CHAPTER IV
DOWN THE LINE—AND BACK
Sometime in the night he knew that they were in motion—the engine was pushing them along, over the track. But when he really woke up, they were standing still, in daylight. North Platte, as like as not; or maybe Kearney. No, it couldn’t be Kearney, could it, for Kearney was 100 miles and more, and that seemed a long way to go, in just one night. At any rate, they were standing in some town; there was a lot of noise outside, of shouting and engine-puffing and feet-scuffling. So he put on his clothes in a jiffy and jumped down through the curtains.
By the rattle of dishes and the smell of bacon the cook was getting breakfast, but the main part of the car was empty. Everybody had left. Seemed as though General Dodge didn’t take time to sleep, himself, for no other bunk was open. Here came old Shep, yawning, from his night’s quarters. Terry hastened to the platform, to find where they were.
North Platte, sure. They’d come only sixty or seventy miles, and must have been lying here quite a while. Yes, it was North Platte, on the south bank of the North Platte River just above where the North Platte joined the South Platte to help make the big Platte.
North Platte was the end of the road, for traffic; the terminal point, that is. The freight and passenger trains from Omaha, 293 miles, stopped here and went back; only the construction-trains went on, with supplies for end o’ track. But North Platte was considerable of a place—and an awful tough place, too, plumb full of gambling joints and saloons.
It had started up in a hurry, last December, when the road had reached it and had made a terminal point and supply depot of it, for the winter. There hadn’t been a thing here, except a prairie-dog town—and in three weeks there had been a brick round-house to hold forty engines, and a station-house, and a water tank heated by a stove so it wouldn’t freeze, and a big hotel to cost $18,000, and a knock-down warehouse (the kind that could be taken apart and fitted together again) almost as large, for the Casement Brothers, and fifteen or sixteen other business buildings, and over a thousand people, including gamblers and saloon keepers, living in all kinds of board and sheet-iron and canvas shacks.
When Terry had joined the road, at the close of winter, North Platte boasted 2,000 people, counting the graders and track-layers, and was a “roaring” town. There was some talk of making it the headquarters of the Union Pacific, instead of Omaha.
It used to be livelier at night than in the day-time, even; but it certainly was lively enough this morning. A long freight-train was unloading ties and iron, to be added to the great collection of ties and iron already waiting for the haul onward to the next supply dump, toward end o’ track. A passenger train had pulled in from Omaha. The passengers were trooping to the Railroad House (which was the name of the $18,000 hotel) or to the eating-room in the Casement Brothers’ portable warehouse, or bargaining to be taken by wagons across the South Platte ford, where the Overland Stage for Denver connected with the railroad.
As fast as the Union Pacific, on the north side of the Platte River, lengthened its passenger haul from Omaha, on the south side of the Platte River the Overland Stage shortened its haul to Denver and Salt Lake.
After a while there would be no stage haul needed, through this country. The stages would run only between Denver and wherever the railroad passed by, north of it; and people would go through from the Missouri River in two days instead of in six.