Between here and Omaha, I’ve seen hundreds of graves just like that little girl’s. They are marked with whatever the families could find at hand — rough boards or sticks or piles of stones — and on even the hottest day, they send a quick chill up my spine.
Our crew was staring at the marker and wondering what to do when Coughlin came along. “Let’s get on with it, boys,” he said as he wrenched that board out of the dust and tossed it off to the side without even breaking his stride.
When I talked to Pa after supper and told him what a mean thing Coughlin had done, he just shook his head and said, “What’s a man going to do?”
Though I know they can’t change the survey of this road to steer around a little girl’s grave, I wish someone would have at least paused to say a few words to honor her soul. I just pray that those travelers laid her deep enough so she won’t be disturbed by all the men and machines.
October 25
Tomorrow we are taking a shot at the tracklaying record. According to the news we get from the papers and from fellows who have traveled this way from Sacramento, it’s been a seesaw battle between us and the C.P. all month. We aim to hit her hard at dawn and show them once and for all what we can do. Pa says there are spies working on our line who are getting paid to tell the C.P. just how fast we’re moving. I suspect the U.P. is probably doing the same thing.
October 26
Today, I felt like I’d joined the circus. There were photographers and newspaper reporters and a passel of spectators who came from back East (Pa called them “useless fancy folks”). The ladies wore frilly dresses and held parasols to keep off the sun. The fellows were dressed in suits and stovepipe hats. With everyone staring at every move we made, it made me feel like a new animal that had just arrived at the zoo.
A skinny fellow who was puffing on a big cigar tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “What’s your job, sonny?”
I got tongue-tied trying to explain that I was just there to help if I was needed when Pa saved me by saying, “He’s my assistant, sir.” Then he whispered, “I’m itching to hand those fellows a shovel, Sean, and tell ’em to make themselves useful.”
I grinned then, and Bill Flanagan, who had overheard Pa’s comment, said, “I wouldn’t advise it, Paddy. They’d probably just hurt themselves, or worse, damage good equipment.” We had a good laugh at that.
We had breakfast at 4:00 A.M. Getting up that early isn’t so bad if you don’t have to listen to Jimmy Flynn carry on. Pa had asked me to stand ready to replace anyone who got tuckered out. I doubted that any of the men would need relief, but I was excited to have a chance to watch the show.
I’ve never seen the fellows work so fast. Before the dust had even settled on the newly set ties, the tenders were clamping their tongs to the rails and rolling them off the beds of the horse carts. And no sooner had the rails clanged down than the spike mauls were ringing out.
I heard a newspaper reporter off to the side reducing the whole tracklaying operation to numbers as he spoke with a lady friend. “Five men to a rail, three blows to a spike, thirty spikes to a rail, four hundred rails to the mile,” he said, making it sound as simple as drawing a line across a map.
I guess when you’re not doing any real work, you’ve got the time to count. I hope when he writes his article he mentions that those rails weigh 560 pounds each — that’s nearly a quarter of a million pounds of lifting for every single mile we put down.
The teamsters were working their horses so hard bringing the rails forward that they had to hitch fresh animals to their supply carts twice during the morning. The only thing that stalled things a bit was lack of water. Three separate times our tracklaying materials were held up when the locomotives ran dry and overheated. Once an engine lost her steam pressure, and the firebox got so hot that it glowed cherry red. Everyone was afraid she was going to melt down or blow, so some fellows and I helped Ben douse the boiler fire with buckets from his water wagon. But as soon as she cooled down, the firemen filled the reservoir and stoked her back up.
By late afternoon, it was clear that we would set the record, so the fellows wasted a little time laughing and bragging like you would expect. Then, just as they were getting ready to quit, Mac O’Grady teased me. “You want to see if you can bust another maul, boy?” he said.
I stood there not knowing what to say. My face reddened up, and I couldn’t decide whether I felt more like cussing him out or running off to hide. Pa and all the spikers were watching as O’Grady pointed the handle of his maul toward me and said, “What do you say?”
I had no choice but to step forward. I set up like Michael Kennedy had shown me last time and bent down to start the spike. When I stood up, my heel caught on the crown of the rail and I almost tripped. The boys behind me chuckled, and I felt my hands turn hot and sweaty.
I swung the maul back and then tried to drop it down smooth like I’d seen the spikers doing all day long. I surprised myself by hitting the spike flush. At that moment, I realized that swinging a pick on the grading crew all those days had improved both my strength and my aim. Why, it was nothing to hit a fat spike head when I’d been nailing tiny cracks and hollows with the sharp end of a pick for days on end.
I hammered the spike flush with my fifth swing, and the rail rang out with a loud ping. That was two more strokes than the best spikers take, but I knew I could get better with practice.
A few of the fellows cheered, and even O’Grady let out a “humph” that indicated I’d done a passable job.
Off to the side I heard Mr. Casement, who was standing next to Pa, say, “Looks like we’ve found ourselves another spiker, Patrick.”
