“If the Central can lay ten miles, our men can lay eleven, sir,” Terry stoutly replied.
“Thank Heaven, they won’t have to,” rapped General Casement. “But I’ll wager that they could, myself.”
This evening, and into the night, the bonfires of sage-brush built by the U. P. camp were answered by the distant glow of the bonfires built by the C. P. camp. The two camps were like the camps of two armies waiting for a test of strength on the morrow.
CHAPTER XIX
THE C. P. SHOW THEIR METTLE
Seven o’clock in the morning of April 29, 1869.
Since before daybreak the people from the U. P. camp had been streaming westward down the grade, toward the C. P. camp. Afoot, ahorse and by wagon they hastened along, to arrive in time for the track-laying contest.
Track Boss Paddy Miles was here, with Big Mike the grading boss, in a graders’ wagon; George had found a mule for hire, and had ridden over with Terry; the two Muldoon lads were here, on their gaunt rail-truck nags; half of Promontory was here; General Dodge, General Casement and his brother Dan Casement, Superintendent Reed, Major Hurd—they had come up from below; and there was a delegation of U. P. surveyors and Mormon citizens, from Ogden and even from Salt Lake City.
The edge of the plateau was alive with wagons, carts, horses, mules, and figures on foot, forging on for the Central end o’ track.
The Central folks seemed to be in no great hurry. The sun was above the Wasatch Range, pouring his beams upon the plateau and ridges of Promontory Point. At the very tip of the Central track waited the C. P. rail-truck, or iron-car—a low flat-car shorter than the U. P. rail-trucks. It was heaped high with rails, spikes and fastenings; and on either side of end o’ track were other piles of iron.
A long iron-train, and the boarding-train behind it, stood with steam up, as far forward as they could get. Ranged along the iron-truck the rail-placers were ready; they were white—for, as Pat said, “yez can’t get along widout the whites, no matter how many Chinymin yez have!” Behind this squad were the first spikers and bolters (“white min, too, mark ye!”) and two groups of Chinamen, also with sledges and with wrenches. And behind these extended, in parallel lines two deep, still more Chinamen—the ballasters with spades and picks.