“An’ what did yez find?”
“Injuns and desert, Mike. Powerful far between water, but the road goes through.”
“That kind of a country, is it?” Mike sighed, and puffed at his stubby black pipe. “Ah, well; for the Injuns we don’t care a rap, b’ gorry; an’ as for the wather, sure we’ll take wan big drink when we start in an’ another when we get out. Lucky for the road that ’tain’t dependin’ on them Chinymen, who have to have their tay three times a day. For it’s hard to make tay widout wather.”
“What’s doing eastward, Mike?”
“Work—an’ work ag’in. But ye’d better stay hereabouts this night. There’s nothin’ in the pass yet. We’re waitin’ for powder for the blastin’, so’s to lay the roadbed in the rock.”
“Have the rails reached Cheyenne?”
“I dunno. They hadn’t reached it whin I lift, but the people had. ’Tis another town started, an’ before winter ’twill be roarin’, for the rails are comin’ fast an’ all the toughs from Julesburg’ll follow.”
They camped this night with the next grading camp, at the foot of the pass.
“The powder’s on its way front Julesburg,” reported the gang boss. “Engineer Hurd’s fetchin’ it from end o’ track—an’ supplies, too. Orders be to work till the snows stop us. Did yez hear tell, out west, where the Cintral is by this time?”
“About two months ago they were on the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, and coming on down. That’s what the telegraph operator at Green River stage station said,” answered George. “They’ve got 10,000 Chinese coolies!”