The C. P. had commenced first. By the time the U. P. had built eleven miles of track, the C. P. had completed over fifty. But while the Central was completing 100 miles, the Union Pacific had completed 300.
Now the Central was still fighting the snowy Sierra Nevada Mountains of eastern California, and the U. P. had open going on the plains. The C. P. had plenty of timber for ties and culverts and bridges, and plenty of cheap Chinese labor; the U. P. had no timber, all its ties were cut up and down the Missouri River or as far east as Wisconsin, and hauled to end o’ track from Omaha, and by the time that they were laid they cost two dollars apiece. Its workmen were mainly Irish, gathered from everywhere and pretty hard to manage.
The C. P. began at Sacramento on the Sacramento River, up from San Francisco, but its rails and locomotives had to be shipped clear around Cape Horn, from the Pennsylvania factories—or else across the Isthmus of Panama. The U. P. began at Omaha, on the Missouri River, but Omaha was 100 miles from any eastern railroad and all the iron and other supplies had to be shipped by steamboat up from St. Louis or by wagon from central Iowa.
It was nip and tuck. Just the same, General G. M. Dodge, the Union Pacific chief engineer (and a mighty fine man), was bound to reach Salt Lake of Utah first, where big business from the Mormons only waited for a railroad. This year he had set out to build 288 more miles of track between April 1 and November 1. That would take the U. P. to the Black Hills of the Rocky Mountains. The C. P. had still forty miles to go, before it was out of its mountains and down into the Nevada desert; and this looked like a year’s work, also.
Then the U. P. would be tackling the mountains, while the C. P. had the desert, with Salt Lake as the prize for both.
But 288 miles, this year, against the Central’s forty! Phew! No matter. General Dodge was the man to do it, and the U. P. gangs believed that they could beat the C. P. gangs to a frazzle.
“B’ gorry, ’tis the Paddies ag’in the Chinks, it is?” growled Pat Miles, the track-laying boss. “Ould Ireland foriver! Shall the like of us let a lot o’ pig-tailed, rice-’atin’ haythen wid shovels an’ picks hoist the yaller above the grane? Niver! Not whilst we have a man who can spit on his hands. Away yonder on that desert over ferninst Californy won’t there be a shindig, though, when the shillaly meets the chop-stick! For ’tis not at Salt Lake we’ll stop; we’ll kape right on into Nevady, glory be!”
So——
“Drill, my paddies, drill!
Drill, you tarriers, drill!