a whirlpool of furious work. Now in the early winter Terry Richards stood beside George Stanton, at the entrance to a cut through snow higher than their heads, high up towards the crest of the Wasatch Mountains dividing Wyoming from Utah, and with frosty breath exclaimed while the rails went forward.

Truly an inspiring sight this was. The landscape was white. For a day there had been a thawing wind, which melted the snow of the partially cleared grade, had left the grade and ties icy, and turned the rails to twin lines which glittered under the sun of the succeeding cold spell.

Far below stretched the row of men, working in their shirt sleeves, with their breaths and the steam from their bodies floating in vapor. The rails, brittle from the frost, and handled carefully with mittens, were clanging, the rail-trucks, hauled by the white-encrusted Muldoon nags, rumbled from behind, and the boarding-train, also white-coated, had pulled in, to await the arrival of the construction-train.

Drowning the ring of sledges and clink of shovels and crow-bars, from the west distance there occasionally echoed the dull boom of blasts; for the grading gangs were not so far ahead, now; the rails were on their heels; the ground had frozen too hard for pick and plough, and every yard of earth in the cuts had to be blasted like granite. Three dollars a yard the U. P. company were paying, the same as for rock work.

George had come up, on the pay-car, again. The pay-car was halted just at the rear of the boarding-train. Down the track, but out of sight, the construction-train might be heard puffing noisily.

“I don’t reckon the C. P. folks met up with much worse than this, in their mountains,” Terry added.

“Shucks, boy! Haven’t you heard tell that their Chinks had to shovel a grade through forty feet of snow pack?” scoffed George. “Yes, and build wooden tunnels, like, to keep from being buried alive. If they were good for forty feet, we’re good for sixty. We aren’t going to stop for winter, either. We’re bound on through, straight to Humbolt Wells.”

“How do you know?” That was sudden news.

“I heard it on the way up. General Dodge and Superintendent Reed were talking about it in the pay-car. That’s what they’re talking about with General Casement now, I bet. The track-gang and grading gangs are going to work right on all winter, same as any time. General Dodge said it would cost the company $10,000,000 extra—but he’s had orders from New York to keep going regardless, and meet the C. P. at Humboldt Wells. So we’ve got to finish those 725 miles at one stint, boy, while the C. P. are building only 300. Think of that! They’ve been building all the year and we’ve still got 400, ourselves.”

“Gee whiz!” Terry gasped. “And we’re in the mountains, to boot, with the snow piling on top of us! Wonder what Pat will say?”

General Dodge, General Casement and Superintendent of Construction Reed were walking slowly up track. The puffing of the construction-train sounded more and more labored—now and then broke into a terrific staccato or drum-fire as the drive-wheels of its two engines slipped on the rails. It had a heavy load of rails and ties both, an engine to pull and an engine to push.

The three men turned to watch it come. It was now in sight, rounding a curve below, weaving among the pines and rocks, and coughing black smoke. It entered a deep cut—emerged, and swaying and struggling struck a long fill where the dirt ballast bridged a hill slope, in a curve, and fell sharply away from under the outer ends of the ties.

“Puff! Puff! Puff-puff-puff! Puff! Puff! PUFF-puff-puff-puff-puff!”

The whole bank glistened with the ice; trickles from the lately melted snow seamed it; it was a south slope, and the ice and snow had melted a little today, again.

“She’ll never make it, will she?” George uttered.

“With dad and Bill running 119? Sure she’ll make it,” declared Terry. “Dad says give old 119 sand enough and she’ll climb a telegraph pole.”

Around the hill roared the heavy train, clouding all the snowy timber with its dense smoke and shaking the air with its bombardment of explosions. It gathered way as it straightened out, for a moment; suddenly began to tilt sideways—engine, tender, first car, second car—the whistle spurted steam, but before the shrieks of the engine and the shouts of the spectators mingled, the track had yielded. Yes, the train, engine and all, car chasing car in a tumbling, plunging hurly-burly while the brakemen sprawled clear, was rolling and sliding down the hill slope, taking rails and ties with it. Its trail left a wide scar in the snow. Only the pusher engine and the caboose remained, above.

