Opening the iron trail

by Edwin L. Sabin

That was of much importance, but was nothing to worry over. George had been kept in Ogden, mostly, with the pay-car. He’d be on hand, though. Nobody who knew George Stanton might doubt this.

“A fine day ahead of us,” Pat prophesied, at the camp, with jerk of his scarred thumb toward the gorgeous yellow sunset. “Sure, we’re goin’ to be blessed wid that—but b’ gorry we got to work all the night, to ’arn it, layin’ our side-track. Them’s the orders from Gin’ral Casement an’ Gin’ral Dodge, an’ they’re goin’ to boss the job themsilves whilst the C. Pay. slape. ’Twill be the U. Pay.’s terminal.”

The night was sharp and starry, and ice formed on the water buckets. The morning dawned as dear as a bell, and fanned by a strong, nipping breeze. Pat’s prophecy had come true.

Before daylight a few spectators had commenced to toil through, in the distance, by horse, wagon and buggy, from the ranches and towns eastward. The boarding-train was made up early, to take the men on from the construction camp. On the tender Terry arrived at the head of the procession.

The plateau was getting lively. A sprinkling of spectators by horse, wagon and buggy had come in from the west also. By all-night work the U. P. siding had been put in and completed. A squad of Pat’s men were tamping the ties, and tossing jokes at the C. P. men for having been outwitted. A squad of Chinamen from the Central camp were pottering along the C. P. roadbed. It all looked like business.

People continued to gather, and Terry fidgeted. About ten o’clock the C. P. construction-train, with the Stanford special as a trailer, puffed down, to halt at C. P. end o’ track, and wait. Engine and cars were fluttering with red, white and blue flags and bunting. The name of the weather-beaten locomotive was “Jupiter.”

Evidently President Stanford had been entertaining a large breakfast party, for almost all the C. P. officials piled out: the governor, and Vice-President C. P. Huntington, and Builder Crocker, and Construction Superintendent J. H. Strobridge, and Chief Engineer S. S. Montague, and Consulting Chief Engineer George E. Gray, and a bunch of others—three United States Pacific Railway commissioners and the governors of Nevada and Arizona, among them, people said.

There was one woman, Mrs. Strobridge, the Heroine of the C. P., they called her, because she had camped at the front, with her husband, all the way during the building. But the U. P. had two heroines, besides Virgie.

President Stanford and Vice-President Huntington attracted the most attention. They were fine-appearing men, in trousers and long coats of black broad-cloth, their shoes polished, everything about them spick and span as if they had come to a reception. Ex-Governor Stanford had ruddy complexion and kind, handsome face. He had been California’s war governor. Vice-President Huntington was larger in frame; broad and heavy and imposing. His face reminded one of a lion’s. During all the years of the railroad building he had made his headquarters in New York, raising money for the company; but he had traveled back and forth, back and forth, by stage and railroad, nobody knew how many times. Both he and Governor Stanford were reported to be very rich.

They all trudged forward, to the space that had been kept open from their end o’ track to the flag telegraph pole. There was shaking of hands, and considerable eddying about. Terry viewed the crowd, and the telegraph pole, anxiously.