The Boundless (3 page)

Will accepts it with a shaking hand and downs it in one fiery gulp.

“Nearly there,” Van Horne tells him, clapping him on the shoulder. The rail baron looks over at Mr. Dorian. “Well done, sir. You're a useful fellow.”

Windows are closed, guns disappear, cigars are relit, and brandy is poured all around. As the train climbs higher, the ride gets rougher. The train jounces over uneven sections of track, screeches around corners. Despite the two stoves in the carriage, it becomes chilly. Staring out at the landscape of granite and forest and snow, Will wonders if he should have stayed back in Farewell.

After thirty more minutes the locomotive gives a whistle blast and begins to slow.

“Well, gentlemen,” says Van Horne, rising, “are you ready to make history?”

When the train stops, Will waits for the gentlemen to get off first. He hopes Van Horne will tell him where to find his father, but the rail baron seems to have forgotten about him. Will is left alone.

“Off with you, then,” says the attendant with a grimace.

Will steps off. There is no platform, just gravel. Despite the sun, it's very cold up here, and the snow is deep on either side of the rail bed. The smell of pine is keen in his nostrils. He fills his chest and starts walking.

To the left of the tracks, the land slopes down into sparse forest that ends at an abrupt precipice. From below rises the sound of a swollen river. Up ahead, to the right of the tracks, some of the trees have been cleared for the work camp.

Wood smoke rises from the chimneys of rickety bunkhouses. Men mill about outside. Will is too shy to call out his father's name. He supposes he should go over and ask someone but dreads the prospect.

The company dignitaries are walking up the tracks toward a gathering crowd. Withers the photographer brings up the rear, he and his assistant lurching under the weight of their equipment.

“William?”

Will looks over and sees someone walking toward him, not a gentleman but a tall working man in a cap. His face is tanned by wind and sun, and he is leaner than the person Will has drawn and redrawn from memory over the past three years. But when James Everett grins his familiar lopsided grin, he is suddenly and powerfully Will's father.

“Will!” he says, and pulls him into a tight hug. Beneath the musty clothing, his father's arms and chest feel as hard as the granite he's blasted from the mountains. Will feels completely safe.

“Mr. Van Horne said you came up in the company car!”

“He invited me!”

James Everett shakes his head. “Well, that's something.”

“There was a sasquatch on the roof!”

“I'm not surprised. Where's your mother?”

“Waiting back in Farewell.”

“Good. She knows you came, though?”

“I sent a message.”

His father holds him at arm's length. “You're a good height. You'll be taller than me soon. A fine fellow through and through.”

Will grins, trying to find himself in his father's face—and sees it in the lopsided grin. Will is built like him, though he has yet to fill out. His red hair is his mother's, but he has his father's large hands. His father reminds him of those trees he saw on the train trip from Winnipeg, the ones that thrive on hardship and get stronger and more stubborn.

“I brought you something,” Will says tentatively, for he's worried his father might not like the gift, might think it childish. He reaches inside his pocket for the sketchbook, but there's the sound of a bell being rung.

“Will you show me after the ceremony?” says his father. “They're starting in a minute. You'll want to see this. They're going to hammer the last spike.”

The last spike.
It's a phrase Will has read many times in the papers, and his father's letters—and it has such power that it hangs in the air like the echo of a thunderclap.

Will leaves the sketchbook inside his pocket. His father leads him toward the growing crowd. Will smiles, enjoying the weight of his father's hand on his shoulder. Set off a ways from the main work camp is a second. There are no wooden bunkhouses there, only tents and miserable lean-tos, where Chinese men are drinking tea and packing up their tattered bags.

“Aren't they coming to the ceremony?” Will asks.

“Not them,” his father answers quietly. “They've got no love for the railway, and I don't blame them. They had the most dangerous jobs and lost a lot of their countrymen.”

Then Will sees something that makes him stop and stare. Spiked to the top of a tall pole is a head. Flies churn about the rotted flesh, and for a moment Will thinks it's human, until he sees the mangy, sun-bleached patches of fur.

“Sasquatch?” he asks his father.

