O, it’s work all day,
No sugar in your tay—
Wor-rkin’ on th’ U. Pay. Ra-a-ailway!”
And—“Down! Down!” “Whang! Whang! Whangity-whang!”
The track-laying and the grading gangs were red-shirted, blue-shirted, gray-shirted; with trousers tucked into heavy boots—and many of the trousers were the army blue. For though the men were mainly Irish, they were Americans and two-thirds had fought in the Union armies during the Civil War. Some also had fought in the Confederate armies.
There were ex-sergeants, ex-corporals, and ex-privates by the scores, working shoulder to shoulder. In fact, the whole U. P. corps was like an army corps. Chief Engineer Dodge had been a major-general in the East and on the Plains; Chief Contractor “Jack” Casement had been brigadier general; about all the way-up men had been generals, colonels, majors, what-not; while the workers under them were ready at a moment to drop picks and shovels and sledges and transits, and grabbing guns “fall in” as regular soldiers.
This meant a great deal, when the Indians were fighting the road. This past winter the engineers doing advance survey work had been told by Chief Red Cloud of the Sioux that they must get out and stay out of the country—but there they were there again. Nobody could bluff those surveyors: fellows like “Major” Marshall Hurd who had served as a private of engineers through the war, and Tom Bates, and young Percy Browne, and their parties.
All the survey parties—some of them 500 miles in the lead—moved and worked, carrying guns; the graders’ camps were little forts; the track-builders marched to their jobs, and stacked their rifles while they plied their tools. At night the guns were arranged in racks in the boarding-cars, to be handy. The construction-trains’ cabooses were padded with sand between double walls, and loop-holed, and even the passenger trains were supplied with rifles and revolvers, in cars and cabs. General Dodge called his private car, in which he shuttled up and down the line, his “traveling arsenal.”
This was the arrangement, from the end o’ track back to beginning, 360 miles, and on ahead to the last survey camp. The Central Pacific was not having such trouble.
“An’ lucky for it, too,” as said Paddy Miles. “For betwixt the yaller an’ the red, sure I’d bet on the red. Wan Injun could lick all the Chinymen on this side the Paycific. But there’s niver an Injun who can lick an Irishman, b’ gosh!”