The Titans

by John Jakes

  “Hell if I will!”

  Michael’s shoulder began to throb. He felt tension in Worthing’s arm. The man was readying for another attempt to pull free. Already Michael had humiliated him, and he realized that he’d probably have to fight. God knew what trouble he’d land in with Casement for that.

  Boots thudded on the steps at the west end of the car. The door banged open.

  “General Jack wants all the crew bosses. Right away!”

  Several diners grumbled and left their places. Michael weighed the risk, accepted it, and released Worthing’s arm.

  “That includes you, I believe.”

  He watched the crop, waiting for it to come slashing at his cheek. Worthing’s hand whitened. Michael mentally gauged how far back he could jump and still throw a punch. The man at the door bellowed again.

  “Worthing, shake a leg! The telegraph says the iron train’s forty minutes late out of Kearney.”

  Eye to eye with Leonidas Worthing, Michael waited. Finally the ex-Confederate ran the tip of his tongue over his upper lip. The hand holding the crop relaxed and regained its color. The other crew bosses trooped out as the man who’d summoned them stormed forward.

  “Damn it, Worthing. Casement said now, not Christmas!”

  Worthing waved the crop. “Shut up. I’m coming.” He inclined his head toward Michael’s. “Wasn’t good luck for you when they put you on one of my gangs, boy.”

  “Surprise me with something else, Captain. And don’t call me boy again or I’ll knock you down so you won’t get up for a while. I answer to the name of Boyle.”

  Worthing reddened. Michael could see grins on the faces along the table. Sean Murphy’s was broadest of all.

  “Ah, who gives a shit what your name is?” The crop wigwagged; Worthing was trying to make light of his humiliation. “A mick’s a mick, except you—you’re special. You’ve been headed for trouble since the day you climbed off the cars.”

  “I could give you a few reasons why.” There was anger in Michael’s eyes again; he’d had enough. “But I’d be wasting my breath.”

  “Reasons—” Worthing nodded, licking the brown stump of an upper tooth. “Lies you’ve been spreading around free and easy among your pals. That nigger. The half-breed I got stuck with—well, you remember one thing. There’s a good forty miles or more until we hit the meridian. That’s forty days. And you’ll be working for me every damn one of ’em. I guarantee you won’t feel like celebrating when we put down milepost two forty-seven.”

  He touched the crop to Michael’s jaw.

  “Before we get there, boy, I’m going to break your back.”

  ii

  Worthing spun and stalked to the door, shoving two workers out of his way. Michael barely heard the compliments directed at him. He was experiencing one of those shameful moments in which he wished he’d never met Mrs. Amanda Kent de la Gura. A good deal of her style—her refusal to be intimidated by those she considered in the wrong—had rubbed off on him while he’d worked for her.

  But he’d joined Jack Casement’s rust eaters to find peace, not endless quarreling.

  He sank down on the bench beside Murphy, staring with lusterless eyes at his plate of beef and cup of cooling coffee.

  He had always been teased about his appetite. His belly seemed to have a limitless capacity—no doubt because he’d gotten so little to eat as a child. He never tired of cramming himself, and the enormous amounts of food he ate never added so much as one extra pound. But his earlier anticipation of breakfast was altogether gone.

  I’m going to break your back.

  “Lord, Fergus, did you hear that feller from the office?” a Paddy on the opposite side asked his companion. “First iron train forty minutes late. ’Spose it’s Injuns?”

  “Eat up!” Murphy urged Michael, who shook his head.

  The man named Fergus shrugged. “The further we go beyond Kearney, the more likely it is. The Injuns don’t like this railway cuttin’ into their buffla grounds.”

  “But I thought General Dodge pacified the savages before he signed on with the U-Pay.”

  “It don’t take ’em long to get unpacified these days,” Fergus replied. “You heard what happened at Fort Laramie. Out this far, the only Injuns we got for friends are the one or two workin’ on the line, and a few hang-around-the-forts. The buckos with the devil in ’em—ones like that Red Cloud—they don’t pay any attention to what the tame Injuns say, do—or sign. Touch the pen, I mean. They can’t write English so they just touch a pen to a treaty an’ some clerk fills in their names.”

