Until the Last Spike Read online

  I’m glad that I’ve finally been able to hear about what Pa lived through. It helps me understand the blank stares he used to give us when he first got back from the war.

  February 10

  I know what it is to be mudsiller now. Actually, I know what it’s like to be worse than a mudsiller — a no siller. I’m living in a sod hut at a place called Dale Creek. Since the tracklaying is on hold, they’ve sent Pa and me and two dozen other fellows ahead to a place called Dale Creek, where the U.P. needs to build a bridge fast. They say the Central Pacific is going great guns, and if we want to keep up, we’ve got to finish our tunnels and bridges on time. Otherwise our tracklayers will get held up.

  The main timbers have been shipped in from Michigan, and there’s already forty or fifty men here who’ve set up a portable sawmill to cut additional supports.

  Everyone is living in mud-chinked log huts on the site. The walls look like normal log cabins with untrimmed ends. But the big problem is the flat sod roofs. They stop water about as good as a dish-swabbing rag.

  February 12

  We are sawing logs and bolting timbers together from dawn to dark. When I look at the span of Dale Creek Gorge — Pa says it’s at least 600 feet long and 120 feet high — I can’t imagine we’ll ever finish this bridge on time.

  My pants are so sticky with pine pitch that they could stand up by themselves.

  Pa and I are both getting real lonesome for home. Last night, he promised me that we could invite John out to visit next summer. I’m writing him a letter this evening to tell him the good news.

  February 18

  I woke up this morning with a worm crawling across my upper lip. It startled me so bad that it took every ounce of my strength to keep from screaming. I’m not afraid of worms, mind you. Back home, John and I use ’em for fishing all the time. One summer, we even raised some big fat ones in a wooden box filled with coffee grounds and vegetable peelings. But waking up like that really spooked me.

  When the fellows fire up the stove, stuff is always dripping down through the sod. A fat little slug fell in Pa’s coffee yesterday, and as strong stomached as he is, he dumped that cup outside and didn’t drink no more.

  February 17

  My journal has two big water spots on the cover. I always feel damp and dirty in this place. Pa says we’ll be going back to the work train by the first week in March, and I can’t wait.

  March 10

  I’m on the grading crew again. Pa teased me when we first got back from Dale Creek. “I heard Jimmy Flynn was looking for another helper,” he said. I just about dropped in my tracks until I saw him grinning. The longer we are out here, the more relaxed Pa gets. It’s hard for me to remember all the way back to before the war, but I’d have to say he’s close to his old self. Aunt Katie sure knew best when she told Pa to come out here. And I sure am glad I got to come with him.

  Enough snow has finally melted for us to start preparing the roadbed.

  March 12

  My grading crew boss is a silent fellow named Larry Coughlin. He is the perfect opposite of Jimmy Flynn. While Jimmy is always shooting off his mouth, Mr. Coughlin rarely speaks. He is all business and, unlike most of the men, his clothes are neat and he shaves every day. Coughlin wears a Union army cap pulled down low to shade his eyes, which are a steely blue.

  Coughlin’s main job is supervising the teamsters and, like Ben Wharton, he really knows how to handle the draft animals. Even the most stubborn mule — one of the fellows named her Sue, after his wife who ran off with a riverboat gambler — will turn and look right at him whenever he whistles. The problem with Coughlin is that he shows a lot more concern for the mules and horses than the men. I’ve seen him spend ten minutes soothing a spooked horse, and then send off a fellow who took a rock chip in the eye and was bleeding real bad with a wave of his hand and a “Go see the doc.”

  The first day I was assigned to Coughlin’s crew, I told him my name was Sullivan. All he said was, “Irish, eh?” and handed me a shovel. He never told me where to go or what to do with it. Of course, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what came next.

  Our job is to cut away the high spots, shovel the fill into wagons, and dump it in the low places. Teams pull scraper blades behind us for the final leveling of the grade.

  When the digging is rough, we have to use our picks. If that doesn’t work, we blast. It’s actually fun watching a charge go off. Not only do we get a little break from our work, but we get to watch some fine fireworks.

  Pa swings by once in a while and tries to pretend that he isn’t checkin’ up on me. But I know better. He preached at me for two nights about how to protect myself during a blast. The trick is to fight the urge to duck your head at the powder flash. You’ve got to look straight up to dodge the material that’s raining down. I’m glad Pa coached me, ’cause once a rock gets airborne, it’s anybody’s guess where it’s going to land.

  March 23

  It feels great to have the sun back. I thought winter was never going to end, but a sudden warm spell has opened up the mountains. The south slopes are bare, and shoots of green grass and tiny wildflowers are popping up all over. I’m so happy to see everything coming back to life that I don’t even mind the flies.

  Pa and Bill and I are back in our tent.

  March 25

  The storm of all storms hit yesterday. It was scary how quiet it started. There was a soft breeze blowing out of the south, like it had all week. Summer looked to be so close that I was even thinking about trying a swim in the river.

