Opening the iron trail

On marched the rails of the iron trail, at a giant’s stride of one to two miles in a day, as if trying to catch the tie-layers and the graders. But the tie-layers, planting their ties every two feet, managed to hold the advance; and twenty, thirty, fifty miles in advance of them, the graders followed the stakes of the engineers. Back and forth along the grade toiled the wagons, distributing ties and provisions. From Omaha to North Platte thundered the trains, bringing fresh supplies, other rails and other ties, to be taken on by the construction-trains.

And into Omaha were pouring, by boat up from St. Louis and St. Joe, and by wagon from Iowa, still other rails and ties and provisions, from the farther east. It was said that if a double line of dollar bills were laid, instead of rails, from Omaha across the plains, they would not pay for the cost of the roadbed alone.

The Indians were still bad. They had not given up. They ambushed grading parties whenever they could—killed stragglers and hunters, and ran off stock. The Pawnee scouts and the regular cavalry and infantry constantly patrolled the right-of-way, camped with the men, and tried to clear the country, before and on either side. But the construction-trains sometimes fought at full speed, or narrowly escaped a wreck.

Every morning the track-layer gang of the boarding-train piled out at reveille, the same as in the army; they marched to work, in columns of fours, at a shoulder arms, under captains and sergeants, stacked their guns, and were ready to spring to ranks again at the first order.

“B’ gorry, the same as a battalion o’ infantry, we are,” said Pat Miles. “An’ there was no better battalion durin’ the war, either. From Gin’ral Casement down to the chief spiker we got as good officers as ever wore the blue, wid five years’ trainin’ behind ’em—an’ there’s many a man usin’ a pick who’s fit to command a company, in a pinch.”

Little was heard from the engineering parties in the field. They were scattered all through the mountains, from up in Wyoming down into Colorado, and on across into Utah, beyond Salt Lake. In fact, last year the surveys for the best routes had been pushed clear to California—so as to be ready.

The parties that had come in, in the winter, to report and draw their maps, had gone out again in early spring for another season’s work. Some of the parties even had stayed out all winter, measuring the snow falls and learning the weather at the passes.

General Sherman, commanding this Military Division of the Missouri, which extended from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, had issued orders that the military posts should furnish General Dodge with all the soldiers who might be spared, so that the road and the survey parties should be protected.

Just the same, the surveying job was a dangerous job; ten and twelve miles of the survey lines were run, each day, and the chain-men and rod-men sometimes were far separated from the soldiers—and the chief of the party was supposed to go in the advance, to discover the easiest country.

Last year the mountains and the deserts on either slope had been pretty well covered. Now it was understood that the road was not to turn south for Denver and the Colorado Rockies—no good passes had been found; it was to turn for the northwest, instead, and cross the Rockies in Wyoming, by a pass that General Dodge himself had discovered in one of his Indian campaigns two years ago.

So onward marched the rails—that double line ever reaching westward. Back and forth, hauling the truck, Terry rode old yellow Jenny—and how many miles he traveled, to every one mile of track, he never quite figured out, but seemed to him that he already had ridden the distance to San Francisco.

“We’ll be after changin’ the base to a new Julesburg—as soon as the rails reach yon,” said the men.

“Sure, if it’s base o’ supplies ye mane, that’ll be changed before ever the rails get there,” was the answer. “Any day now they’ll be comin’ through—wid their gin mills an’ their skin-games an’ all on wheels, to be set up an’ waitin’ for our pay-car.”

And that was true. The railroad followed up along the north side of the South Platte River. The Overland Stage road followed up along the south side, with the six-horse teams and the round Concord stages plying over it between North Platte and Denver, on the Salt Lake haul. And stage road and railroad grade headed westward toward the old stage station at Julesburg.

It seemed likely that a new Julesburg would be the next supply base. It was about the right distance from North Platte, the last base, or ninety miles; for about every ninety or one hundred miles the supply base was relocated, farther along, at end o’ track.

Sure enough. The middle of June, when old Julesburg itself was in sight, two or three miles before, on the south side of the river there appeared a long procession of wagons, buggies, horses, mules, men, women and children.

“B’ gorry! Here they come, an’ there they go. Ain’t they kind, though, to be all waitin’ for us?”

The wagons were loaded high with canvas, lumber, and goods; men and women were perched atop, or riding in buggies, or upon saddle-animals. The procession looked like a procession of refugees from a war—there must have been over two hundred people. They certainly raised a great cloud of dust.

The track-gang paused to cheer and wave; the women and the men waved back. The graders on ahead waved and cheered, as the procession passed them, to ford the river again at old Julesburg and wait for end o’ track.

But Paddy Miles, the rugged Irishman, growled indignant.

“Bad cess to the likes of ’em. ’Tis hell on wheels, ag’in, movin’ on to ruin many a man amongst us. Sure, if the Injuns’d only sweep the whole lot from the face o’ the trail, I’d sing ‘Glory be! There’s a use for the red nagurs, after all.’”

The way these new towns sprang up was wonderful. The railroad sort of sowed them—and they grew over night like Jonah’s gourd or the bean-stalk of Jack-the-Giant-Killer. There was North Platte. Before the rails touched it, it had been nothing except a prairie-dog village. But in three weeks it had blossomed into a regular town.

Now part of its people were moving along, to tag the pay-car. These were the saloon keepers, gamblers, and speculators, in haste to fleece the railroad workers. The track men and the graders got three dollars a day, which meant rich picking for people bent upon selling nothing for something.

