General Dodge was back from his exploring trip into the far west. He had taken his company through to Salt Lake, and then east again by a northern route. He had found no survey better than the Percy Browne lines; the road was to run through the Red Basin.
“To Fort Sanders was the plan o’ him an’ Gin’ral Casement,” said Pat. “Two hundred an’ eighty-eight miles for the year, that is. But we’re like to fall short o’ that an’ we’ll rist content when we’ve planted post 540 at the top o’ the grade. ’Twill be 500 miles o’ track laid in two seasons o’ twelve months altogether—near sixty miles a month—two miles a workin’ day, ain’t it, week in an’ week out? B’ gorry, I call that purty good, meself, an’ the Cintral bunch o’ pig-tails can put the figgers in their pipes an’ smoke ’em.”
Therefore at the close of December the track and grading gangs knocked off for the winter, with end o’ track almost to the top, and only ten miles this side of Sherman Summit.
The pay-car pulled in, to pay off the men. General Dodge, General Casement, Superintendent Reed, and other officials came, for the last inspection of the year. While the men were gathering their tools, to board their train and “leave the job,” Terry and George and Pat rode horseback up the grade to the top, for a view.
Snow whitened the pass, changing the Black Hills to white; a wind always blew, up here, and the air was cutting cold. The curves of the roadbed hid the boarding-train and end o’ track, behind, but farther in the east, and below, might be seen Cheyenne, sprawling on the drear plains, with the rails apparently spanning the distance to it. Southwest seventy-five miles there uplifted hoary Long’s Peak, the northernmost sentinel of the Colorado Rockies; ’twas claimed that on a clear day you could see even the celebrated Pike’s Peak, the southernmost sentinel, 150 miles by air-line. Northwest, about 100 miles, beckoned the great, lone Elk Mountain, at the western end of the Laramie Plains.
In that direction Pat gazed—they all gazed, with watering eyes. Pat sighed.
“Sure,” he said, “’tis a weary march, yet, rail by rail, twenty-eight feet by twenty-eight feet, across them plains, an’ across the waterless desert, an’ across the snow mountains, and down to Salt Lake, an’ on, ever on, into the west, for twice the distance we’ve come already. But we’ll make it, lads. Aye, we’ll make it, if we finish on our hands an’ knees. I hear tell there be folks back in the States who say that no head of a daycent-size family will live to see the iron horse crossin’ continent from the Atlantic to the Paycific. They say he’ll die of old age, before. But I, Paddy Miles, construction foreman o’ Casement Brothers, a-layin’ the U. Pay. tracks, say that afore the Irishmen on the right o’ way have grown whiskers, the smart-alicks themselves’ll be ridin’ on passes (if they can get ’em) from Chicago to ’Frisco widout change o’ cars.” He turned his horse. “Come on back now. We’ll winter in Cheyenne, an’ be ready to start in fresh on the job by the time the wild geese are flyin’, in the spring.”
“Hurrah for the U. P.!” uttered George. “But what I want to know next is, what has the C. P. done?”
“Well, they ain’t been loafin’, b’ gorry,” Pat assured. “They’ve been workin’, whilst hangin’ on by their toes.”
And that was so. In 1866 the U. P. had laid 260 miles of track; the C. P. only thirty-eight. This year the U. P.’s record was 240 miles—“an’ ivery mile a fight,” as Pat said; the C. P. record was only forty-six miles—but such miles, according to the California and Salt Lake newspapers!