  Then, late in the afternoon, the breeze shifted over to the north. I didn’t think anything of it until I heard the pitch of the wind change all of a sudden. We all leaned on our shovels and listened to the sound hit a high, whining note. A few minutes later the air turned icy cold, and there was a soft hiss of snow blowing down the mountain and across my boot tops.

  By noon today, everything had stopped dead. Snow has drifted as deep as the telegraph poles, stalling the trains and completely burying the wagons. Ben told me that lots of livestock are missing.

  April 1

  It took us a week to shovel out from the blizzard. A stage was stranded for six days in the Cheyenne Pass, and the driver got frostbit so bad that the doc had to saw one of his legs off.

  Tracklaying operations are going full tilt now.

  Word is that Indian troubles have started up again back on the plains. Pa says he can’t risk letting John visit us like we’d planned. I hate to write and tell him, but I have to.

  April 5

  Sherman Summit, Wyoming

  We’ve reached the summit. Though it’s plenty cold working on the grading crew, it’s a big improvement over sod hut living.

  Mr. Casement is pushing us already. No matter that the ground is still too frozen for picks. No matter that the air is so thin that we get nosebleeds, Casement’s railroad will be built.

  Pa is shaking his head at the shoddy tracklaying. All we did to prepare the grade was scrape away a little snow and blast a chunk of frozen rock here and there. Sometimes it felt like the tie setters were chasing us right up the mountain. Pa says that all this track will have to be repaired before the first train can make it through to San Francisco.

  Counting the new men who were recruited over the winter, there’s now over five thousand track men and graders working for the U.P. Ben Wharton says it takes one thousand mule-and-horse teams hauling full time to keep everyone busy.

  April 11

  The Dale Creek Bridge almost blew down in a storm the other day. Pa talked to an engineer named Hezekiah Bissell, who said that a big wind came up, and the whole bridge started swaying from side to side. His crew just stared as it rocked back and forth.

  With some fast talking, Bissell finally convinced a few fellows to crawl out onto the bridge and attach some ropes. They had to stake a half-dozen lines before the bridge finally stopped
swaying.

  It gives me the chills to know that we are going to drive our work train over that trestle any day now.

  April 12

  Since Pa was feeling bad today — it would have been my mother’s thirty-fourth birthday — I asked him if he wanted to go fishing. We borrowed Ben’s poles and hiked up a fork of Dale Creek until we found a little pool. Pa never said anything about what day it was. He mainly talked about a stubborn fellow he had on his crew. Then, just before dark, he caught a nice trout using a cricket for bait. Instead of keeping it like I thought he would, he set the fish back in the shallows.

  As it flicked away with a splash of its tail, Pa smiled and rinsed his hands off in the clear water. He looked at the purple mountains to the north and wrapped up his line. He reached out and put his arm around my shoulders. “This was a fine idea, son,” he said. “There’s nothing better than wild country to clear a man’s mind.” Then, as we turned back down the trail, he added, “I know your mother would have loved the look of these hills.”

  April 14

  Today was the third anniversary of President Lincoln’s assassination. The men who served in the Union army were more quiet than usual.

  April 22

  The Dale Creek Bridge is ready for a test run tomorrow. To me, it looks like a six-hundred-foot-long crisscross of toothpicks. Pa says they aren’t going to let a train go any faster than four miles per hour, but if I had the choice, I’d rather climb down our side of the gorge and hike back up the other hill than ride over that flimsy trestle.

  April 23

  I never thought we’d make it, but the work train inched across the Dale Creek Bridge today. Bissell’s men had left their guy ropes in place, and they pulled as tight as a set of banjo strings as the steel wheels of our flatcar creaked out onto the trestle. I felt the bridge timbers flex under the load and I waited for the ropes to pop. Would it be better to jump or just close my eyes and hang on tight?

  After we made it to the other side, I thought about what the U.P. would have done if that feeble excuse for a trestle had given out. I bet they would have used us all for fill and carted in some extra dirt to level things off.

  April 24

  Indians raided a camp near Dale Creek. They killed two men, wounded four, and drove off a dozen head of stock. Back on Lodgepole Creek, two off-duty U.P. men were attacked. One, named Bill Edmundson, ran a mile back to the station with four arrows sticking out of him. His buddy, Torn Cahoon, was scalped but, like Bill Thompson, he survived.

  The U.P. has filled the space in the walls of their coaches and cabooses with sand to protect them from rifle fire. These days, Pa is sleeping with his loaded Colt right beside him. I suspect he’s more concerned about protecting me than himself.

  May 3

  They are still trying to shore up the Dale Creek Bridge. Two carpenters fell to their deaths yesterday.

  May 16

  We just heard that the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson failed by a single vote. For the last week the telegraph wires have been humming with news of Johnson’s trial. Though nobody out here seems to think a whole lot of Johnson, they agree with Bill Flanagan’s opinion: “He ain’t no Lincoln, but he deserves better than what those scalawags in Congress wanted to give him.” Sometimes even Bill gets lucky and makes sense.

