OPENING THE IRON TRAIL
CHAPTER I
TERRY RICHARDS ON THE JOB
“Drill, my paddies, drill!
Drill, you tarriers, drill!
O, it’s work all day,
No sugar in your tay—
Wor-rkin’ on th’ U. Pay. Ra-a-ailway!”
The rousing chant rang gaily upon the thin air of Western spring. Sitting Jenny, the old yellow mule, for a moment’s breather while the load of rails was being swept from his flat-car truck, Terry Richards had to smile.
Nobody knew who invented that song. Some said Paddy Miles, the track-laying boss—and it did sound like Pat. At any rate, the lines had made a hit, until already their words were echoing from the Omaha yards, the beginning of track, past end o’ track and on through the grading-camps clear to the mountains where the surveying parties were spying out the trail, for this new Union Pacific Railroad across continent.
Time, early in May, 1867. Place, end o’ track, on the Great Plains just north of the Platte River, between North Platte Station of west central Nebraska and Julesburg, the old Overland Stage Station, of northeastern Colorado. Scene, track-laying—a bevy of sweaty, flannel-shirted, cowhide-booted men working like beavers, but with spades, picks, sledges, wrenches and hands, while far before were the graders, keeping ahead, and behind were the boarding-train and the construction-train, puffing back and forth.