When the dust finally settled, we had put down seven and three-fourths miles of rail. “Let those China boys have a crack at that,” Mac O’Grady said as he swaggered off toward the dining car. Everyone nodded their heads in agreement, and as much as I hate that blowhard, he’s probably right. I can’t imagine anyone beating our record.
October 27
I just heard that Charlie Crocker, the construction chief of the C.P., has accepted U.P. vice president Durant’s $10,000 bet that the C.P. can’t beat our single-day record. Crocker said that he wanted to pick the time and the place, and Durant agreed. Crocker claims they’ll have a ten-mile day.
All I’ve got to say is, that’s a far piece to walk in a day’s time, much less lay rails.
Pa laughed when he heard about the bet. “Crocker can’t boil enough tea to keep those Chinamen going that long,” he said.
I don’t know how Pa can have so many strong opinions about the Chinese, being that the only Chinese he knows are a family named Pan who run a laundry back in Chicago.
October 29
I’m not a spiker yet — that would have been way too much to ask — but I am working as a rail tender. I can see why Pa started me off as a water carrier. Heaving these 560-pound rails around is a heck of a lot harder than lifting water buckets. And I thought that was tough work when I first got out here.
V.P. Durant has been hovering around all the crews. He’s asking questions and giving orders all the time. Today, I heard him tell General Casement that if we can average two miles of track per day, we should be able to do three.
I’ll bet that fellow doesn’t know how to do much more than carry his money bags to the bank.
November 3
Casement hasn’t paid us for two weeks. Pa says the blowhards from back East like Durant have fouled up the finances of the U.P. so bad that the railroad is short of cash. Whatever the reason, the men are getting more ornery every day.
November 11
I heard about a town just up ahead called Bear River City, which is even wilder than Julesburg. Bill says that the citizens have formed a committee to cut back on the violence. Yesterday, they hung a gunman named Little Jack O’Neil and two of his buddies.
Executing people without a fair trial se
ems like a strange way to stop violence.
November 14
Working as an iron man — loading rails and rolling them off the cart — is a tricky business. It takes perfect timing for the four of us to clamp our tongs on a rail and drop it in place. If I lift late, the fellows give me a good cussing, and if I lift too early, I risk ripping my back.
But the most important thing is to watch your feet. When they sing out, “Down,” that rail is going down whether you’re ready or not, and you better get your boots clear. A rail tender named Peter McKinney got his toes caught under a rail last week and he yowled like a gut-shot coyote. No one blamed him for yelling, either, because 560 pounds of iron can mash up a foot so bad that you can’t hardly recognize it.
November 16
Mac O’Grady finally got what he deserved today. He was picking on the younger fellows like he always does, teasing and calling them names. But no one paid him any mind until he started in on Peter McKinney.
Poor McKinney was just getting so he could limp around in an oversized boot that was padded with bandages, and he was anxious to help the tracklayers. He said he needed to get back on the payroll so he could send money to his wife and eight kids in St. Louis. He was doing all he could — opening spike kegs, handing the fellows their mauls, and the like. That’s when O’Grady walked over and set the head of his spike maul right on top of McKinney’s bad foot.
“The weather’s gettin’ a bit cool, ain’t it, Pete?” he said, leaning on the handle of his maul to see how much pressure McKinney could stand.
That’s when Pa stepped in. “Leave him be, Mac,” Pa said.
“Mind your own business, Paddy,” he said. “You ain’t his mother.”
Pa walked right over without another word and grabbed that spike maul out of O’Grady’s hand and tossed it down.
You could see the relief on McKinney’s face when the pressure eased, and I thought that would be the end of it. But O’Grady was piping mad. He shoved Pa back and took a swing. I opened my mouth to warn Pa, but he’d already seen the fist coming and blocked it with his left hand. Then, instead of punching O’Grady like you’d expect, he gave him a quick backhand, and then another. His hands flashed out so quick, they were a blur — right, left, right. O’Grady’s head snapped back each time.
I could see that O’Grady was knocked out on his feet, so I yelled, “Stop, Pa,” and caught him by the shoulder. Pa whirled with a wild-eyed look, and for an instant I thought he might take a swing at me. Then he was back to himself and apologizing for losing control. O’Grady woke up a bit later, covered with dust, but no worse for wear.
Tonight, when I opened my journal, I realized where Pa’s anger came from. Today would have been his anniversary again. If only someone had warned Mac O’Grady to be better behaved for just one day.
November 18
The last two days, Mac O’Grady has been so polite that I don’t hardly recognize him.
November 19
Bear River City, Wyoming
All hell broke loose yesterday. Pardon my swearing, but what happened over in Bear River City today made the fight between Pa and Mac O’Grady look like a ladies’ tea party.
Bear Town, as the locals call the place, had sprung up just beyond the end of the track. The gamblers and fancy ladies and saloon keepers had set up shop, but for a change, they weren’t the cause of the trouble.
