The Boundless

by Kenneth Oppel

  “How do you do, Will?” Unlike the other gentlemen, he approaches Will and shakes his hand. He has strikingly high cheekbones, a warm hue to his skin, and a dark, penetrating gaze.

  “Good, thanks,” murmurs Will.

  “Mr. Dorian here,” says the rail baron, “has taken a great liking to a painting of mine.”

  Mr. Van Horne walks over to the parlor wall where an oil painting hangs, and he smiles at Will. “I saw your drawings, lad. What do you think? Is it a good piece?”

  Will studies it. There’s a house in winter, with several sleighs outside. A blacksmith tends to one of the horse’s hooves.

  “I like it,” he says.

  Mr. Dorian tilts his head. “I’m offering a fine price.”

  “The price is irrelevant,” Van Horne says, laughing. “I won’t be parted from it. She’s my pride and joy. Don’t you have enough pretty baubles in that circus of yours?”

  “Some baubles are prettier than others,” says Mr. Dorian. His voice is deep and carries the faintest hint of an accent. Is it French? Will wonders.

  “Do you work for that circus near the station?” Will asks impulsively. Maybe he knows the girl and can tell him her name.

  “Alas, no.”

  “I heard they have a good wire walker,” Will says, wanting to sound knowledgeable.

  “Is that so? Well, I’m always looking for new talent.”

  To Will’s relief the gentlemen all resume their conversations with one another. He retreats to the very back of the car and sits quietly. He watches and listens. He dares not even take out his sketchbook, in case that might be rude.

  The man called Withers seems to be a photographer, because he and his assistant keep checking through several large cases holding a camera and all sorts of equipment.

  The train shudders and surges higher into the mountains. Will hasn’t seen a single sign of human habitation since Farewell. Often all he can see are the vast pines that grow along the track, but sometimes they thin and he catches a sunlit glimpse of a high bony crag, or a cataract of black water spilling over a cliff. Will jolts when the train steams across a wooden trestle and he peers down to the jagged, churning gorge, hundreds of feet below.

  An attendant comes through and serves a luncheon of cold chicken cutlets, steamed vegetables, and boiled baby potatoes. Van Horne, after taking his meal, points the attendant back to Will, and the fellow grudgingly hands him a plate and napkin. Will sits for a while staring at the food, wondering how he’s supposed to eat it, then realizes his cutlery is wrapped up in the thick napkin.

  Copying how the gentlemen hold their forks and knives, Will tries to eat neatly. The food’s very good—certainly better than the boiled something-or-other last night at Mrs. Chester’s. Some sauce plops onto his vest. He tries to dab it off with his napkin but seems only to spread it, so he rubs it in as hard as he can until it disappears.

  “I like to keep a sketchbook myself,” says Van Horne, sitting down near him. “What do you think of this, eh?”

  In his hands he holds a beautifully bound volume. The paper is so thick and creamy, Will can’t help stroking it. Across two pages are drawings of a machine so extraordinary that it takes him several seconds to figure out what he is looking at.

  “Is it a locomotive?”

  “Indeed.”

  “It can’t be so big, can it?”

  “Mark my words, once she’s built, she’ll ride these tracks. Maybe you’ll ride upon her.”

  “Van Horne,” says Sandford Fleming, “you are hopeless at keeping secrets.”

  “There’s no need to keep this secret,” he replies, winking at Will. “I’m the only one who can build this train, and build it I will. And who knows, maybe one day someone like William here will drive it.”

  “What will you call her, sir?”

  “The Boundless.”

  Laughter rumbles from a gentleman with an enormous white beard. “Building the track nearly bankrupted us ten times over—and the nation with it. I marvel at your appetite for risk.”

  “It’s a keen appetite I have, Smith,” Van Horne replies, “and without it we wouldn’t have finished the railway.”

  “Not to mention blind luck,” says Smith. “Now, who’s up for a game of poker?”

  The carriage suddenly darkens, and Will thinks they’ve entered a tunnel. But when he looks out the windows, he sees dense trees on both sides, so close that their branches scrape and snap against the carriage.

  “Why haven’t these blasted trees been cut back?” Van Horne demands angrily. “I told them last time I was up. It’s not—”

  There’s a loud thump, and Will turns in time to see a dark shape climb swiftly past a window onto the roof. Heavy footsteps sound overhead.

