Until the Last Spike

by William Durbin

  I actually feel a little sorry for the snakes. Like the buffalo, they’ve had this country to themselves for longer than any of us know. Now just because we’ve decided to build a railroad, we expect them to clear out of our way.

  The one good thing about my hunts is that they’ve helped me appreciate my pick-and-shovel work. Though it might be hot and dirty filling the wagons, it’s relaxing compared to snake patrol.

  July 19

  St. Mary’s, Wyoming (mile 679)

  We just got to a big tunnel. It’s a two-hundred-foot-long sandstone cut that a crew of Mormons has been drilling and blasting for several months. The U.P. contracted with the head of the Mormon Church — his name is Brigham Young — to supply ties and timbers and do 120 miles of grading around Ogden, Utah. For now, we have to build our tracks around the tunnel because the rock is so crumbly that they have to timber the whole thing.

  Pa and I peeked inside, and you couldn’t pay me enough money to slave away like those tunnel rats do. It’s hard to breathe in all the dust, and as soon as you step away from the yellow light of the kerosene lamps, you might as well be inside a coffin.

  I haven’t talked to any of the Mormons yet, but the fellows say that some of them have a dozen wives. I can’t see how one man could keep track of that many ladies, much less keep them all happy. My uncle Willy back in Chicago has his hands full with only one woman, and I know that Pa still considers himself married to his Maggie.

  July 21

  Benton, Wyoming (mile 696)

  This is the driest and dustiest place I’ve ever seen. When I toss a shovelful of dirt into the air, I end up eating half of it. I get so lonesome for the rivers and lakes back home, I’d give anything for a cool Lake Michigan breeze. I was hoping we’d find greener country soon, but General Casement has scouted seventy miles ahead, and he told Pa that it gets even worse. “It’s the meanest place I’ve ever seen,” he said. Considering how tough Casement is, that makes me plenty uneasy.

  It’s amazing how fast Benton, the latest hell-on-wheels town, is going up. The fellows have the building down pat. There’s already twenty saloons and five dance halls. Some are ragged tents like we’re used to seeing, but lots of the storefronts are being delivered straight from Chicago. They build them back East and ship them out here on flatcars. A few of the buildings are even painted with brick patterns that look almost like the real thing. They say a half-dozen men with hammers and screwdrivers can put up a city block in a single day.

  Bill Flanagan says that one frame tent is a hundred feet long and has a mirror-backed bar, cut-glass goblets, gilt-framed pictures, and a band playing day and night. He joked that the paint hadn’t even dried on the joint before they were serving up their “road poison.” That’s Bill’s name for the cheap whiskey that they pass off on the U.P. workers. I thought that was pretty funny.

  July 22

  There’s a whole bunch of newspapermen hanging around camp tonight. Pa said they never left him alone one minute all day because they are studying “track­laying science.” Though they like to refer to themselves as “editorial gentlemen,” Pa calls them “nosy print hacks.” He told one fellow off after supper when he wouldn’t stop questioning him. “Can’t you let a man rest?” he said. “The only science to this job is hard work and sweat.”

  Pa says that the U.P.’s advertising agency brings the reporters out here in plush railcars and pays all their expenses and gives them fancy meals just so they’ll say nice stuff about the railroad. If that’s true, I wonder if I can believe anything I read in the papers.

  The price of water in Benton is up to ten cents a bucket. The people have to haul it all the way from the North Platte River, and that’s five long, dusty miles away. Every well they’ve dug has come up dry so far. If they don’t find water soon, this town may not last long.

  July 24

  Rawlins, Wyoming

  There’s a pretty little spring here that gushes right out of bare rock. Pa said that General Dodge discovered it on his first survey trip. It is a marvel to look at a flowing pool of water in this dry country.

  To the west, the land is totally flat. There isn’t a hint of a hill or a hummock as far as I can see. It’s like God took a giant rolling pin to this landscape. I never thought I could miss trees so much.

  July 25

  I found out another reason why we’ve had so many newspapermen around lately. Pa took me into Benton for supper tonight, and we saw a crowd of men in army uniforms and fancy suits in front of the hotel. One fellow was even wearing a stovepipe hat and a cape. As we passed by, Pa tipped his cap, and said, “Evening, General.”

  When the men began climbing into a stagecoach, Pa pointed out a short man in a white hat with a dark beard and close-set eyes. “That’s Ulysses S. Grant,” he whispered. Then he explained that the fellow he’d spoken to was none other than General William Tecumseh Sherman, the man he’d served under during the war. Though Sherman was tall, he had a thin nose and the pale, tired face of an undertaker.

  After they rode off, I asked Pa how a plain-looking fellow like Sherman could lead thousands of soldiers into battle. “Did you get a good look at his eyes?” he asked, and when I shook my head, all he said was, “If you ever look him straight in the eye, you’ll know.”

  July 27

  Mr. Casement told Pa that Grant and Sherman were passing through Benton the other night on their way to a big meeting at Fort Sanders. They hope to straighten out the financial mess that Durant has got the U.P. into and work out a peace treaty with Red Cloud at the same time. I wish them luck.

