A FIGHT FOR A FINISH
“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.”