  “Gentlemen, we have an uninvited guest,” says Van Horne, drawing a pistol from his jacket.

  “What is it?” Will asks, his throat tight. “Is it a—”

  “Yes. Head down, keep away from the windows,” Van Horne tells him.

  Will can only stare, petrified, as the other men draw guns. Sandford Fleming takes a rifle from a rack on the wall and loads it. The railway men walk smartly to the windows, slide the glass down, and lean far out. Squinting, they take aim and begin firing.

  The reports are deafening, but Will can still hear the frantic pounding of footfalls overhead. The ceiling beams shudder under the thing’s massive weight.

  Withers the photographer is crouched on the floor, his terrified gaze ricocheting about. His assistant whimpers softly. Mr. Dorian is the only other man without a gun, and he stands calmly in the center of the room with an air of faint amusement on his face.

  “Quickly, gentlemen!” cries Van Horne. “If he gets to the locomotive, he’ll kill our engineer.”

  They reload and redouble their efforts. Gun smoke stings Will’s eyes. Still the footfalls pound against the roof, making their way steadily forward—then pause.

  “Can’t see him anywhere!” hollers one of the gentlemen.

  Mr. Dorian takes the remaining rifle from the rack and walks calmly to the front of the carriage. He stands listening, the color high in his cheeks, and then fires a single shot through the ceiling.

  There’s a massive thump against the roof, then a scratching sound. Will whirls as a brown shape drops past the window. He hurries over and catches just a glimpse of a massive, furred creature crumpled alongside the tracks. He feels hot all through, and his heart’s suddenly hammering. He sits down.

  “Steadies the nerves,” Van Horne says, offering Will a small glass of brandy.

  Will accepts it with a shaking hand and downs it in one fiery gulp.

  “Nearly there,” Van Horne tells him, clapping him on the shoulder. The rail baron looks over at Mr. Dorian. “Well done, sir. You’re a useful fellow.”

  Windows are closed, guns disappear, cigars are relit, and brandy is poured all around. As the train climbs higher, the ride gets rougher. The train jounces over uneven sections of track, screeches around corners. Despite the two stoves in the carriage, it becomes chilly. Staring out at the landscape of granite and forest and snow, Will wonders if he should have stayed back in Farewell.

  After thirty more minutes the locomotive gives a whistle blast and begins to slow.

  “Well, gentlemen,” says Van Horne, rising, “are you ready to make history?”

  When the train stops, Will waits for the gentlemen to get off first. He hopes Van Horne will tell him where to find his father, but the rail baron seems to have forgotten about him. Will is left alone.

  “Off with you, then,” says the attendant with a grimace.

  Will steps off. There is no platform, just gravel. Despite the sun, it’s very cold up here, and the snow is deep on either side of the rail bed. The smell of pine is keen in his nostrils. He fills his chest and starts walking.

 
To the left of the tracks, the land slopes down into sparse forest that ends at an abrupt precipice. From below rises the sound of a swollen river. Up ahead, to the right of the tracks, some of the trees have been cleared for the work camp.

  Wood smoke rises from the chimneys of rickety bunkhouses. Men mill about outside. Will is too shy to call out his father’s name. He supposes he should go over and ask someone but dreads the prospect.

  The company dignitaries are walking up the tracks toward a gathering crowd. Withers the photographer brings up the rear, he and his assistant lurching under the weight of their equipment.

  “William?”

  Will looks over and sees someone walking toward him, not a gentleman but a tall working man in a cap. His face is tanned by wind and sun, and he is leaner than the person Will has drawn and redrawn from memory over the past three years. But when James Everett grins his familiar lopsided grin, he is suddenly and powerfully Will’s father.

  “Will!” he says, and pulls him into a tight hug. Beneath the musty clothing, his father’s arms and chest feel as hard as the granite he’s blasted from the mountains. Will feels completely safe.

  “Mr. Van Horne said you came up in the company car!”

  “He invited me!”

  James Everett shakes his head. “Well, that’s something.”

  “There was a sasquatch on the roof!”

  “I’m not surprised. Where’s your mother?”

  “Waiting back in Farewell.”

  “Good. She knows you came, though?”

  “I sent a message.”

  His father holds him at arm’s length. “You’re a good height. You’ll be taller than me soon. A fine fellow through and through.”