The land agents of the railroad company had selected the site for the next terminus town. Evidently it was across from old Julesburg, for this evening lights beamed out, in a great cluster, up the grade, where the “Hell on Wheels,” as the wrathful Pat Miles had dubbed it, was settling down like a fat spider weaving a web.

In the morning there was revealed the tents set up, and the board shanties going up—a mass of whity-brown and dingy dun, squatted upon the gravelly landscape on the railroad side of the river.

Several graders had been killed, in shooting scrapes; the night at new Julesburg had been a wild one; the track-layers who were anxious to spend their money waxed impatient to arrive. As soon as the rails reached the sprawling tent-and-shanty town, on the third day, the terminus supplies were moving up, on flat-cars, from North Platte.

The big building used by Casement Brothers, the contractors, occupied a car by itself. It could be taken apart like a toy building of blocks or cardboard. All the sections were numbered; and were unjointed, piled upon a car, moved on, and set up again.

That was the case with a number of other buildings—stores and offices, and the like. Some of them were painted to look as though they had brick or stone fronts—but they were only flimsy wood. Why, anybody who wished to erect a home on a lot could buy the house for $300 in Chicago, and have it shipped, ready to be stuck together.

The railroad company owned the lands upon which these terminal towns or “base” towns were located. The company land agents sold or leased the town lots, and the speculators who acquired the lots ran the figures up as high as $1000.

The rails paused a few days at this new Julesburg, while the supplies from North Platte were brought up, and side-tracks were laid for switching. After supper the first night in, Terry and little Jimmie, his side-partner, went sight-seeing—like everybody else.

What a place—what an ugly, sprawling, dusty, noisy place, of tents and shacks and jostling people, flannel-shirted, booted track-layers and graders, blanketed Mexicans, even a few Arapaho Indians, attracted hither-thither by the shouts and songs and revolver shots, while candles, lanterns and coal-oil lamps tried to turn the dusk into day.

“The man over there is yelling ‘Hurrah for the wickedest town in America!’ Hear him?” half whispered Jimmie.

“It’s a heap worse than North Platte ever was,” Terry answered. “North Platte’s a division point and will be a city; but Pat says this town won’t last long. When the gamblers and whiskey-sellers move on with the rails, there won’t be anything left.”

Suddenly he and Jimmie met, face to face, General Dodge himself, with little General “Jack” Casement and a party, two of them in military uniform. The generals stopped short.

“What are you boys doing here?”

“Jist lookin’ ’round, sorrs,” stammered Jimmie, in his best brogue, with scrape of foot and touch of fingers to his ragged cap.

“You go back to the train. This is no place for boys,” General Casement ordered sharply. “I think,” he added, to General Dodge, “that I’ll instruct the police to keep all minors off the streets, at night, unless with their parents or guardians.”

“A good idea,” agreed General Dodge. “But I’ll relieve you of one boy, anyway. He goes along with me, I believe. You still want to go to the very front, do you?” he asked, of Terry.

“Yes, sir, if I can.”

“Well, you can, with General Casement’s permission. I’m on my way now. My party is camped a few miles out, beside the river. You’ll see the tents, in the morning. And you’ll find an old friend of yours with us: Sol Judy.”

That was good news.

“Is Sol going? Do you know Sol, sir?”

“Yes, indeed. Sol’s been my guide before. He mentioned you when we got to talking over the Plum Creek massacre. That was a close call, wasn’t it! And you lost your dog.”

“Yes, sir,” faltered Terry, with a little twinge in his heart. “I lost him. But he saved Bill Thompson and me. I suppose losing those men was worse.”

“They all gave their lives to the service,” said the general, gravely. “People will never know what it costs to build this road and keep it open. Now, we break camp at five o’clock tomorrow morning. You report to me here at Casement Brothers’ headquarters at six o’clock. Bring your campaign kit along, for we’ll be out all summer. We’ll provide a horse for you.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll be there,” Terry exclaimed, rejoicing.

“How about this other lad?” pursued the general, a twinkle in his eye as he scanned the red-headed Jimmie Muldoon. “Does he want to go out into the Indian country?”

“No, sorr; plaze, sorr,” Jimmie apologized. “Sure, we have plinty Injuns where we be, an’ I’ll stay wid the Irish. Me father’s chief spiker, sorr, an’ me mother washes clothes, an’ me brother’s water carrier an’ I’ve another brother who’s like to have Terry’s job; so it’s the Muldoon family that’ll see the end o’ track through to Salt Lake.”

“All right,” the general laughed. “Stay ‘wid the Irish.’ You’ve a loyal corps, Casement. But both you boys go back to your train and keep out of trouble.”

With Jimmie, Terry was glad enough to beat a retreat to the boarding-train, set out a little way in the cleaner brush and sand, where the air was pure and the night was peaceful. A number of the men, also, soon had enough of “town,” and were already turning in, to sleep. But there was no sleep in new Julesburg. All night the hubbub and hurly-burly continued, in spite of the police stationed by General Casement.

However, tomorrow this would be left behind. Many a mile yet into the north of west stretched the grade, waiting for the rails; and beyond the grade itself stretched the surveyors’ location stakes; and beyond the line of location stakes stretched widely the desert and the mountains, where other stakes were being driven—and where Terry Richards was about to explore, in company with Scout Sol Judy and no less a personage than the bold General Dodge, chief engineer of the whole road.

George Stanton, somewhere out there, having fun while he chopped stakes and maybe even held the end of a surveyor’s chain, was likely to get the surprise of his life.