James Everett nods. “That one came in the night, killed one of the Chinese blasters, and tried to drag him off.”

“Why did they do that to its head?”

“Some of the men think it scares them off. It doesn't, though. Not since we started shooting them.”

Will has read all of his father's letters so many times, he has them nearly memorized. Last year, when the first crews entered the mountains, the Native Canadians warned them of the sasq'ets, the “stick men.” Plenty of the workers thought it was superstitious nonsense. It wasn't. The young ones came first and were merely a nuisance, filching food from the mess tents, playing with the workers' tools like comical monkeys. But there was nothing comical about the adults.

“Come on,” his father says.

They near the fringes of the crowd. Will's father jostles him closer to the front. Nobody seems to mind as James Everett passes, for he has a friendly word for everyone, and people say, “Is that your lad?” and “He's the spitting image!” and “Let him get a good view!” Before long Will finds himself standing not far behind the dignitaries he rode up with. With his top hat Mr. Smith is the tallest, and Will can make out Van Horne, talking to the man with the ferocious beard. Their woolen coats are buttoned snugly against their ample bellies.

Spread out on either side of the tracks are the workers, like Will's dad, humbly dressed, some smoking, all looking like they could use a hot bath and a square meal.

“Gentlemen, are we ready?” asks Withers, bent over his camera.

Will watches as Van Horne steps forward.

“This mighty road,” the rail baron cries out, “will connect our new dominion from sea to sea. Men, you've all toiled long and hard for this moment, and there's not one of you who doesn't have a share in the glory. Be proud of that, for there will never be another job like this in our lifetimes—and you will forever be a part of history!”

Will finds himself cheering along with the rest.

“And to complete this great enterprise,” says Van Horne, “Mr. Donald Smith, the president of the CPR, will drive the last spike!”

Another cheer as Mr. Smith steps forward, holding a silver sledgehammer.

A weedy-looking railway official approaches with a long, ornate velvet case.

It seems to Will that every man in the crowd takes a small step toward it. Like a sigh of mountain wind, a collective gasp rises. Will stands tall on his toes as Smith lifts from the case a six-inch rail spike. The dull luster of gold is unmistakable, as is the sparkle of diamonds, set deeply into the side of the spike, spelling out a name he can't see.

“Heard it cost more than two hundred thousand dollars,” Will hears a man whisper bitterly behind him. “I could work ten lifetimes, wouldn't make half that.”

Will glances back and sees a man about his father's age, sandy haired, a bit of gray coming into his beard. He has chilly blue eyes. His nose looks like it's been broken more than once.

“You ask me, it's criminal, spending that much on a spike, after we slaved two months without the pay car coming. Bet Van Horne didn't go without his pay.”

The man raises his eyebrows challengingly at Will, and Will turns away.

Quietly Will's father says, “Van Horne came through for us in the end, Brogan. He kept his bargain.”

“Let's just say he got the better end,” Brogan says, and sniffs.

“Ready when you are, Mr. Smith,” says Withers behind the big camera.

Donald Smith positions the spike atop the final steel plate and grips the sledgehammer.

“Everyone still now!” cries out the photographer. “And, Mr. Smith, I'll need you to hold your pose once you hit the spike.”

Smith strikes and freezes.

“And . . . wonderful!” cries the photographer.

But Smith's aim was off, and Will sees he has only bent the top of the spike without driving it in properly.

Van Horne gives a hearty laugh. “Smith, you've spent too long behind a desk.”

“Let me straighten that out for you, sir,” says the assistant, trying in vain to yank out the spike with his hands.

Van Horne steps forward and pulls it out with one swift tug. He takes the hammer from Smith and with a sharp blow straightens the priceless gold spike against the rail.

“Do the honors, Van Horne,” says Smith good-naturedly. “No one has given more of his life to build this road.”

“Perhaps.” Van Horne looks about the crowd, and his eyes settle on Will. “But this road is for a new generation that'll use it long after we're gone. Lad, would you like to try your hand?”

Will is aware of every set of eyes in the crowd fixed on him, more intense than the sun's glare.