  According to the papers, Congress just created the Wyoming Territory. Names are funny things. People have been calling this country “Wyoming” for years and years, yet it took Congress this long to finally catch up and make it official.

  July 28

  The Red Desert, Wyoming

  It feels like we’ve reached the end of the earth. I can’t believe the dust. Every night when I go to bed, I tell myself that this bleakness can’t go on — that I’ll wake up to find a pretty green valley over the next hill — but each morning the same dead land stretches on. Empty white sky. A bleak gray horizon. Ankle-deep alkali everywhere. The dust is as fine as flour, and it gets between your teeth and up your nose and in your ears. You can’t spit or swallow without tasting the bitterness.

  The only half-pretty thing are the buttes. Tall, striped spires of red sandstone, they look like the Lord just plunked them down without any plan. At least they save a fellow from going crazy from the sameness.

  I talked with Ben Wharton today, and he says that ten thousand draft animals and ten thousand workmen are now strung out along the U.P. roadbed. A constant cloud of dust hangs over us.

  It hurts Ben to see the animals suffer in the heat. Six mules died one day last week. When they drop in their tracks, the mule skinners just untangle the lines and roll the bodies off to the side for buzzard bait.

  Quite a few men have died from heatstroke, too. The only difference between the way the U.P. treats them and the mules is that the men get shallow graves. The chaplain says a little service, and the burying is done so quick that you’ve barely got time to get your hat back on before the grave is being mounded up. Sometimes they stick a board in the ground for a marker, but I don’t think most of the fellows care one way or the other. A lot of them have been wandering since the war ended and don’t have any relations left. A fellow named Donnelly, who died yesterday, asked to have the handle of a spike maul driven into the ground at his head. I heard O’Grady say that it was a waste of good hickory, but the other boys told him to shut his yap.

  Though I can’t understand why, a few fellows ask to be laid out right under the roadbed. A buddy of Ben’s named Louis, whose chest was crushed by a wagon wheel and died real slow, said he wanted to be buried “right beneath those sleepers.” “Sleepers” is another name we give to the ties.

  Life is cheap
out here in the desert. Your luck can run out at any minute. Even Pa is complaining about the heat.

  I haven’t seen a tree or a shrub or a blade of grass for two weeks.

  August 1

  My hands are getting so rough and calloused from all the picking and shoveling that they feel like sandpaper. When I itched a fly bite on my chin this afternoon, I felt some beard stubble. Pa says it won’t be long before I’m shaving.

  Today we passed a broken-up wagon box, and a pile of oxen bones that were picked clean of every bit of hide and hair.

  August 10

  We now have to haul our water fifty miles. It takes a full time crew to keep the big tanks on the flatcars filled.

  The only good thing about this place is that it’s too hot and dry for rattlesnakes, so Coughlin has canceled my morning scouting.

  August 11

  A fight broke out between the graders and the tracklayers today. The track men have been pushing the grading crew lately, and bad feelings have been building. It’s so easy for them to lay their rails on these flats that we can’t stay ahead of them.

  It started after lunch. The chuck wagon had just left, and the graders were busy moving their equipment. When one of our mule skinners didn’t pull his scraper ahead fast enough to suit Mac O’Grady, he shouted, “Clear those nags out of the way so we men can get to work.”

  That really set the graders off. Their heads all wheeled, and a tough fellow called Frank Stranahan spit in the dirt and cursed O’Grady.

  Next thing I knew, both groups were charging each other with their fists cocked. Hats were flying, and mules were jerking white-eyed at their bits. No one even noticed when an unbraked wagon rattled off on its own. I was so stunned by the sound of a fist cracking into the jaw of a man next to me that I barely had time to duck a punch thrown at my head.

  Casement cracked his bullwhip over the heads of the men, but they wouldn’t back off until he finally emptied his six-shooter into the air. Though they grumbled at one another for the rest of the day, there were no more fisticuffs.

  After dinner those same men were sharing a drink of whiskey and chuckling over their blackened eyes. As they laughed at their own foolishness, I couldn’t help but think back to how bull-raging mad they were. If they hadn’t thrown down their spike mauls and shovels before they went at it, I know there would’ve been someone dead on the tracks.

  August 15

  Mr. Casement is getting fed up with the excursionists. I think he hates them even more than Pa, and that’s saying a heap. You’d think they’d leave us alone way out here, but just when we think we’ve seen the last of them, a new lot shows up at the end of the track. It’s always the same sort, too — professors and fancy ladies and reporters and company officials all dressed up and itching to see the tracklayers at work so they can go back East and brag to everyone that they got a firsthand view of the modern wonder of the world — the Transcontinental Railroad.

  “Useless gawkers,” I heard Casement call them today.

  August 20

  Creston, Wyoming (mile 737)

  According to the engineers, we’ve just laid our tracks across the Continental Divide. But it is still so flat that if the surveyors hadn’t told us that we’d reached the place where two watersheds meet, I never would have guessed.