The fellows who started it all are two brothers named Leigh and Richmond Freeman. They’ve been following us road builders for a long while, toting a one-ton printing press (which the U.P. carried for free on its train) and publishing a newspaper called the Frontier Index. A lot of the fellows have been riled up about the things they’ve put in their paper lately criticizing the U.P. Ben gets especially sad when he hears what the Freemans have spouted off about Negroes being subhuman and not deserving their freedom. In a way, I’m almost glad that Ben can’t read — the stuff in the Freemans’ paper is that ugly.
Well, this time the Freemans went overboard. They printed an editorial saying that Ulysses S. Grant was “a whiskey-bloated, squaw-ravishing adulterer” and a “nigger worshipping mogul.” I don’t know what a “mogul” is, and I don’t think most of the other U.P. men do, either, but we all know what the rest means. Since a good portion of our men served under Grant during the war, they didn’t take kindly to such insults.
However, what really put them over the edge was the evil things that those Freemans wrote about President Lincoln. Not only did they call Lincoln “filthy” and “lecherous,” but they went so far as to say that John Wilkes Booth did a good deed by assassinating him.
As mean-spirited as those words were, if the men had stayed sober and if they’d been paid on time, everything might have turned out okay. But Casement is a full month behind on our wages now, and once the men got liquored up, there was no stopping them.
When the trouble started, Pa and I were walking past a little board-and-batten shack that called itself the R. R. House restaurant. I heard some yelling and looked up the street. There must have been two hundred fellows headed toward the Freemans’ office. They were a fearsome sight, swinging ax handles and spike mauls and yelling at people to clear out of their way.
Even though I wanted to follow along and see what happened, Pa got me out of there quick. A few minutes later, I was glad he did. We weren’t halfway back to the work train when I heard the first shots. They were just a couple of flat cracks that sounded like a Colt .44. I didn’t think much of it because gunfire isn’t unusual in a frontier town. Then, all of a sudden, it sounded like a whole army was letting loose. Six-shooters and shotguns and rifles were popping off so fast that it could have been a Gatling gun.
“Good Lord,” Pa whispered, and shook his head. I think all the shooting reminded him of the war, because he turned as pale as I’d ever seen him.
November 20
I found out where the shooting came from. According to Bill Flanagan, who took a slug in the forearm and looks like he’ll be laid up for a while, the U.P. men stormed into the Freemans’ office and smashed it up. But when they stepped back out into the street, a bunch of town vigilantes opened up on them. Twenty-five men were killed. Dozens more were wounded.
The sad thing is that the U.P. just dug a big hole and buried all those fellows together. No service. No markers. No nothing.
Pa said that the railroad wanted to keep it quiet. Two fellows who they didn’t hush up were those snakes the Freemans. Somebody tipped them off before the U.P. men got to their office, and they sneaked off like the cowards they are.
I can’t believe that the railroad expects to get away with piling a bunch of shot-up bodies into an open grave. Those men were pounding spikes and slurping down coffee yesterday, yet today it’s like they were never alive. One of them — Charlie O’Farrell — was the finest clog dancer and singer that I’ve ever seen. His voice was so pure that he could make me smile by just saying, “Top of the morning, Sean.” I know for a fact that he’s got a girl back in Kerry, Ireland, and he was saving up money to send for her. Are we supposed to pretend that he just disappeared?
I tried to write this all in a letter to John, but it was hard to find words to describe the sadness and anger I’m feeling. I know if Indians had killed those fellows, every newspaper in this country would be scrambling to print the story with a fat headline. There would’ve been a heap of bad news then.
November 23
I’ve been checking the papers every chance I get, and the U.P. must be doing a good job of covering things up, because there is barely a word about what they are calling “the Bear River riot.”
Mr. Casement decided to teach the Bear River City people a lesson. Instead of building a siding — a branch of the track — into town like the U.P. usually does, we laid our tracks straight on by. Those local businessmen are probably upset, but they should have thought a bit more before they shot up our men.
November 26
I celebrated my second Thanksgiving on the railroad today. It sure was nice of President Lincoln to start this holiday back up again. We got part of the afternoon off, and the cooks gave us an extra-nice meal with biscuits and real gravy instead of just pot drippings. Pa took me to a pie shop that a lady has set up in a tent, and I got a big piece of pumpkin pie. Though the crust was a bit chewy, I’m not about to complain.
I wrote Aunt Katie a letter and told her how much I miss her and her lemon-cream pies.
November 28
Aspen Station, Wyoming (mile 937)
I can see why they call this place Aspen. The hills are covered with solid stands of aspen trees. Last month there must have been golden leaves rippling all over these slopes, but now everything has gone gray. The trunks and branches are just bare sticks poking up into the sky. Back home our oaks hold on to their leaves well into the winter and leave us with a splash of color to remember summer by. If there weren’t a few evergreens to break up the grayness of these mountains, this wouldn’t look much better than the desert country we left behind.
Just east of town — between here and a place called Piedmont — we crossed the Oregon Trail for what Pa says will be the last time. In the short, rutted stretch of road that I could see, I counted two graves, a broken wagon wheel, a discarded chest of drawers, and a brand-new baby’s cradle.
December 4
Evanston, Wyoming (mile 955)
Until the Last Spike Page 7