Samuel Merwin

“ Every one of the faint evening camp sounds fell loud on their ears. A puff of wind shook the tent flaps and stirred the papers on the table. The lamp flickered. Very slowly, without looking up, Old Van reached back to his hip pocket, drew out a revolver, laid it on the table,—laid it, oddly enough, on a copy of the Book of Common Prayer which was acting as a paperweight, and left the tent and went off down the grade. And for some time after his footfalls had died away Carhart sat with elbows on table, chin on hands, looking at the weapon. ”

“ Then, after a moment of confusion, three men rode out of the circle of lanterns, put their horses at the grade, stood out for a vivid moment in the path of light thrown by the nearest engine,—Paul Carhart, Young Vandervelt, and the easy-riding guide,—plunged down the farther side of the grade, and blended into the night. One after another the long line of wagons followed after, whips cracking, mules balking and breaking, men tugging at the spokes of the wheels. ”

“ He knew how a man’s sense of proportion can go awry,—how a mere railroad, with its very important banker-officials in top hats and its very elaborate and impressive organization, could seem a child’s toy here in the desert where the wonderful spaces and the unearthly atmosphere and the morning and evening colors lie very close to the borders of another realm, and where the eye of God blazes forever down on the just and the unjust.
None of the little devices of a sophisticated world pass current in the desert. Carhart [Pg 133] knew all this, as I have said, very well. ”

“ Carhart took it all in, as he cantered out toward the head of the line, dropping a nod here and there, and waving Byers, who was leaning on his pony’s rump and looking impatiently back, to start off. He had picked his men with care—he knew that he could trust them. And so, on reaching the leading wagon and pulling to a walk, he settled himself comfortably in his saddle and began to plan the conversation with Commodore Durfee which was to come next and which was to mean everything or nothing to Paul Carhart. ”

“ By mid-afternoon every man of the thousand felt the difference. Before supper time the heat, the gloom, the loneliness of the desert, the sense of a dead pull on the work, the queer thought that there was no such place as Red Hills anywhere on the map, and that even if there were, the western extension of the Shaky and Windy would never reach it, these thoughts were preying on them, particularly on Young Van, who was up and at work soon after noon. ”

“ As soon as it was dark, men carrying rifles and with light rations stuffed into all available pockets—little men, middle-sized men, and big men, but all active and well-muscled—appeared here and there by ones and twos and threes, dodged out of the camp, and slipped through the hollow behind the trestle-end. There was little champing and pawing of horses to-night, for Carhart and Byers were the only ones to ride. The men lay or sat on the rocks and on the ground there behind the brow of the ridge, and talked soberly. ”

“ Men on horseback—picturesque figures in wide-brimmed hats and blue shirts and snug-fitting boots laced to the knee—were riding in and out among the teams. The old track ended in the immediate foreground, and here old Van was at work with his young surveyors, looking up the old stakes and driving new ones to a line set by a solemn youngster with skinny hands and a long nose. ”

“ Within, seated on blocks of timber around a cracker-box, four men were playing poker; and pressing about them was a score of laborers—all, in fact, who could crowd into the tent. The air was foul with cheap tobacco and with the hundred odors that cling to working clothes. The eyes of the twenty or more men were fixed feverishly on the greasy cards, and on the heaps of the day’s pay-slips. By a simple process of elimination the ownership of these slips had been narrowed down to the present players—Jack Flagg, his assistant Charlie, Dimond, and a Mexican. ”

“ The line was creeping on again—on, on through the desert.
“What do you think of this!” had been Young Van’s exclamation when the second train appeared.
“It’s too good to be true,” was the reply of his grizzled brother.
Old Vandervelt was right: it was too good to be true. Soon the days were getting away from them again; provisions and water were running short, and Peet was sending on the most skilful lot of excuses he had yet offered. For the second time the tracklaying had to stop; and Carhart, slipping a revolver into his holster, rode forward alone to find Scribner. ”

“ Carhart was genuinely interested.
“Why?” Young Van rose and stood looking gloomily down at his chief. “That’s a funny question for you to ask. You’ve been watching my work for these months, and you’ve seen me developing new limitations in every possible direction. All together, I’ve discovered about the choicest crop any man ever opened up. When I started out, I thought I might some day become an engineer. But if this job has taught me anything, it has taught me that I’m the emptiest ass that ever tried to lay two rails, end to end, in a reasonably straight line.” ”

“ Then for a time a series of remarkable scenes took place along the right of way of the Paradise Southern. Men by the hundred, all seemingly bent on destruction, swarmed over the line and tore it to pieces. Trains ran north and west laden with rusty old rails, switches, ancient cross-ties of questionable durability, with everything, as Carhart had ordered, excepting the sand and clay ballast.
“Some poor devils lost their little fortunes in the old P. S.” said Tiffany, on the first morning, as the two engineers stood looking at the work of ruin. ”

“ One lost his head and fired. But Dimond, his eyes blazing, swearing under his breath, handed his rifle to Carhart and went running and leaping down the hillside. When he reached the fallen man, he bent over him and took the letter from his hand and, standing erect, waved it. Still holding it above his head, he went on down the hill and disappeared among the rocks that surrounded the camp.
Late that afternoon Flagg’s men straggled out through the hollow, bound for Red Hills. And every large rock on either hillside concealed a man and a rifle. ”

“ One line of wagons—laden with scrapers, “slips” and “wheelers,” tents and camp equipage, the timbers and machinery of a pile-driver, and a thousand and one other things—was little by little extricating itself from the tangle, winding slowly past head-quarters, and on toward the low-lying, blood-red sun. This was the outfit of the second [Pg 39] division, and Harry Scribner, riding a wiry black pony, was leading it into corral on “mile two,” preparatory to a start in the early morning.
From the headquarters cook tent, behind the “office,” came savory odors. ”