General Dodge, General Casement and Superintendent Reed already were running. Terry and George ran. Amid wild shouts the track-gang, some dropping their tools, others carrying crow-bars and picks and spades, ran, slipping and staggering as they pelted down the track, or by a shortcut forged through the deep snow.

“Oh, gosh!” George panted, sprinting.

“I should say!” gasped Terry.

Marvelous to tell, the engine—good old No. 119!—had landed right side up! Engineer Richards and Foreman Bill had stuck to their posts; they were dazedly descending from the cab.

“I’ve always said she was a lucky girl,” announced Terry’s father, through the blood from a gash in his cheek.

But what a mess that was, here in the little gulch! A mixture of rails, ties, cars, extending from roadbed to bottom. But nobody badly hurt.

“A foine dump yez made,” Pat wheezed, arriving. “Aren’t yez satisfied to lave the track where we laid it? Move your feet, men,” he barked, at the staring, laughing track-gang, tearing in out of breath. “Part o’ yez on the grade ag’in; there’s rails an’ ties a-plenty, an’ I want a new track widin the hour. What’s wan train in the ditch, annyhow?”

All was good nature. The men sprang to their tasks. General Casement nodded approvingly. He and General Dodge beckoned Pat aside. Pat listened and nodded also.

“Sure,” he agreed. “What’s the use o’ stoppin’ for weather? Give us the rails an’ the pay-car reg’lar, an’ the boys’ll keep goin’.”

So the work was to continue all winter!

The many hands made a short job of laying a new section of track. The engine with the pay-car backed down; and aiding the derrick, it and the pusher engine of the construction-train began to remove the wreck from the ditch.

The U. P. gangs knew no such words as “quit.” Their eyes were ever turned westward, peering for Ogden and for the smoke of the C. P. construction-trains, beyond.

“Wan hundred miles to the top, an’ wan hundred down, on the last leg, an’ there we are, boys,” Pat had cheered. He was a host in himself.

The Wasatch Range of the Rockies had loomed ever nearer and nearer. It had proved to be a fine hunting and fishing country; but nobody took the time to hunt or fish. It had proved to be a wonderful scenery country; but nobody had time to view the strange rocks and dashing rivers and pine-clad slopes. The men only worked, ate, slept—and worked again, to the tune of “Down! Down!” and “Whang! Whang! Whangity-whang! Whang! Whang!” From grading-camps and tie-camps, located far out in the high timbered regions, wild nights and strenuous days were reported.

The surveyors had found a pass better than the stage road pass, over the north end of the Wasatch; the advance grading gangs were being flung forward 150 miles, to blast the cuts and level the ridges; and although Omaha was 900 miles behind, the rails were coming forward in a long thunderous procession of trains and dumped at the eager front.

“No hand shall be taken from the throttle until we know that the front is supplied,” had telegraphed Superintendent Hoxie, from Omaha.

And Terry as time-checker and George as pay-car clerk were as busy as the busiest.

Up for the pass had climbed the track, following the winding line of survey stakes that frequently stretched one mile into two and three. End o’ track was eleven miles north of old Fort Bridger, Jim Bridger’s station on the Overland Stage trail, and 6,550 feet in air, when winter struck.

On that October morning Terry, the track-layers and ballasters had romped out from the boarding-train into a foot of snow and an air thick with the whirling flakes.

“Merry Christmas!”

“Sure, an’ snow-birds we are!”

“Yes, an’ snow-shoes we’ll nade, for this kind o’ work.”

The men were lively, but the march was slowed. For two days the storm had raged, before the weather settled to clear and stinging cold. The construction-train, No. 119 switched to the pulling end, bucked the drifts with two engines; and as many men wielding shovels, scraping the grade, as wielded sledges and picks and crow-bars. There was plenty of wood, so that the boarding-train and camps were kept warm.

