“Reckon we’ll have to break the news to Harry, back at Laramie,” remarked George. Harry Revere had got as far as Laramie City, and was lightning-shooter there, now.
“Yes, reckon we will,” Terry mused. “I’m glad he wasn’t here to see. He’s powerful fond of old Jenny.”
Somehow, they all felt rather sober, that night in the cosy Home Cooking restaurant. But it had been a great day. Seven and five-eighths miles of track in the ten hours. Whew! And Jenny had not been to blame. General Casement was satisfied. He had said that they wouldn’t have made the eight miles, anyway.
CHAPTER XV
A FIGHT FOR A FINISH
“Whew! Watch those tarriers ‘drill,’ will you!”
The fall of 1868 had vanished in a whirlpool of furious work. Now in the early winter Terry Richards stood beside George Stanton, at the entrance to a cut through snow higher than their heads, high up towards the crest of the Wasatch Mountains dividing Wyoming from Utah, and with frosty breath exclaimed while the rails went forward.
Truly an inspiring sight this was. The landscape was white. For a day there had been a thawing wind, which melted the snow of the partially cleared grade, had left the grade and ties icy, and turned the rails to twin lines which glittered under the sun of the succeeding cold spell.
Far below stretched the row of men, working in their shirt sleeves, with their breaths and the steam from their bodies floating in vapor. The rails, brittle from the frost, and handled carefully with mittens, were clanging, the rail-trucks, hauled by the white-encrusted Muldoon nags, rumbled from behind, and the boarding-train, also white-coated, had pulled in, to await the arrival of the construction-train.
Drowning the ring of sledges and clink of shovels and crow-bars, from the west distance there occasionally echoed the dull boom of blasts; for the grading gangs were not so far ahead, now; the rails were on their heels; the ground had frozen too hard for pick and plough, and every yard of earth in the cuts had to be blasted like granite. Three dollars a yard the U. P. company were paying, the same as for rock work.
George had come up, on the pay-car, again. The pay-car was halted just at the rear of the boarding-train. Down the track, but out of sight, the construction-train might be heard puffing noisily.