Golden Spike

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by Robert Lee Murphy

Will looked at his uncle, then he looked at Jenny. Neither spoke.

  Will faced Dodge. “Ah . . . I . . . ah, I want to build railroads, General Dodge. I don’t mean as a hunter for a survey party. I want to do something more important.”

  “How about becoming a surveyor?” Dodge asked.

  “I don’t have the education, sir. I only went through the eighth grade. I haven’t gone to college like Uncle Sean.”

  “You don’t have to go to college. We can put you in an apprentice program.”

  “Become an apprentice?”

  “Not like that blacksmith apprentice program you ran away from when I first met you. I would not have liked the confinement that implied, either. We put candidates through an apprenticeship that entails working in the field alongside a trained surveyor. The apprenticeship doesn’t have to last seven years, either. It can end as soon as you learn the trade. I’ll even assign you to your uncle . . . if he’ll have you?”

  Will’s uncle nodded. “I would be delighted to train a family member.”

  “Do you accept?” Dodge asked.

  “Yes, sir! I accept.”

  “Done.” Dodge shook Will’s hand. “Now, I must be on my way. Sean, walk with me to the coach.”

  Will’s uncle and General Dodge headed toward the Pullman palace car of Durant’s train.

  Will turned to Jenny. “You know Lone Eagle’s wife is going to have a baby?”

  “Yes. Where is Butterfly Morning now, Lone Eagle?”

  “She is with her family on the Shoshone Wind River reservation. After the baby is born, I will take her and the baby to Bullfrog’s cabin on the North Platte. It is a good place to raise a child.”

  Jenny reached beneath the neck of her dress and pulled out a rawhide thong. A single eagle talon hung from it. She lifted it over her head and stepped in front of Lone Eagle.

  “Please give this eagle talon to your baby. It is lucky. It saved my life once, as you well know. I want to return it to your family.”

  Jenny raised the thong, Lone Eagle bent his head, and Jenny dropped the rawhide necklace over it.

  “Thank you, Jenny. Our baby will cherish it. Now, I must go find the lieutenant. We are returning to Wyoming tomorrow.”

  “Goodbye, for now, Lone Eagle,” Will said. “I know I will see you again.”

  “Goodbye, Will. Goodbye, Jenny, Goodbye, Homer. Thank you all for being my friend.” Lone Eagle walked away.

  “You have a tear in your eye, Will,” Jenny said.

  Will swiped a finger across his cheek beneath his eye. “We’re all going in different directions,” he said.

  “Miss Jenny,” Homer said, “you and Will must excuse me. I needs to feed Ruby and Buck and pack things up for Mr. Corcoran and Will to go to Omaha.”

  “Of course, Homer. Good luck on your trip to Texas. I hope you find your family.”

  Homer nodded and headed back to the row of tents used by the UP workers for temporary living quarters.

  Following the celebratory party, George Booth, the Jupiter’s engineer, had turned the governor’s special around using the Union Pacific’s new wye track. Two blasts from the locomotive’s whistle sounded the alert for the departure of Stanford’s train to Sacramento.

  “I must go, Will,” Jenny said.

  “I’ll walk you back.”

  He held her hand, and they headed toward the Director’s car.

  “Will,” Jenny asked, “have you decided whether you’re going to see Mort Kavanagh?”

  “Yes, I plan to stop there on my way back through Corinne.”

  “I think that will help you find peace.”

  At the bottom step of the passenger car’s front platform, she stopped and looked up at him. He stared into her pale blue eyes. He saw no hint of gray.

  “If you come to California, be sure to see me. Elspeth’s millinery shop is right across the street from the depot in Sacramento.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Jenny stood on her toes and kissed him firmly on the lips. She turned away, climbed the steps onto the platform, and grasped the handle of the coach’s door. She removed her bonnet and allowed the evening breeze to blow her long, black tresses across her face and float around her shoulders.

  “You’re blushing, Will Braddock.” She opened the door and disappeared.

  Will touched his fingertips to his lips. Hopefully, the apprenticeship wouldn’t take too long.

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  In Golden Spike, Will Braddock encounters the following historical characters:

  Grenville M. Dodge, Union Pacific’s chief engineer

  Ulysses S. Grant, President of the United States

  Jack Casement, Union Pacific’s construction contractor

  Dan Casement, Union Pacific’s construction contractor (partners with his brother, Jack)

  Thomas “Doc” Durant, Union Pacific’s vice president & general manager

  “Colonel” Silas Seymour, Durant’s consulting engineer

  Samuel B. Reed, Union Pacific’s engineer of construction

  Jacob Blickensderfer, former Department of Interior railroad inspector working for Union Pacific