  Fergus’ companion looked puzzled. “I dunno what you mean, hang-around-the-forts.”

  “That’s because you ain’t been out here long enough,” Fergus announced in a smug tone. “Hang-arounds are Injuns who pitch their tipis near a post to trade an’ beg for handouts. Liquor. Hot coffee with lots of sugar in it. Everybody back East thinks the Injuns are crazy for the alcohol, but a buffla hunter told me it’s coffee with sugar they fancy most. Why, for years on the Holy Road—”

  “What the devil is that?”

  “You look at it every day! Holy Road’s what they call the old emigrant trail across the river—just like this here’s the Fire Road. The Injuns used to make a game of stoppin’ wagons and askin’ for sugared coffee as the price of lettin’ white folks pass through.”

  “I don’t know why we’re gabbling about the red heathens,” Sean Murphy put in, his words muffled by a mouth stuffed with beans. His cuff served as a napkin to catch the juice. “We’ve rails to worry about. Train’ll more likely be an hour late, but we still have a mile to lay, regardless.”

  “We’ll get it done,” Michael said, more confident than he felt.

  “Mebbe,” Fergus said. “But I have a funny feeling it’s to be one of those days that bust a man’s privates.”

  Or break his back?

  Michael drank a little of the tepid coffee. Tried to forget Worthing’s threat. He forced a smile.

  “Cheer up, Patrick Fergus. We do get paid this evening, you know. And with a start such as we’ve just had, the day can become no worse, only better.”

  But he was wrong.

  Chapter IV

  “A March as Glorious as Sherman’s”

  i

  SEAN MURPHY’S PREDICTION PROVED accurate. The iron train pulled by the engine Vice-Admiral Farragut arrived an hour late. Not an auspicious beginning for a Saturday, the one workday Casement’s men eagerly anticipated.

  As soon as the day’s work was over, gold or greenbacks would be handed out from the office car, and a man could spend the rest of the evening drinking, rattling dice on a blanket, playing euchre—whatever he fancied—with no fear that too little sleep or an aching head would hamper him next morning. Sunday was for sleeping, reading, writing letters, laundering and mending clothes, or taking a lazy dip in the Platte.

  This Saturday, the men knew the evening’s fun would be cut short. Late train or no, a mile of track had to be laid. Michael and Murphy drifted through the crowd watching the Farragut chug in from the east. They saw sour faces everywhere.

  Michael also noted some longing glances directed toward an attraction that had been with the moving railhead ever since it passed Grand Island, a dusty little settlement populated mostly by German families hoping to build a future out of small farms or, as soon as the railroad lured more settlers, business establishments.

  The attraction was an ordinary wagon. Drawn by two mules, it creaked along beside the advancing rails six days a week and stopped where they stopped each night. This morning the mules had not yet been hitched, were still tethered to the tailboard. What made the wagon of interest were two large barrels lashed to the side. A dipper on a chain hung from each. One barrel bore the name DORN in crudely painted white letters. The other said WHISKEY. There were two more barrels tied to the wagon’s far side, and others stored under the patched canvas top. Beyond the wagon Michael glimpsed the large partitioned duck tent erected every ev
ening.

  He couldn’t personally swear the interior of the tent was partitioned. But certain venturesome rust eaters declared it was. On several occasions, these men—usually tipsy—had tried without success to get a midnight peek at a member of the family of the liquor merchant who’d lit out from Grand Island in an attempt to make money satisfying one of the vices tolerated by the U-Pay management—thirst.

  Gustav Dorn, the bearded Dutchman who owned the rig and sold the whiskey, had a fondness for his own product. Michael had occasionally bought a half-dipper of forty rod from him. Dorn was always unsteady on his feet. He spoke broken English rendered nearly unintelligible by sips of his own stock.

  At the moment Dorn was nowhere to be seen. His son, a plump blond boy of about fourteen, sat on the wagon seat, guarding the liquor and the nearby tent with an old but powerful Hawken percussion rifle. Casement’s orders prohibited any liquor being sold until the day’s quota of track had been laid.