  Casement is getting his two miles a day and then some. I got a letter from John last week, but things have been moving so fast around here that it took me until tonight to write back.

  September 1

  We laid sixty-five miles of track last month, but Pa says Durant is pushing for more. Rumors are that the C.P. is going even faster than we are. Though the mountains held the C.P. back a long time, the fellows say that they’ve reached a flat desert in Nevada and are going great guns.

  The men are quick to shoot their mouths off. Tonight at supper, Bill Flanagan said, “No bunch of Chinamen is going to show us up,” and everyone nodded their head.

  September 6

  Sunday. The days are getting shorter, but Casement isn’t letting a little thing like darkness slow us down. We are working by moonlight, and when the moon isn’t out, we string lamps along the grade. Sometimes we light piles of sagebrush to help see our way. The smoke bums my eyes, and it’s hard to breathe when the wind is wrong.

  One day last week, our crews worked from dawn to dusk and put down six miles of track.

  “That’ll show ’em,” everyone said, but a few days later we heard that the C.P. had laid seven miles in only fourteen hours.

  September 18

  I got a letter from John today. He took a whole page to describe his geography teacher and, as usual, he cheered me up.

  Dear Sean,

  School has started up again, and you are sure lucky that you are working on the railroad instead of doing these dumb lessons. We’ve got a new geography teacher named Mr. Simpson, who expects us to know every single state in the Union along with all the capitals and state flags. I’ve only been in school a week, but my head is already crammed full. He says by the end of the year we will know every country and ocean in the world. And he wasn’t joking.

  Nobody likes him because he is always showing off how smart he is. Being that he just finished high school last spring, he should know more than us kids.

  The only good thing he’s done so far is to give us all a laugh on the second day of school. It happened when he was waving his pointer at the map and telling us all about San Francisco. Robert Hawkins flicked a spit wad at the side blackboard, and Simpson spun around real quick to try to catch him. His pointer knocked over an ink bottle, which spilled right onto Susie McDougall’s lap and ruined her pretty yellow dress. She must be a very unlucky person, because if you recall from the letter I wrote you last winter, she was the one who broke her arm on our hayride. Then Simpson made it worse by trying to daub up the ink with his handkerchief Susie started crying, and he got so flustered that he wiped his forehead and inked himself all up. We thought that would slow him down a bit, but he just keeps piling on the work.

  Your brother the scholar,

  John

  I miss school a lot when I hear stories like that. Maybe I can save up my money and go to college someday. I know Mom would have wanted me to continue my schooling, and a suit-and-tie job would sure beat shoveling in the smoke and the dark.

  September 19

  For the last week, we’ve been building our grade alongside a stagecoach line. We’re going faster than ever, but every traveler we talk to says the C.P. is doing the same or better.

  The race is getting tighter for sure.

  October 1

  Green River, Wyoming (mile 845)

  There is a huge mesa just outside of town called Citadel Rock. The base of it slopes gradually, with shallow gullies trailing away on all sides, but the top half shoots straight up into the sky. The rock looks like a fat knife handle, decorated with alternate stripes of pink and red and brown. I wonder what the view is like from the top? I’ll bet I could see all the way back to Chicago.

  We’re finally into patches of timber again. It feels so good to see some green and have a few hills around to break up the awful flatness.

  October 4

  As strange as it might sound, I’ve felt a little closed in the last few days. Though I was itching to get away from that empty desert, I must’ve gotten used to all the openness without knowing it. Now every time I turn, there’s a hill or a tree. Everything seems crowded and squeezed in tight.

  October 7

  I’m getting over that closed-in feeling. It’s strange how a fellow can get used to anything — even a thing like the desert that I hated in the worst way.

  October 15

  Granger, Wyoming

  Our tracks crossed the Oregon Trail again today. Pa says that after running north of here along the Sweetwater River and Big Sandy Creek, the trail loops south of our grade. When I asked him why the
wagons didn’t take a straighter route like the railroad does, he shook his head and said, “Remember the Red Desert?”

  It was dumb of me not to figure that one out. Thinking back to the sun-bleached skulls and oxen bones we’d seen on the alkali flats, I realized that anyone with half a brain would rather drive a wagon team fifty miles out of their way than end up dead. Pa says that wagon travel is also easier to the north because the foothills rise more gradually up there.

  Even here the Oregon Trail is littered with broken wagon parts and cast-off furniture. I can’t begin to imagine everything those wagons have cast aside between here and where they started back in places like Independence, Missouri, which Pa says is nearly a thousand miles away. Every article must have meant a whole lot to someone to tote it this far, and it must have hurt plenty to leave it behind.

  This morning, my crew found a wooden grave marker in the middle of the right-of-way. Carved out of a buckboard seat, it was so weathered and gray that it looked fifty years old. But the dates scratched across the top read 1855–1863. The rest of the words, which I could only partly read, said something about OHIO and a girl named SARAH JO.

  Dying young has got to be the saddest thing in this whole world. Though it is tough when a grown-up like my mother dies, there is something more cruel in the death of a child. You can’t help asking why her and imagining what she might have become.