“Yes, it can. Sure it can. Look at what we’ve been laying right along in the desert: two and three miles, and four, and once six, in mighty bad country.”
“I’ll be there, Terry,” Virgie cried. “I want to see.”
What a spring and summer that had been! And what a fall and winter it was to be! The great race was in full swing.
In middle April the U. P. track-layers had finally broken loose from winter quarters in Cheyenne, and since then they had not wasted a day.
At the start, the grade had not yet been clear of snow, nor the ground thawed, and it took twenty-four days to make thirty-three miles to the Laramie River just below Fort Sanders across the Black Hills.
A third of Cheyenne flocked here, to the new base named Laramie City. Even before the track got in, Laramie City boasted the title “Gem City of the Mountains,” had 500 shacks and 3,000 people, and was “roaring.” The freight trains were close behind end o’ track, and the passenger trains from Omaha began to roll in again.
In rolled, on wheels, the Cheyenne take-down buildings and the gambling and saloon and side-show outfits—and among the very first of all the outfits to report, was the Home Cooking restaurant. It had proved so popular that, as George said, it was given a “front seat.”
Terry and his father, at the farther front, were glad indeed to welcome it. But the grading gangs were on ahead, and the track-layer gang stayed only long enough to lay the switches and sidings. Then the rails leaped forward, on the trail.
“’Tis a long way yet to the ind o’ the 500 miles, lads,” reminded Paddy; and with him urging, and extra wages promised for Sundays and holidays, the track-layers scarcely straightened their backs except at darkness.
The track flew through the length of the Laramie Plains and found a bridge ready at the North Platte River almost on the very spot where young Engineer Appleton had swung across with the news of Percy Browne’s death. Leaping the river the rails paused to plant another terminal and supply base just beyond brand-new Fort Steele.