  As Michael watched, the tent flap lifted. The third member of the family appeared, carrying a coffeepot to a cook fire of buffalo chips. Why in God’s name the German had brought his daughter to the all-male railhead was beyond Michael’s comprehension. The only explanation he’d heard had come from the boy, via Murphy. According to Sean, Gustav Dorn believed his daughter was safer traveling with him than she would have been if she’d remained behind, alone, in Grand Island.

  Dorn’s daughter was seldom on display at the railhead. She only came outdoors to prepare meals for her father and brother. She spent the rest of her time in the tent, or in the wagon when it was en route between stops. Michael had also heard the girl was a religious sort and read the Bible a good deal.

  He studied her while she hung the pot over the coals and poked them with a stick. As usual, she wore a man’s outfit: trousers, a too-large woolen coat, a soft-brimmed old hat. Her hair was pushed up under the hat. That and the shapeless clothing virtually disguised her sex.

  He’d never seen the girl up close. Some others had; she’d voluntarily doctored a few minor cuts or sprains, there being no physician in the workforce. Her patients reported she was young and pretty, though not much given to friendliness. An understandable defense, he figured. One smile of encouragement and half the men in Jack Casement’s crew would have stormed her tent with their pants at half-mast.

  But the real deterrents to social intercourse—and attempts at another kind—were the Hawkens the family had brought along. On one occasion Michael had glimpsed the girl carrying one of the hunting rifles. He assumed she wouldn’t have fooled with it if she were a novice at using it.

  Without having met the girl, Michael admired her pluck. It took nerve to come to the railhead, even with protection. But he suspected Dorn’s daughter couldn’t be as pretty as described. Being the only female for a hundred miles could elevate plainness to stunning beauty in the eye of the lustful beholder. An objective analysis would probably reveal her to be a thin-lipped sort, cold-blooded, and disapproving of human weakness. No doubt she hoped to save her father’s soul from eternal damnation, since he was engaged in a trade at odds with the precepts of the book she supposedly read for hours on end.

  She was out of sight now—back inside the tent—and Michael’s musings were cut short by a rising noise level that signaled the start of work.

  With billows of steam and the squeal of drivers, the train of flatcars from Kearney pulled in behind Osceola. Foremen started shouting. From the disorganized crowd loitering on either side of the track, five-man gangs coalesced with surprising speed.

  The gangs climbed aboard the flatcars and began unloading the day’s supplies, starting with eight-foot ties of two kinds: stronger ones of oak or cedar, and softer, less durable ones of cottonwood impregnated with a zinc chloride solution to toughen and preserve them; the process was called burnettizing. Four treated ties would be laid for every harder one.

  Wrought-iron chairs were manhandled off and piled beside the track, along with rails, fish plates for joining the rail sections, and casks of spikes and bolts. Then the Vice-Admiral Farragut began to back down the track, followed by Osceola hauling the four gigantic boxcars. Clanking and puffing smoke, the two trains withdrew beyond the stacked materials, leaving the western end of the track free.

  Michael and Murphy started, searching for the other members of their five-man gang as two lorry cars—lightweight four-wheeled carts—were lifted onto the track and loaded with the required number of ties, rails, chairs, fish plates, spikes, and bolts. The pair of Irishmen soon located a third—sour, sallow Liam O’Dey.

  O’Dey was in his late twenties, but looked twice that. Unable to find work in his native Philadelphia, he’d left a wife and seven children ages six to fourteen. Somehow he’d hoodwinked his employers into thinking he was in good health. A consumptive cough said otherwise.

  He dragged a news clipping from his pocket and showed it to Michael.

  “Ye’ll have a fine laugh out o’ this. It’s from one of the papers at home. Me old lady sent it.”

  Michael scanned the type. Evidently the piece was an editorial, one of the few favorable ones he’d seen. O’Dey coughed, then pointed. “See there? It says we’re engaged in a ‘second grand march to the sea!’”

  Michael read the next lines:

  Sherman, with his victorious legions sweeping from Atlanta to Savannah, must have been a spectacle no more glorious than this army of men a-march from Omaha to Sacramento, subduing unknown wildernesses, surmounting untried obstacles, and binding across the broad breast of America the iron emblem of modern progress and civilization. All honor, not only to the brains that have conceived, but to the indomitable wills, the brave hearts, and the brawny muscles that are actually achieving the great work!

