The driver’s shout would begin with a “Whoa up!” Then the foreman shouted, “Rail,” and the men would slide a rail from the car. The foreman shouted, “Down!” And it was dropped into place with a heavy clang. The car would roll forward, and after it came the bolters, dropping a clamp at each rail-joint, and two spikes at each tie. Clamps were then bolted to the rails, joining them together; and then came the spikers with their heavy sledges, driving the spikes into the ties and fixing the rails into place. The wonderful rhythm of their hammers was a thing to hear. “Whoa up!. .. Rail! … Down! … Whoa up! .. . Rail! … Down! …” Several men glanced around as Jethro Stuart walked his pack horses up to the right-of-way, and their eyes went to the burdens the horses bore. Slowly the pace of the workmen dwindled and came to a stop.
“Where’d you find ‘em?” the foreman asked.
“ ‘Bout a mile over yonder.”
“Know that one,” one of the track-layers said, indicating the nearest of the dead men. “He was a surveyor. Met him in California. Name’s Prescott … Sam Prescott.”
The eyes of the men strayed from the bodies to look apprehensively toward the silent hills. There had been rumors of Indian trouble, but the two dead men were a fact.
Anger was never far from Mike King; it was a factor in his success and in the speed with which the railroad was moving westward. He was a hard-muscled young man with bold, hard eyes, who habitually wore a business suit. Now, seeing work halted and the men grouped around the horses, his anger blazed up. Followed by a harried young man with a briefcase, he started for the group. The foreman looked up, started to see King bearing down upon him, but before he could open his mouth to get the men back on the job, King pointed a stiff finger at him. “You were foreman here. Now you’re a track-layer, or you’re fired—you take your choice. And if you’re fired you get back to the settlements in your own way.”
Abruptly, he turned his back on the foreman, dismissing him from his mind. “You … !” He indicated a stocky man with hard lines graven into his face. “You’re the foreman until I can find somebody better. Get these men to work!” “Yes, sir!” The new foreman turned sharply around. “All right, men! Roll ‘em!” With a quick gesture he started the one horse that drew the rail car, and then yelled, “Whoa up! … Rail! … Down!”
Mike turned on Stuart. “Your name is Jethro Stuart?”
“It is.”
“Stuart, you were hired to hunt buffalo to feed these men, not to stop their work. Why’d you bring those bodies down here?”
“They’re railroaders. I thought somebody on the railroad might be interested.” “I am the railroad,” King replied, “and I am not interested! You should have buried them where you found them and tracked down the Indians who did it.” “Like you said, Mr. King”—Jethro’s eyes were cool—“I was hired to hunt. I wasn’t hired to dig graves or fight Indians. Anyway”—he indicated the workmen—“they’re mostly old soldiers. I wouldn’t expect a couple of dead men to bother ‘em much.” “I don’t want anything in their thick skulls but work—you understand? Now you get rid of those bodies and start tracking down those Indians while I telegraph the army.”
Abruptly, King turned away.
Jethro Stuart had not moved. Lazily, he took out a plug of tobacco and bit off a small fragment. “You keep forgettin’, Mr. King, my job’s to hunt game.” King wheeled in his tracks. “Your job was to hunt. Go to the paymaster and draw your time.”
Unconcerned, Jethro turned his back on King and began to unfasten the lashings on the bodies. “Be interested to know, Mr. King—who’s going to hunt your meat? You?”
The contempt in Stuart’s voice infuriated King, but his anger was stifled by the realization that he could not, for the time being, replace Jethro. Without the hunter, there would be no fresh meat for the laborers; and without meat, he would soon have no crew. His anger, his feelings about Jethro, these meant nothing when in the balance against the progress of the railroad. “All right!” He waved an impatient hand. “Forget what I said. But I want you to bring in buffalo meat, not dead men!”
Turning away, he said to his secretary, “Make a note to replace that man at the first opportunity.”
Behind him something thumped upon the ground and, glancing back, King saw Stuart had dumped the two bodies right where he stood. Anger flooded him again and he started to shout, then clamped his lips, staring after Stuart, his fury bitter in his mouth. Behind him the spikers swung their sledges in a steady rhythm … it had a lovely sound. Slowly, his hot burst of rage subsided.
“Mr. King,” his secretary said, “those bodies—?” “Leave ‘em for the army. If they won’t protect us, they can at least bury the dead.”
They called it the End of the Track, and the name was about as accurate as could be. Only one might have been better—the End of the Line, and for many that was what it was.
Tonight it was here; last night it had been thirty miles away. Tomorrow night would be the last on this site, and then it would move along. If they were lucky they might spend a week in one spot … such times were rare with Mike King on the job. At the End of the Track there was but one law—the Railroad. And at the End of the Track, or anywhere along the six hundred miles of steel, Mike King was the Railroad.
It was a town that moved with the track, and could be taken down in less than an hour—a town without roots, populated by men without roots, and by women—with one exception—of just one kind.
A dozen large tents and fifty small ones—that was the town at the End of the Track, and nowhere in so small a space had there ever been concentrated so large a percentage of vice. You could choose your game, and your brand of whiskey. You bought rot-gut whiskey if you didn’t care. If you did care, there was good whiskey; there was even champagne and expensive wine. You could choose your kind of woman. All nationalities and colors were there, schooled in every sin, and prepared to invent a few new ones at the customer’s discretion. It was rough, bawdy, brutal.
The bulk of the men who inhabited the tent city by night were the track-layers, spikers, tie-cutters, and teamsters who were building the road. But there were also the men and women who traveled to entertain and serve them. The tracklayers and those who went before them were making money, and they wanted to spend it. Mike King favored the spending, because a man who was broke was a man who had to stay on the job. Labor at the End of the Track was difficult to get, and many a laborer hesitated to risk the Indians who lurked just beyond the hills. Scattered among the inhabitants of the tent city was a liberal sprinkling of blue, for the railroad would not and could not advance even a step without protection from the army. And Lieutenant Zeb Rawlings was in command. Zeb Rawlings came out of his tent into the night and stood there with the cool wind on his face. He removed his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, and when he looked around, he looked at the hills.
He had never thought of returning East, although he continued a sporadic correspondence with Jeremiah, who was prospering on the farm. He knew, as Jeremiah had known, that the West was for him. Here he belonged, and nowhere else.
He looked at the hills, and knew that the Indians were out there and, night or day, they were watching. How long they would be content to watch, he did not know, except that it would not be forever. A time would come, and then it would be up to him and his blue-coated soldiers.
That he would be outnumbered he took for granted. Three years of Indian fighting had taught him he could handle numbers if he could avoid surprise. Those three years had served to impress him anew with what he had learned long ago from the tales of his father—that as a fighting man the Indian was rarely equaled. He walked slowly along the “street” toward the gambling tents, listening to the music with only a small part of his attention. The three frontier years had left a mark upon him that was deeper than the burns of sun and wind. He had grown increasingly sparing of words, increasingly watchful. Long since, he had learned to listen with part of his mind for the night around him, to hear the slightest sound. He would never be as good at that as Linus had been, for Linus had lived longer in Indian country, and knew it better.