XXXIII
At Crisis
It was December now, and winter had set in early. Temple found it exceedingly difficult to secure the assistant surveyors, rodmen, chainmen, and the rest, whose services were absolutely necessary, but by dint of hard work, he at last completed the organization of his several engineering corps, and set to work surveying the line, locating it, establishing grades, and the like.
Hurry it as he might, the work was very slow, because of the bad weather, but at least it went forward, and early in January gangs of men were sent into each county to make a show, at least, of construction work, and thus to avoid all possibility of the forfeiture of the county and town subscriptions.
The greatest difficulty encountered was in meeting the requirement that a car should actually cross the line between the two counties by noon of the fifteenth of March. That part of the line was peculiarly difficult of access. It could be reached only by a twenty-five mile journey across country, over roads which, in the winter, were well-nigh impassable. In order to build any sort of railroad line at the point involved, it was necessary to carry across country all the tools, earth cars, and construction materials, together with a large company of workmen. Huts must be built to shield the men from the severity of the weather, and provisions for them must be hauled over twenty-five miles of swamp roads. In order to do so, streams must be bridged for the wagons, and in many places the road must be "corduroyed" for many miles of its extent. That is to say, it must be paved with unhewn logs, laid side by side across it.
It was near the end of February, therefore, before anything like systematic construction at that point could be got under way.
Meanwhile, Duncan's mission to New York had been successful, though it was attended by much of difficulty. He had secured the necessary stock subscriptions, and better still, he had succeeded in inducing one of the great trunk lines of the East to guarantee a considerable bond issue on the part of the new road, under an agreement that when completed it should be made, in effect, an extension of the eastern company's lines.
The only problem now was to prevent that diversion of the proposed line which Tandy was openly trying to bring about. The New York capitalists whom Duncan had secured as stockholders in the enterprise, were, many of them, disposed to look upon the proposed change of terminus from Cairo to the rival city with a good deal of favor. Such a change would considerably shorten the line to be built, and the connection southwest from Paducah to Memphis was in some respects a more desirable one than that from Cairo.
But Duncan had secured from the capitalists a trustworthy promise that the line should be built to Cairo, as originally planned, provided the Cairo people, with Duncan, Hallam, and Stafford at their head, should protect the subscriptions of the two hesitating counties by meeting the requirement imposed at Tandy's suggestion. Thus everything depended upon the completion of a track across that county line before noon on the fifteenth day of March.
Temple had succeeded in getting the work started, but the task was a Herculean one. Duncan hurried to the scene of action as soon as he returned from New York to Cairo. He found that the space to be built over was very low-lying, and that the nearest source of supply for earth with which to build the high embankment required was nearly two miles distant.