I sent a telegram from Green River, our breakfast stop, grateful for the twin telegraph lines shadowing the rails. “Trip going well,” I wrote on the dispatch slip, resisting adding, “Wish you were here.”
A voice startled me on the way out. “Sendin’ out a story?”
He was leaning against the wall, almost hidden behind the telegraph-office door. I stepped from the doorway and saw that he was sweating in the morning heat. The pupils of his eyes were dilated, his breathing labored.
“Just a message home,” I said. “You okay?”
He eyed me as though weighing my words. I felt the menace again.
“Morphine,” he said. “Always brings a sweat. Took a ball near my lung in the war.”
That was a long time, I thought, to be using so dangerous a painkiller. At that moment the man’s companion came around the corner.
“C’mon, Dingus,” he said, ignoring me as he took the pale man’s arm.
I thrust my hand out. “I'm Sam Fowler.”
The older man paid no attention. The one called Dingus said, “J. T. Jackson, Louisville. This here’s Colbourn, my partner.” He said the names carefully, glancing back over his shoulder as he moved away.
What’s with those two? I wondered.
We passed Cathedral Rock, where workers were replacing wooden bridge sections. All along the UP gangs were visible now—young and Irish mostly, dirty and bearded in dungarees and slouch hats, waving to us when their bosses weren’t looking—replacing iron-capped wood rails, converting fueling stations to coal, reworking grades.
Rolling across the wastelands, I wondered if we would all be mummified by the heat and dust. At noon we stopped at Wasatch Station in the Utah Territory. Passengers craned their necks to spot Mormons, those goatsy old devils with harems of compliant wives. At the What Cheer Eating House we ate biscuits that must have been made with alkali.
We climbed through the rugged gorges of Echo and Weber canyons, staring at thrusts of red sandstone towering hundreds of feet above—
Devil’s Gate, Devil’s Slide, Witches’ Rock—as we passed along ledges barely wide enough for the tracks.
The Weber River was spanned by a reconstructed bridge. The original had washed away. This one swayed alarmingly as the engineer stopped in midspan so we could look straight down into a chasm where the river flowed between rock walls three thousand feet high.
“This is worse than the circus high-wire act,” Johnny said, looking away.
“Did you do that too?”
“Once.”
In late afternoon we pulled out of Ogden. For the next fifty miles another set of tracks ran parallel to ours. In the frantic cross-country race for subsidies, the competing railroads had shot past each other. Belligerent Union Pacific gangs had attacked the Chinese Central Pacific workers with stones and bullets. Promontory had been selected as a temporary linking point—there the golden spike was duly driven, sparking a national celebration—but the permanent division was still in negotiation, with Ogden the strongest contender.
We reached Promontory an hour before sunset. At first glance it didn’t seem different from other desert stations. We wrestled for our luggage and lined up at the ticket windows, only to learn that no connecting Central Pacific train departed until the next morning. Curses, threats, and offers of quick cash made no impression. We were all stranded in Promontory for the night.
“This whole place is on the wrong side of the tracks,” Johnny commented; looking around.
Which about said it all. To our left squatted sun-bleached express buildings. In the distance a United States flag marked the site of the golden spike ceremony. To our right stretched a single line of canvas-topped structures with crude signs.
“Try your luck, gents?” Shills lounged in the doorways of faro and poker establishments. “Two dollars?”
“Could try me for that,” a woman with orange hair said. “Wouldn’t take much luck neither.” After we passed she snorted. “Them two ain’t likely stiff for anything!”
It got a laugh from men who eyed us like wolves inspecting the latest sheep shipment. Among them were knots of the ruggedest, most predatory-looking whores I’d ever seen.
After checking out several lodging shanties we decided on Sunny-side House, like the rest a flophouse where for steep prices you rented a cot in a canvas-topped room shared by fifteen others; but unlike the others it didn’t double as a gambling house, and it promised “guaranteed protection” of luggage and valuables.
Since there was little else to do we ambled back up the street. “This is just an overgrown gambling hell,” Johnny said, pointing at three-card monte and craps tables in front of doorways—convenient for fleecing travelers on a few minutes’ stopover. Even our conductor, not overly solicitous of our welfare, had dropped hints that Promontory’s whiskey was watered—or worse—and the whores who swarmed to greet each train were diseased.
In front of the Switch Key Saloon we ran into a man from our car who shamefacedly confessed losing forty dollars in less than fifteen minutes. We glanced inside and saw poker and faro games in full swing. Men clustered in the street around tables and lurched through doorways signed REFRESHMENTS. A few wore expensive clothes, but most were in typical plains garb: broad-brimmed hats with felt bands, wide leather belts holding guns and knives, thigh-length coats, pant-legs tucked inside high boots.
They were discharged railroad workers, miners, livestockmen; many were drifters now, dirty, ill-smelling and lice-ridden—I saw one whose eyebrows crawled. The sort who got their jollies watching dogs rip each other apart—which happened now in the street, prompting a rash of betting on which animal would survive.
Guns fired every few seconds and yelling was constant. I eyed the formidable weapons around us, thinking my derringer would intimidate few here. At least we didn’t need to pretend Johnny was my servant. If a man had money he was welcome in all establishments, regardless of race. Everyone was ripped off equally.
“Let’s get a drink,” said Johnny. “I’m dryer’n dust.”
We stood before a shanty modestly