“Go on,” he hears his father whisper, and Will feels his hand upon his back. “You can do it.”

“Yes, sir!” Will says, so nervous that his voice comes out much louder than expected.

He steps forward, his legs feeling strangely disconnected from his body.

He takes the silver sledgehammer Van Horne holds out to him.

“One hand close to the top,” the rail baron tells him quietly. “Tight grip. Now you'll want to raise it to your shoulder. Look at the spike the whole time.”

Will can now see the diamonds set into the spike's side and the name they spell. He murmurs the word: “Craigellachie.”

“That's the name I'm giving this place,” says Van Horne. “Now strike!”

Will tenses his muscles and strikes.

He doesn't even know if he's been successful until he hears the cheer rise up from the crowd.

“Well done, lad!” Van Horne cries. “The last spike!”

“You finished the railway, Will!” his father says, slapping him on the back.

“All aboard for the Pacific!” shouts Donald Smith.

From down the tracks the company locomotive blasts its whistle. Men take out their pistols and begin firing in the air. The shots echo between the snow-laden slopes, one great firework crackle.

When the shooting subsides, the rumble is so low that it is barely audible, but Will can hear it, and he looks at his father in alarm. James Everett is shielding his eyes and staring at the summit. Will sees a patch of perfect snow pucker and slip raggedly away from the pack. A dreamy white haze rises like sea spume as it plows a growing crest before it.

“Avalanche!” James Everett bellows, pointing. “Avalanche!”

All is chaos as men run for cover, looking up at the plunging snow, trying to guess where it will hit. There are cries of “Not that way!” and “Climb a tree!” and “Stick close to the rock face!” Withers seizes his camera and tripod and pelts after the dignitaries toward the locomotive.

“Move the train! Back it up!” shouts Van Horne. “Men, take cover! The snow sheds are your best bet!”

“This way!” Will's father says, sprinting. Will knows the sheds are supposed to keep the snow off the track as the railroad skirts the mountain face, but are the sheds strong enough to withstand an avalanche?

The sound of thunder builds. He runs after his father and trips, sprawling hard on the tracks. His wretched bootlaces! He tries to stand, but the toe of his boot is jammed beneath one of the ties. Fire jolts up his ankle.

“Pa!”

His father turns and rushes back to him. “Is it broken?” he pants.

“Jammed.” He's trying to pull it free, but each tug only gives him more pain.

The ground begins to tremble.

“Never mind, never mind! Just undo the laces and slip out.” Will sees his father glance up at the snow and then back to the boot, fingers clutching at the laces. “Almost there. . . . Ease your foot out now.”

With a grunt of pain Will pulls his foot from his boot, and his father hauls him up.

“Lean on me.”

Not far away Will glimpses a man bent over the track, trying to lever up a spike with a crowbar. Then Will looks up at the snow and knows they're too late. His eyes meet his father's.

“I'm sorry,” Will says as the ice-streaked wind hits them.

“Stay on top of it!” his father yells above the din. “Swim!”

His father disappears in the blizzard, and Will is running, the pain in his foot forgotten. He runs blindly. The ground is a white rug being pulled out from beneath him. He staggers, and knows that to fall is certain death. He throws his body forward and thrashes wildly, trying to stay atop the churning sea of snow. It pushes and pummels him with a terrifying weight. There is no time for fear, only a wild animal scrabbling as he tries to keep on top. He goes under, claws his way back up, gulping air, hurtled along by the avalanche's mighty muscle.

Something long and narrow whips past, nearly taking off his head—and he realizes it's a twisted measure of steel rail. Off to his right he catches the dim shadow of his father, swimming alongside him, before he vanishes once more. Some high branches of a buried tree jut out of the blizzard, and he makes a grab, but is swept past. He knows he is being washed down through the sparse woods that grow right to the edge of the gorge.

Another set of boughs looms up, directly in front of him, and he clutches at them and this time holds fast. His body is lashed about by the driving force of the snow, but he won't release his grip, even as his head is covered and snow rammed up his nostrils. He gags, choking for breath.