The Journey of Josephine Cain (9 page)

Lewis stopped her movement with his hand, and drew her hand to his lips, where he offered the lightest of kisses. “Thank you, Josephine, for being the woman I can never deserve.”

The past was quickly forgotten, and Josephine’s thoughts focused on the future.

Her future with Lewis.

For the second time that day, the train slowed to a stop. The first time they had stopped at Fremont, Nebraska, where supplies had been cached all winter.

“What’re we stopping for now?” Raleigh asked.

Hudson carefully got to his knees atop the railcar and looked west. He saw a line of graded land and ties stretching forward—ties waiting for rails. “It’s the end of the line, men! We’re here!”

When they climbed down he wasn’t sure if what surrounded him was a foreign netherland or hell. For they had indeed come to the end of the track. What happened next was a muddle of confusion and chaos. The men tumbled out of the boxcars like fleas jumping off a dog. No one knew where to go. They had been told what their jobs would be, but none of them had laid any actual track. Rumor was that up until now, when no one knew exactly what to do, the men before them were lucky to lay a half mile a day. Now with the new reinforcements and the general’s organization, the bosses expected nearer to two.

Two
miles
. It didn’t sound like much, but when he broke it down to laying one rail at a time, hitting one spike at a time . . . Hudson could feel his muscles aching already.

The men wandered around until hope stepped forward. General Cain stood atop a crate and directed them this way and that.

“Don’t we get no time to check out the town, to take it all in?” Raleigh asked his brother.

“Guess not.”

All
was Columbus, Nebraska, an odd assortment of buildings and tents, scattered on either side of the track. Crude signs announced their purpose:
Saloon, Railway Office, Sawmill, Store
.

But there wasn’t time to explore, as the general and Boss gave directions. Everyone had a purpose. Months before, another Union general, General Grenville Dodge, had scoped out the best route. His surveyors had marked the way, and graders smoothed the land, while other crews laid the wood ties like a ladder stretching toward tomorrow. Now it was the tracklayers’ turn. Hudson had heard it was General Cain who’d come up with the idea of giving each group of men a specialized job.

Two generals who were used to getting men to do what needed to be done. Somebody was mighty smart putting them in charge.

Raleigh and Hudson were handed their spike mauls. Raleigh ran a hand along the foot-long head with two tapered ends. “I bet we’ll go through a few of these before we meet up with the Central Pacific.”

Hudson weighed it in his hands. “It’s not so heavy, about the same weight as a sledgehammer—ten, twelve pounds?”

“Not heavy just holding it, but swinging it from dawn to dusk?” Raleigh squeezed Hudson’s biceps. “You may even get yourself some real muscles.”

Hudson could’ve argued with him, saying something about Raleigh’s build, but the truth was, his little brother already had the physique of a spiker. He seemed to thrive on physical labor.

Hudson was fine with labor, but he preferred a mix of mental and physical. He enjoyed the chance to plan and organize, to think of what things
could
be.

But there was no call for thinkers here. Though they were all men, they were hired to work like machines. Or animals. He only hoped they would become neither.

“Here we go,” Raleigh said as he headed to the end of the line. “Another day, another dollar.”

“Three dollars,” Hudson corrected. “Come on. Let’s do this.”

Within half an hour, the work began in earnest. A horse-drawn lorry car filled with iron approached the end of the line. Four men removed each rail and trotted forward, laying it on the ties. When the lorry was empty, a man unhitched it from the horse, and it was pushed off the rails, into the ditch, making room for another one to move forward.

The men who’d been assigned to be “bolters” and “gaugers” stepped forward. The first group fastened the rail sections together, the second aligned them.

Then it was Hudson’s turn. As a “spiker,” he hammered the rails into place. The feel of the heavy maul racing through the air and hitting the spike made his muscles ring, as if the sound itself became physical. The music of metal hitting metal sounded like an anvil chorus.

“Come on, men,” the general yelled. “Spikers, keep the handle horizontal or you’ll bend the spike and ruin the head. Three strokes to a spike, ten spikes to a rail, four hundred rails to a mile that runs over three thousand ties. It should only take you thirty seconds for each section. In twelve hours we should lay three hundred tons of rail.”

One of the rail layers yelled out, “Yer making me tired just listening to you, General.”

Hudson saw two young boys run past, dumping the iron spikes on the ground on either side of the track. They were in constant motion, dumping and running back for more. The way everybody was working together made Hudson want to move faster.

But by the end of the day, the music of the anvil chorus had turned into a dirge of moans. Two hundred men sat shoulder to shoulder on the benches in one of the dining cars, their shoulders slumped, their heads hanging heavy. A hunk of meat and a pile of cubed potatoes lay on each plate, and each plate was nailed to the table.

“I can’t even pick up my fork,” Raleigh complained as he flexed his raw fingers.

“It’s my arms that are a’hurting,” said another man, who’d had to carry the rails into place with tongs.

