MOVING DAY ALONG THE LINE
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.