“Mr. Hawke?”
The sound of gunfire faded away, replaced by the sound of a train in motion.
“Mr. Hawke?”
Hawke was fully awake now, and already this dream of the hell of Gettysburg, like many before it, was mercifully slipping from his memory. He could feel the gentle sway of the train in motion, and when he pushed his hat up and looked through the window, he saw that they were well out of the city. They were passing a farm, and on the other side of the field he saw a man walking behind a mule and plow.
“Mr. Hawke.”
The tone grew more insistent.
Hawke turned to see who was addressing him and saw a man wearing a blue uniform jacket and billed cap.
“Yes?” Hawke replied
“My name is McCutcheon, Mr. Hawke. I am the conductor. If you would come with me, I’ll show you to the palace car where you will be playing.”
“All right,” Hawke said.
“I don’t know what you have been told as to what your duties are,” the conductor said, “but let me go over my rules with you.”
“Your rules?”
“Yes, Mr. Hawke, my rules. As the conductor of this train, I am the man in charge, the captain, so to speak, of this ship. Do you have a problem with that?”
“No problem.”
“Very good. First of all, I shall expect absolute courtesy to all the passengers. Some may get a little out of hand from time to time, but if they do, I want you to remember that we are here to serve them.
“Secondly, I will require you to be present in the palace car until midnight, every night, until we have completed our journey. You will be allowed one hour off for your meals, and you may take your meals in the dining car.”
Hawke was following the conductor now, and as they passed between the cars, it was necessary to step across a gap of some two feet from the platform of one car to the platform of the next. Looking down through the gap, Hawke could see the ballast and railroad ties slipping by rapidly. Also, out here there was a breath of hot wind and the smell of smoke.
With the train in motion, there was a great deal of independent movement in the sway and roll of the individual cars, though they were connected. Because of that, it was not possible to step from one car to the next without paying attention to what you were doing. Despite the conductor’s haughty attitude, Hawke had to give him grudging respect for the ease with which he negotiated the transit from car to car.
As they passed through one of the parlor cars, Hawke saw Jay Dupree and Libby St. Cyr.
“Well, we meet again, I see,” Libby said. “Are you going to play now?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ll be in to listen, shortly.”
When they stepped onto the rear platform of this car, McCutcheon held up his hand to stop Hawke.
“Another thing,” he said. “There is to be absolutely no fraternization between employees of Union Pacific and passengers.”
When Jason White entered Bailey McPherson’s office in Green River, he was carrying a large, rolled-up document.
“Miss McPherson, I have the preliminary surveys here, if you would like to see them.”
“Yes, of course I want to see them,” Bailey said. “Spread your map out here on the table.”
Jason unrolled the map, and Bailey began finding ways to hold down the corners. She put an ink bottle on one corner, a book on a second corner, and a lantern on the third. When the fourth corner attempted to roll up, she looked at Dancer.
“Ethan, put your gun on that corner,” she said.
Dancer hesitated a moment, then took his gun from the holster and put it where she directed.
“Now, show me the route,” she said to Jason.
He used his finger to trace along the drawn railroad tracks.
“We will follow the Green River northwest until we reach the conflux of the Green and the Big Sandy. We turn north along the Big Sandy until we reach the Little Sandy River. We will follow the Little Sandy almost due north until we arrive at its terminus at South Pass.”
“And the entire route is along the rivers?” Bailey asked.
“Yes. Of course, you do realize, don’t you, that by routing your railroad this way, instead of going straight to South Pass, you are increasing the length by some thirty miles. That’s almost half again what a straight route would be.”
“Yes, I know that,” Bailey said.
“What will we tell the railroad commission? They will question why you aren’t going by the shortest route.”
“You don’t worry about that,” Bailey said. “Addison has already taken care of it. All you need to do now is submit the surveys for compensation. According to the Railroad Land Grant Act of 1862, we are entitled to a four- hundred-foot right of way, and ten square miles of property for every one mile of route.”
“Good Lord! That gives you a five-mile-wide swath of land from here to the Sweetwater!” Jason did some quick figuring. “That’s over a quarter of a million acres!”
“A quarter of a million acres of the best range land in the entire territory,” Bailey said. “With sweet water and green grass.”
“That’s a lot of land.”
“Yes, it is. It challenges Northumbria in size.” Bailey looked up with shining, beady eyes. “And, if I play my cards right, I’ll own Northumbria as well.”
Hawke had been on the train for two days, playing the piano in the palace car. Dupree and the three women with him—Libby, Lulu, and Sue—were his most faithful listeners. The women were young, attractive, and very flirtatious. If Hawke had had any question as to the purpose of Dupree’s social club, spending some time around these women answered it for him.
The first night out, after departing Chicago, Hawke played mostly classical music. But as the train got farther west and picked up new passengers, the demographics of his audience changed. Mechanics, farmhands, and ultimately cowboys now outnumbered the wealthy eastern businessmen by a substantial number, and their music