  Brigham Young, Mormon leader

  James Strobridge, Central Pacific’s construction superintendent

  Hanna Marie Strobridge, wife of James Strobridge

  Samuel S. Montague, Central Pacific’s chief engineer

  Charles Crocker, one of the “Big Four” Central Pacific founders

  Andrew J. Russell, Union Pacific’s official photographer

  Colonel John Stevenson, Fort Fred Steele commanding officer

  Governor Leland Stanford, one of the “Big Four” Central Pacific founders and its president

  Sidney Dillon, Union Pacific director and head of Crédit Mobilier

  John Duff, Union Pacific director

  George Coley, Central Pacific’s foreman on team that laid ten miles of track in one day

  Sam Bradford, engineer on Union Pacific locomotive No. 119

  Cyrus Sweet, fireman on Union Pacific locomotive No. 119

  George Booth, engineer on Central Pacific locomotive No. 60, Jupiter

  R. A. Murphy, fireman on Central Pacific locomotive No. 60, Jupiter

  Watson N. Shilling, Western Union telegrapher

  Jenny McNabb encounters the following historical characters traveling in the director’s car on Governor Stanford’s special train from Sacramento to Promontory Summit. These persons, first named in Chapter 40, do not represent all of the passengers making the journey:

  Eli D. Dennison, Central Pacific conductor

  Governor Anson P. K. Safford, newly appointed governor of Arizona Territory

  J. W. Haines, Federal Commissioner of Inspection for the Central Pacific

  Frederick A. Tritle, Federal Commissioner of Inspection for the Central Pacific and candidate for governor of Nevada

  W. G. Sherman, Federal Commissioner of Inspection for the Central Pacific and brother of General William T. Sherman

  Judge Silas W. Sanderson, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California

  Alfred A. Hart, Central Pacific’s official photographer

  Dr. Harvey Willson Harkness, Sacramento Press editor and publisher and Stanford’s physician

  E. B. Ryan, Stanford’s private secretary

  All other characters are fictitious.

  In 1869, the community of Wahsatch was spelled differently than it is today and from how the Wasatch Mountains have always been spelled.

  References to the day and date about the agreement reached between General Grenville M. Dodge of the Union Pacific and Collis P. Huntington of the Central Pacific as to the location for the meeting of the two railroads differ. Maury Klein in Union Pacific, Volume 1, states that “late in the evening on April 9 a bargain was struck.” Stephen E. Ambrose in Nothing Like It in theWorld writes “So, on April 9, Dodge met with Huntington in Washington.” David Haward Bain in Empire Express claims “On the evening of Sunday, April 8, Hunti
ngton met Dodge in Washington . . .” In fact, April 8 is a Thursday. It appears that the meeting between Dodge and Huntington commenced on the evening of April 8 and was concluded the next day, April 9, Friday. On the night of April 9, Congress met in a late session and issued the joint resolution specifying the joining of the railroads would take place at Promontory Summit, Utah. The wording in Chapter 33 of a telegram from Dodge to Samuel Reed announcing the agreement is the author’s invention.

  The tracklaying record set by the Central Pacific described in Chapter 39 was never beaten by traditional tracklayers. There is no record that Doc Durant ever paid the bet he lost.

  Over twenty newspaper reporters attended the ceremony joining the two halves of the Pacific Railroad. Following the festivities they evidently kept the telegraph line busy transmitting their stories. As described in Chapter 51, most of them could not hear what the dignitaries said, so the “facts” vary considerably. Three persons also wrote about the ceremony in their diaries, and four people, including General Grenville Dodge, later wrote articles about their participation. Like the newspaper reports, their versions of the events are different. As the author, I chose what I considered to be the most interesting “facts” and included them in Golden Spike.

  The Golden Spike is on display in the museum at Leland Stanford Junior University in Palo Alto, California. Nevada’s Silver Spike is also on display at Stanford University, as is the Silver-Headed Maul. Arizona’s Gold and Silver Spike is on display at the Museum of the City of New York. The Second Golden Spike and the Laurel Wood Tie apparently were lost during the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Award-winning author Robert Lee Murphy’s Eagle Talons, the first book in The Iron Horse Chronicles, won the 2015 Bronze Will Rogers Medallion Award for younger readers. In 2016, the second book, Bear Claws, received the Silver Will Rogers Medallion Award for younger readers and was awarded First Place for Fiction by the Wyoming State Historical Society. Golden Spike concludes the trilogy.

  Murphy devoted years of research to ensure the historical accuracy of the timeline his characters encounter. He traveled the route of the transcontinental railroad, walked the ground where the scenes take place, and visited all the museums and historical parks along the way.

  Prior to becoming an author, Murphy worked with international organizations on all seven continents, including Antarctica, where Murphy Peak bears his name. Murphy is a member of the Society of Children’s BookWriters & Illustrators, Western Writers of America, the Wyoming State Historical Society, and the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society. Visit the author at his website: http://robertleemurphy.net.

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