The additional men poured into Cheyenne, like the iron was pouring in. They raised the population to 10,000. An army of picks and spades, sledges, ploughs and scrapers only awaited the word: “Forward!” The surveying parties had gone at once. From Omaha the chiefs had passed through, picking up their squads on their way. Some were camped on the Laramie Plains; some were camped at Rawlins Springs of the high plateau; some were into the Red Desert; some were crossing the Wasatch Range of Utah with sleds, over snow to the tops of the telegraph poles; some were in the Nevada desert beyond the Salt Lake, and facing the Central engineers. That was George’s father’s job. He had not come in at all, but had wintered at Salt Lake and Ogden.
It was to be the greatest race ever run on the American continent. Every mile gained meant $48,000 or $32,000; it meant also a grant of land twenty miles deep on either side of the tracks; and it meant beating the other fellow.
CHAPTER XIV
THE “TARRIERS” MAKE A RECORD
“Hurrah! Everybody come out to end o’ track tomorrow. We’re going to throw a scare for sure into those Central gangs.”
That was Terry, bursting in through the back doorway of the Home Cooking restaurant, in this last new base and division point, of Bryan, far western Wyoming. Time: Friday evening, late in September, 1868.
“What kind of a ‘scare,’ Terry?”
“Track-laying. Another record. The Central matched our six miles in a day by claiming seven. General Casement is out yonder, with General Corse and a bunch of other big-bugs, and they’re feeling good; and tomorrow General Casement is going to show us off and put a stopper in the Central’s brag.”
“How far away are you now, boy?” George asked.
“Eighteen miles. They’re setting mile-post 877, at a side-station named Granger. We’ve just crossed the line into Utah (for Utah had not yet lost so much of its northeast corner) and that’s one reason we celebrate. Pat says he’ll lay eight miles as a mark for the ‘C. Pay. haythen’ to aim at.”
“I don’t believe it can be done,” Terry’s father declared.