“Shoulders,” was all Hudson could manage. He focused on the meat. He’d never been so hungry, because he’d never worked so hard. Back at the mill they worked long days, and though it also involved repetitive movement, it wasn’t backbreaking work. Tedious and boring, but not backbreaking.

A man across the table pointed his fork at Hudson’s plate. “You want yer potatoes?”

“I believe I do.” He stabbed a chunk to claim them.

“Did you even chew, Oscar?” Raleigh asked the man.

“I chewed,” the man said. “But I need more.”

Just then a kitchen worker came into the car carrying a platter and bowl.

Second helpings were had by all.

“Come on, Hudson. There’s whiskey to be had.”

Hudson settled in the empty dining car with his paper and pencil. “I need to write to Sarah Ann.”

Raleigh shook his head. “You’re one strange man, choosing letter-writing over whiskey.”

“So be it. Don’t you think you should write Mum and Da?”

“You say my howdys for me.”

Hudson looked up at his brother, his little brother who was a man. “Behave yourself, all right?”

“I most certainly will not.” Raleigh winked and hurried away, joining the throng of men who were finding solace in the saloons of Columbus.

Sarah Ann. She was Hudson’s solace.

He smoothed the page and wrote the date and salutation:
June 4, 1866. My dearest Sarah Ann . . .

But then he hesitated. What should he tell her? If he was truthful about the grueling work, she’d worry. So he looked out the window and wrote about
that
.

The Nebraska plains go on forever, a softly undulating tan spotted with low-growing grasses and fields of wildflowers, bowing in the breeze. The sky is a bowl of blue, rimming the land on all sides. Periodically we pass piles of construction debris, proof that the line is stretching out before us, waiting for the rails
.

He read it over, nodding. She’d like to hear about wildflowers. Back home she was so proud of the zinnias and asters that she’d planted in a rickety window box.

General Cain says we’ve reached the 100-mile mark. That’s a nice round number, but it’s more important than that. Congress gave us a deadline. We needed to measure 100 miles of track by July 1—with watering facilities, fuel facilities, and sidetracks, all good enough to have passenger and freight run out of Omaha—or the Union Pacific would lose its charter. And we’ve made it. I’m hoping my back and shoulders hold out for the next hundred miles
.

He hadn’t meant to mention his aches and pains and considered crossing it out. But he left it. It didn’t hurt to have her know how hard he was working.

For her.

“
Le Grand Isle?”
Raleigh asked, as the track they laid reached an existing town that was just sitting on the prairie, waiting for them to arrive.

“That’s what some French fur trader called it seventy years ago. We’re supposed to call it Grand Island,” Hudson said.

Oscar added, “It’s a forty-mile island in the Platte River.”

Hudson liked the sounds of that. He missed water. Pittsburgh was built on a river. “I wouldn’t mind doing a bit o’ fishing at the end of the day.”

Another worker shook his head. “We all need to be careful with that river. It’s not like most. I’ve heard it said that it’s two miles wide and will have six inches of water sitting over six feet of dangerous sand. It’s too thin to walk on, too thick to drink, too shallow to put a boat on, too deep for safe fording, too yellow to wash in, and too pale to paint with.”

Hudson laughed. “Sounds pretty useless—as rivers go.”

“Which makes me wonder why we’re following it all the way to Wyoming.”

Hudson shrugged. But he’d heard a reason. “It’s a path. Along with the wagon ruts of the Mormons who’ve come before. When you have hundreds of miles of open land, some path is better than starting out from noth—”

“Indians!”

Every eye looked to the south. There, near the river, was a band of more than a dozen Indians on horses.

“Guns! Get the rifles!”

Workers scrambled back into the bunk cars where a cache of rifles was stored by the ceiling. Within seconds a line of men formed from inside the car to out, handing the guns down the line into eager hands.

Some men climbed on top of the rail cars, lying low with guns pointed. Every man put the train between them and the Indians.

Someone up top yelled out, “General! Come back!”

Hudson and Raleigh hopped over the coupler between two cars, needing to see.

General Cain was riding out to meet the Indians. “What is he doing?” Hudson asked.

Raleigh crossed himself, mumbling a prayer. “He’s one brave man.”

Or stupid
.

As one moment moved into the next, it became apparent that these Indians were not going to attack. And even more surprising was the fact that the general seemed to know the lead man. They spoke back and forth, and . . .

They shook hands.

Then they all rode toward the end of the line, toward the place where Hudson and the others would be laying track.

When General Cain turned around and saw the workers and the guns, he raised a hand. “At ease, gentlemen. Spotted Tail is a friend. He and his men would like to see how we lay track.”

“Well, I’ll be,” Raleigh said.

Hudson watched the Indians surround the track on their horses. “They’ve told us not all the Indians are dangerous. The Pawnee are friendly, and the Sioux. It’s the Cheyenne we have to worry about. And the hotheads in every tribe.”

“How can we tell them apart?” Raleigh asked.

“I have no idea,” Hudson said. “But I think we’ll have to learn.”