  “My,” Michael said, smiling. “‘Indomitable wills.’ ‘Brave hearts.’ ‘A march as glorious as Sherman’s!’ We’ve come into our own, lads. We’re heroes just like the general.”

  O’Dey coughed again, spat on the ground. “At least we are to some pup of a scrivener who ain’t been out here to see the filthy hard work for himself.”

  Murphy put in, “No doubt the writer’s opinion will be sharply revised if we fail to reach the meridian before the heavy snows.”

  O’Dey crumpled the clipping and thrust it back in his pocket. “Bunch of twaddle,” he said with his usual petulance. “Having Worthing in command, I feel more like one of the victims of Savannah than a conquerin’ general.”

  “Ssst!” Murphy gestured. “Here he comes.”

  Worthing strode up to them, an angry glint in his eye. He waved his crop at the trio.

  “Out where you belong—and snappy! Where’s the nigger and the half-breed?”

  A stoop-shouldered but powerful black man in his twenties slipped up to the rear of the group and waved the blue bandana he’d been using to swab his cheeks. The sun promised intense heat before the day was done.

  “Right here’s one, Captain,” the black man said, winking at Michael to show that his toothy, truckling grin wasn’t meant to be taken seriously.

  “Find that scummy Indian. Get a move on!” Worthing pivoted away, heading for another of the gangs he supervised.

  “Mornin’, all,” the black said as the four men began to trot toward the last pair of rails spiked down the preceding night.

  “Morning, Greenup,” Michael said. Greenup Williams was a freedman from Kentucky, one of about a dozen blacks in the workforce.

  “Captain sure does look thunderous today,” Greenup observed.

  “He and Mr. Boyle exchanged a few intemperate words in the dinin’ saloon,” Murphy informed him.

  “That so? Well, let’s hope everybody stays peaceable the rest of the day. I got a hankering to visit the whiskey wagon quick as I can.”

  O’Dey managed to sound gloomy even though gasping for breath. “Captain Worthing will—no doubt have us—whistled out and too—weak to raise a dipper by the time we see sunset.” He came to a halt as the others trotted on, cup
ped his hand over his mouth, and bent forward, coughing hard.

  The three reached the last pair of rails. O’Dey straggled along a moment later. Down the line, Christian appeared, rushing to join them.

  “Hey, Chief, you late.” Greenup grinned as the new arrival dragged his galluses up over his shoulders.

  Christian feigned annoyance. “Doesn’t the Union Pacific permit a man to perform his natural functions in the morning?”

  Michael spied Worthing striding along behind the Indian. He tried to warn Christian with a glance but failed.

  Half a mile back, a cart boy led a workhorse to the first lorry car. The boy was a towhead named Tom Ruffin. He’d run away from an Indiana orphanage to join the great enterprise. The boy tied the horse to the cart, then climbed on the animal’s back.

  Christian stretched a suspender and rolled his tongue in his cheek.

  “No, on reflection, I guess it doesn’t. The only function that interests himself is the breaking of a man’s spine. Or spirit.”

  “Christian—!” Michael began. By then Worthing had reached the Delaware. He jabbed the nape of Christian’s neck with his crop.

  Christian spun, one hand dropping toward the sheath of his Bowie knife. Worthing grinned.

  “You’re right about that, Injun. And I just put you on my list. Now shut up and get ready to lay some track.”

  Shoving Christian aside, he stalked by.

  The Delaware fumed. Sean Murphy pressed a palm against his belly and bowed to the Virginian’s back. “Yes, sir, yer majesty, yer eminence.”

  Michael smiled. Greenup Williams laughed aloud. Worthing’s head jerked. The back of his neck grew pink. But he didn’t turn or break stride. He kept walking east, ready to signal the cart boy to bring the lorry car.

  O’Dey looked unhappy. He seldom fraternized with the others and resented the bickering that frequently interrupted the flow of work.

  Despite Worthing’s threat in the dining car, Michael felt surprisingly devilish all at once. Sarcasm and laughter were weapons Worthing didn’t understand, and against which he had no defense. Your majesty. Your eminence. He’d have to remember those.