“They say the company’s plumb out of money. We lost, at only $16,000 a mile across the plains. Had to do too much hauling at long distance.”
“Well, I guess the Central didn’t make much money, at $48,000 a mile in those mountains; and look at the freight bills they’ve been paying. Now we get our $48,000 a mile, for easy grading; and after that, $32,000 a mile. The U. P.’ll raise enough to start on again.”
And evidently this was to be the case. General Dodge went to New York, for a company meeting. After he had explained the route, and had shown the maps of the surveys, the company told him to go ahead as fast as he could.
It was a busy winter in Cheyenne. Supplies of rails and spikes and bolts and other iron ammunition poured in as rapidly as the trains could bring them. Tons and tons—thousands of tons—were stacked in the Casement Bros.’ warehouses. And out along the line over the Black Hills, and down, and away into the Laramie Plains huge piles of ties and culvert and bridge timbers were being collected.
Cheyenne boomed. It had 3,000 buildings and 6,000 people; and what with the graders and track-layers who wintered there, several of the business firms were selling goods to the amount of $30,000 a month! The Home Restaurant did a fine business, besides feeding its “men folks.”
Early in the spring General Dodge called all the chiefs of departments to meet him at Omaha, the U. P. headquarters. At the close of the meeting the word was spread:
The trail had been decided upon. There was no good route through Salt Lake City, and around the south end of the Great Salt Lake. Ogden, at the north end of the lake, thirty-six miles north of Salt Lake City, was to be the Utah terminal point. But the engineers were to set out at once, snow or no snow, mountains or no mountains, and run their stakes from the Laramie Plains to Humboldt Wells over 200 miles west of Ogden!
The graders were to start in as soon as the frost was out of the ground so that they could dig.
The track-layers were expected to lay 500 miles of track in eight months—and then keep going the 220 miles farther, so as to meet the C. P. at Humboldt Wells in the next year, 1869!
“For th’ love o’ Hiven!” Pat Miles gasped, reading the orders. “To Ogden, is it, 500 miles, t’other side the snow range, at one jump—an’ 220 miles across the desert, at another? Oh, well! Faith an’ we’ll do it. The Cintral have their 10,000 Chinks, but the U. Pay.’ll have 15,000 white men. That’s all we nade: men, men, an’ more men—an’ a bit o’ money to pay ’em wid.”