Terry rode his horse breast-high in the white mantle, to get the time from the gang bosses.

Storm had succeeded storm. It was to be a hard winter and an early winter; and of the 500 miles only some 375 had been finished. Now fairly out of their mountains and into the Nevada desert, the C. P. crews were coming fast—they had to haul fuel and ties and water as well as their rails, from far behind, but they had laid 250 miles and graded 300.

“They’ve got 350 miles yet to go, ’fore they reach Ogden, ag’in our 100,” quoth Pat. “But if we’re snowed in atop these mountains wid the passes behind an’ ahid blocked, whilst they have only a few ridges to cross, faith they’re like to bate us in the spring.”

Mile by mile, at snail’s pace instead of giant’s strides, the U. P. track crept onward and upward, piercing the snow.

“Well, if we can’t foller the stakes we can foller the tiligraph poles,” Pat encouraged. “They’re stickin’ into sight.”

For the railroad trail was now almost the same as the Overland Stage trail, and the telegraph had been in here since ’61.

All in all, readily enough might Terry Richards exclaim: “Whew!” and wonder if the C. P. had had any worse country in their winter mountains.

Thanksgiving caught them on the summit of the pass over—7,500 feet up, but not so high as Sherman Summit of the Black Hills.

“Down grade, hooray!” the men cheered, although down grade made little difference. But they were getting west of the Rockies, at last.

Before Christmas another town and supply base awaited end o’ track. This was Evanston, named for Mr. James Evans the engineering chief, in the Bear River Valley on the west slope of the Uintah Range of the Wasatch. ’Twas a depot for the ties that had been floated down the Bear, and according to Geologist Van Lennep there were coal-fields near by.

Omaha, 955 miles; Ogden, seventy-five miles. Of the 955 miles the Government inspectors had accepted 940, already. From Bryan arrived Casement Brothers’ take-down warehouse, and the Home Cooking restaurant bringing Mother Richards and Mother Stanton and Virgie—but that was about all. The gamblers and saloon-men and toughs had gathered from Utah and the grading and tie camps.

Virgie was tickled to be at the front again. Now she might ride the engine of the construction-train, when she felt like it, and keep up her record of “first passenger across.”

“Sure, ’tis a winter quarters for them that nade such,” announced Pat—and genuine winter quarters Evanston certainly appeared to be, with the snow above the roofs of the one-story shacks. “But we’ll not stay long, oursilves; not even for Christmas cilibration of more’n a day. We’ll put Wyoming behind us, lad, an’ get into Utah wance more afore the year closes. Yis, we’ll chase that boundary till we ketch it.”

In the past few months Wyoming had passed end o’ track. It had taken a bite out of Utah’s northeast corner; and this had been discouraging. But now end o’ track forged on, out of Evanston into which the passengers and freight already were rolling. In the dusk of New Year’s Eve the track gangs threw down their tools with a whoop.

Record for 1868, 425 miles: fifty miles a month, all told, across the waterless desert and the frozen snowy mountains, into Utah again, at last!

“An’ whereabouts is the C. Pay., then? How far have they come, tell me?”

That was the great question. The telegraph ticked the answer into Evanston.

“Track completed by the Central Pacific, in 1868: 363 miles.”

Pat groaned.

“They’re short o’ Humboldt Wells only forty odd miles.” And he braced up. “But they’re short o’ Ogden some 270, ag’in our sivinty-five. An’ the orders be to reach Ogden an’ kape’ goin’. We’ll make a frish start ’arly wid this new year.”

Suddenly the United States awakened to the fact that the Salt Lake was to be reached not in 1870 but in 1869, and that the iron highway across continent was to be ready for business six years ahead of schedule. The Government had required only fifty miles a year; the two companies were building 200, 300, 400. The newspapers of East and West flared with headlines.

“But where’ll we meet?” proposed George.

“I dunno,” Terry confessed. “If the C. P. keeps coming one way, past Humboldt Wells, and we keep going the other way, to Humboldt Wells, we won’t meet anywhere.”