“We’ll be there, too,” had wired back Mr. Reed.
“We’ll be there,” had asserted Pat.
Before noon of April 28, the U. P. end o’ track came to a rest near the idling camp of Promontory, where a lot of ex-graders were squatted, and gamblers, eating-house keepers, liquor sellers and real-estate boomers had arrived, to await events.
One rail’s length short of the stake and flag, the track stopped—obeying orders from Mr. Reed.
Hats were flung into the air, tools went hurtling, cheers rang riotous, and George, who had hopped a ride up from Blue Creek, so as to be on hand, danced a war-dance with Terry.
“Done! Hurrah! Done!”
“Why do yez say ‘done,’ when ’tain’t done at all, at all?” reproved red-headed little Jimmie Muldoon, severely. “Do yez expec’ the ingines to walk the ties, th’ same as me horse? It won’t be done until th’ C. Pay. lay their fourteen mile—an’ Pat says that mebbe we’ll have to fall in an’ help ’em.”
“Well, we’re done, all but twenty-eight feet,” retorted George. “And if the C. P. lay their ten miles tomorrow, they’ll be about done. Four miles more is nothing. Not out of nearly 2,000. We all can pitch in and lay that in an hour. Come on, Terry, let’s figure.”
They sat down, to figure.
Union Pacific: forty miles of track laid in 1865; 260 miles in 1866; 246 miles in 1867; 425 miles in 1868, and now 125, in the four months of 1869—which made, as Pat said, 550 miles in thirteen months, not counting the sidings and switches, and the eighty miles at Humboldt Wells.