“ Gus Vandervelt hurried out, saddled his horse, and rode off into the thickening dusk. Old Van went to select his guards. Carhart saw them go; then, pausing to note with satisfaction the prospect of only moderate darkness, he set about organizing his force. All the empty casks and barrels were loaded on wagons. Mules were hitched four and six in hand. Water, beyond a canteen for each man, could not be spared; but Charlie packed provisions enough—so he thought—for twenty-four hours. ”

“ Through the still air came the champing of bits and the pawing and snorting of horses. The man with the spectacles and the less striking nose seemed to dislike these noises. He drew out a watch now and then, and held it up in the moonlight. The work was going on rapidly, yet how slowly! Once somebody dropped an armful of wood, and every man started at the sound.
The watchman upon whom devolved the responsibility of seeing that no prowling strangers walked off by night with the town of “Durfee” was meanwhile dreaming troublous dreams. ”

“ If he could not control the rate of pay, he could at least control the rate of work. To himself, to the younger engineers, to the men, to the mules, he was merciless. And foot by foot, rod by rod, the embankment that was to bear the track crept on into the desert. The sun beat down; the wind, when there was a wind, was scorching hot; but Old Van gave no heed. Now and again he glanced back to where the material train lay silent and useless, hoping against hope that far in the distance he might see the smoke of that other train from Sherman. Peet had said, yesterday, that it was on the way ”

“ The red, spent sun hung low in the west; the parched earth was awaiting the night breeze. Cantering easily on, Carhart soon reached the grade, and turned in toward the tents. The endless quiet of the desert gave place to an odd, tense quiet in the camp. The groups of laborers, [Pg 105] standing or lying motionless, ceasing their low, excited talk as he passed; the lowered eyes, the circle of Mexicans standing about the mules, the want of the relaxation and animal good-nature that should follow the night whistle: these signs were plain as print to his eyes and his senses. ”

“ Young Van suggested. “He would like it that way, I think.”
At six in the morning a long procession filed out of the camp. At the head went the rude coffin on the shoulders of six surveyors and foremen. Paul Carhart and Tiffany followed, the chief with a prayer book in his hand; and after them came the men. The grave was ready. The laborers and the skilled workmen stood shoulder to shoulder in a wide circle, baring their heads to the sun. Carhart opened the book and slowly turned the pages in a quiet so intense that the rustle of the leaves could be heard by every man there. ”

“ Carhart frowned and gave it up. The “thirty or thirty-five miles” had apparently been the roughest sort of an estimate.
[Pg 117]
Then the sun came up and beat upon them, and the sand began to radiate heat by way of an earnest of the day to follow; and then the wheels sank so deeply that the chief and Young Van tossed their reins to the guide and walked by the wagons to lend a hand now and then at the spokes. All the crazy energy of the evening was gone; men and mules were alike sullen and dispirited. Of the latter, many gave out and fell, and these were cut out and left there to die. ”

“ The drivers took up their reins, and settled themselves for the long journey. Like Carhart’s [Pg 63] men, they were a mixed lot—Mexicans, half-breeds, native Americans of a curiously military stamp, and nondescripts—but good-natured enough; and Flint, believing with Carhart in the value of good cooks, meant to keep them good-natured. One by one the whips cracked; a confusion of English, Spanish, and French cries went up; the mules plunged; the heavy wagons, laden with derricks, timber, tools, camp supplies, and the inevitable pile-driver, groaned forward; and the La Paz Bridge outfit was off. ”

“ Tiffany caught the signal, made his excuses, and walked off with this dusty, inconspicuous man on whose shoulders rested the welfare of the whole Sherman and Western system. He had observed that the young women drew instinctively away from the dingy figure, and his smile was not restrained. He was thinking of his first meeting with Paul Carhart, in Chicago,—it was at the farewell dinner to the Dutch engineers,—and of his distinguished appearance as he rose to speak, and of his delightfully [Pg 141] humorous enumeration of the qualities required in an American engineer. ”

“ It would be a day or so before the young man would be able to resume his work. Then Carhart stepped out, walked part way down the knoll, and looked about him, and became conscious of an unusual stir about the job. Peering out through dusty spectacles, he saw that a party of strangers were coming up the slope toward him.
At the head walked Old Van, in boiled shirt and city clothes, with a tall man in frock coat and top hat whom Carhart recognized as Vice-president Chambers. After them came a party of ladies and one or two young men to whom Tiffany was explaining the methods of construction. ”

“ A good many stories were told, most of them by Tiffany, who had run the gamut of railroading, north, south, east, and west.
“That was a great time we had up at Pittsburgh,” said he, “when I stole the gondola cars,”—he placed the accent on the do,—“best thing I ever did. That was when I was on the Almighty and Great Windy that used to run from Pittsburg up to the New York State line. I was acting as a sort of traffic superintendent, among other things,—we had to do all sorts of work then; no picking and choosing and no watching the clock for us.” ”

“ Ordinarily, Carhart would not have relished undertaking such a hasty job; but in this case there were compensations. When he had first looked over the location maps, in Daniel De Reamer’s New York office, his quiet eyes had danced behind their spectacles; for it promised to be pretty work, in which a man could use his imagination. There was the bridge over the La Paz River, for instance. He should have to send a man out there with a long wagon train of materials, and with orders to have the bridge ready when the track should reach the river. ”