For the railroad trail was now almost the same as the Overland Stage trail, and the telegraph had been in here since ’61.
All in all, readily enough might Terry Richards exclaim: “Whew!” and wonder if the C. P. had had any worse country in their winter mountains.
Thanksgiving caught them on the summit of the pass over—7,500 feet up, but not so high as Sherman Summit of the Black Hills.
“Down grade, hooray!” the men cheered, although down grade made little difference. But they were getting west of the Rockies, at last.
Before Christmas another town and supply base awaited end o’ track. This was Evanston, named for Mr. James Evans the engineering chief, in the Bear River Valley on the west slope of the Uintah Range of the Wasatch. ’Twas a depot for the ties that had been floated down the Bear, and according to Geologist Van Lennep there were coal-fields near by.
Omaha, 955 miles; Ogden, seventy-five miles. Of the 955 miles the Government inspectors had accepted 940, already. From Bryan arrived Casement Brothers’ take-down warehouse, and the Home Cooking restaurant bringing Mother Richards and Mother Stanton and Virgie—but that was about all. The gamblers and saloon-men and toughs had gathered from Utah and the grading and tie camps.
Virgie was tickled to be at the front again. Now she might ride the engine of the construction-train, when she felt like it, and keep up her record of “first passenger across.”
“Sure, ’tis a winter quarters for them that nade such,” announced Pat—and genuine winter quarters Evanston certainly appeared to be, with the snow above the roofs of the one-story shacks. “But we’ll not stay long, oursilves; not even for Christmas cilibration of more’n a day. We’ll put Wyoming behind us, lad, an’ get into Utah wance more afore the year closes. Yis, we’ll chase that boundary till we ketch it.”
In the past few months Wyoming had passed end o’ track. It had taken a bite out of Utah’s northeast corner; and this had been discouraging. But now end o’ track forged on, out of Evanston into which the passengers and freight already were rolling. In the dusk of New Year’s Eve the track gangs threw down their tools with a whoop.
Record for 1868, 425 miles: fifty miles a month, all told, across the waterless desert and the frozen snowy mountains, into Utah again, at last!