  May 30

  Congress has just declared a new holiday called Decoration Day to honor the soldiers who were killed in the war. It’s just like those politicians to be trumping up the charges on President Johnson one day, and then declaring a national celebration the next.

  June 8

  Laramie, Wyoming (mile 573)

  The days are getting warmer all the time. We’ve just hit a pretty stretch of the Laramie River that runs along the western edge of the Black Hills. A big flat plain lies ahead. The grading has been a picnic here compared to what we had back at Sherman Summit. Things are going so smooth that even Coughlin pushes back his army cap and admires the scenery once in a while.

  I know I shouldn’t complain after that long, ugly winter, but the sun sure gets hot on these western slopes. Lots of fellows have taken to wearing Mexican sombreros. My favorite part of the whole day is the few minutes I get after supper to take a swim. On the hottest days even Pa takes a dip. The fellows all have a good laugh when Pa takes a running start and leaps out into the river. Two hundred and twenty pounds of track boss can sure kick up a splash!

  June 12

  I got a letter from John today.

  Dear Sean,

  How’s life in the West? I am excited that school will finally be out next week. Bobby Williams and his pa and Uncle Willy and I are going camping on the Rock River. Billy’s been there twice before and he says that though it is a long wagon ride, it is worth it because the fishing is so good. Being that hardly anyone goes up there, we should have the place to ourselves.

  It is too bad that I won’t be able to visit you this summer, but I wouldn’t want to get killed by the Indians. According to the papers, the bullets are flying out there. How many times have you been shot at?

  Your fishing champion brother,

  John

  Boy, would a summer vacation feel good about now.

  June 14

  It’s Sunday. Pa and Ben Wharton and I went fishing this afternoon. We didn’t have any luck, but it was good to see Pa relax. Ben started reminiscing about the war, telling about the day when he’d suddenly been moved to the front lines. When Ben mentioned a battle near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Pa joined right in without tensing up like he usually does. They were surprised to discover that they’d been on opposite sides in the very same battle.

  As they discussed the layout of the field and where they’d been standing, they realized they’d probably been shooting at each other. “Lordy, Sean” — Ben turned to me — “if I’d a had two good arms, I mighta shot your papa dead.”

  He and Pa had a good laugh over that, but I really couldn’t see the humor.

  I always figured that Ben went home on leave after his arm was shot off. The Union army is lucky that the Confederates didn’t have more soldiers like Ben on their side.

  June 20

  For the past week we’ve been on an easy stretch of grading. General Casement is pleased that the track is going down so fast. I can tell because though he has the same gruff face as always, I heard him whistling as he rode by our crew yesterday.

  The boys were sitting around a campfire this afternoon, singing and clog dancing and sipping whiskey like they sometimes do on a Sunday, when a couple of trappers stopped by on their way to Medicine Bow. They warmed their coffee on our fire and ended up spending the night. They told us tales about faraway places like Bozeman and Missoula. One of those fellows was carrying a Hawken rifle that looked ten feet long. He claimed he could “shoot the eyelash off a mosquito at a hundred yards.” Those fellows slept right out in the open and, by the time I got up for breakfast, they had saddled their horses and were gone.

  July 1

  Carbon, Wyoming (mile 656)

  They call this place “Carbon” because there’s a big coal deposit near here. Since the price of wood is up to $100 a cord on the plains, the coal will really help the U.P. save money. They are already busy converting the locomotives.

  July 11

  Since the grading was getting boring, I volunteered for what Coughlin called a new “detail” this morning. I figured that any job would be a welcome change of pace from dirt work.

  Boy, was I mistaken. When I stepped forward, Coughlin pulled out a rusty old navy six-shooter and a box of cartridges from his haversack. “Go hunt down some snakes,” he said.

  When I just stood there, he looked irritated and said, “Get on, now.”

  After he walked off, I asked one of the other fellows what Coughlin meant. With a grin he explained that so many rattlesnakes were spooking the animals that the boss wanted someone to walk out ahead of t
he crew and clear out the snakes.

  My first thought was, that’ll teach me to not volunteer without knowing what I’m in for. But when I remembered that I could still be working for Jimmy Flynn, I decided I was one for two in the volunteering department.

  July 13

  I’m a lousy shot with that navy six. Though I can knock a can off a fence post at fifty yards with a rifle, I’ve never been able to hit a blessed thing with a six-shooter. That’s not so bad when you’re target shooting, but snakes are a bit trickier — they bite back.

  Pa thinks Coughlin should shoot his own snakes, but I told him that it’s my fault for volunteering.

  July 14

  At least my daily snake-hunting duties are short. My job is to check the grade each morning. Most of the time there’s only a little rattler or two, and they slink off before I can even lift my gun. When I do run into a big one, I’ve learned to creep real close before I fire. But I can guarantee you that I’m aiming the whole time I walk forward, and I squeeze that trigger as soon as I hear the first rattle.