  Will grins, trying to find himself in his father’s face—and sees it in the lopsided grin. Will is built like him, though he has yet to fill out. His red hair is his mother’s, but he has his father’s large hands. His father reminds him of those trees he saw on the train trip from Winnipeg, the ones that thrive on hardship and get stronger and more stubborn.

  “I brought you something,” Will says tentatively, for he’s worried his father might not like the gift, might think it childish. He reaches inside his pocket for the sketchbook, but there’s the sound of a bell being rung.

  “Will you show me after the ceremony?” says his father. “They’re starting in a minute. You’ll want to see this. They’re going to hammer the last spike.”

  The last spike. It’s a phrase Will has read many times in the papers, and his father’s letters—and it has such power that it hangs in the air like the echo of a thunderclap.

  Will leaves the sketchbook inside his pocket. His father leads him toward the growing crowd. Will smiles, enjoying the weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder. Set off a ways from the main work camp is a second. There are no wooden bunkhouses there, only tents and miserable lean-tos, where Chinese men are drinking tea and packing up their tattered bags.

  “Aren’t they coming to the ceremony?” Will asks.

  “Not them,” his father answers quietly. “They’ve got no love for the railway, and I don’t blame them. They had the most dangerous jobs and lost a lot of their countrymen.”

  Then Will sees something that makes him stop and stare. Spiked to the top of a tall pole is a head. Flies churn about the rotted flesh, and for a moment Will thinks it’s human, until he sees the mangy, sun-bleached patches of fur.

  “Sasquatch?” he asks his father.

  James Everett nods. “That one came in the night, killed one of the Chinese blasters, and tried to drag him off.”

  “Why did they do that to its head?”

  “Some of the men think it scares them off. It doesn’t, though. Not since we started shooting them.”

  Will has read all of his father’s letters so many times, he has them nearly memorized. Last year, when the first crews entered the mountains, the Native Canadians warned them of the sasq’ets, the “stick men.” Plenty of the workers thought it was superstitious nonsense. It wasn’t. The young ones came first and were merely a nuisance, filching food from the mess tents, playing with the workers’ tools like comical monkeys. But there was nothing comical about the adults.

  “Come on,” his father says.

  They near the fringes of the crowd. Will’s father jostles him closer to the front. Nobody seems to mind as James Everett passes, for he has a friendly word for everyone, and people say, “Is that your lad?” and “He’s the spitting image!” and “Let him get a good view!” Before long Will finds himself standing not far behind the dignitaries he rode up with. With his top hat Mr. Smith is the tallest, and Will can make out Van Horne, talking to the man with the ferocious beard. Their woolen coats are buttoned snugly against their ample bellies.

  Spread out on either side of the tracks are the workers, like Will’s dad, humbly dressed, some smoking, all looking like they could use a hot bath and a square meal.

  “Gentlemen, are we ready?” asks Withers, bent over his camera.

  Will watches as Van Horne steps forward.

  “This mighty road,” the rail baron cries out, “will connect our new dominion from sea to sea. Men, you’ve all toiled long and hard for this moment, and there’s not one of you who doesn’t have a share in the glory. Be proud of that, for there will never be another job like this in our lifetimes—and you will forever be a part of history!”

  Will finds himself cheering along with the rest.

  “And to complete this great enterprise,” says Van Horne, “Mr. Donald Smith, the president of the CPR, will drive the last spike!”

  Another cheer as Mr. Smith steps forward, holding a silver sledgehammer.

  A weedy-looking railway official approaches with a long, ornate velvet case.

  It seems to Will that every man in the crowd takes a small step toward it. Like a sigh of mountain wind, a collective gasp rises. Will stands tall on his toes as Smith lifts from the case a six-inch rail spike. The dull luster of gold is unmistakable, as is the sparkle of diamonds, set deeply into the side of the spike, spelling out a name he can’t see.

  “Heard it cost more than two hundred thousand dollars,” Will hears a man whisper bitterly behind him. “I could work ten lifetimes, wouldn’t make half that.”

  Will glances back and sees a man about his father’s age, sandy haired, a bit of gray coming into his beard. He has chilly blue eyes. His nose looks like it’s been broken more than once.

  “You ask me, it’s criminal, spending that much on a spike, after we slaved two months without the pay car coming. Bet Van Horne didn’t go without his pay.”

  The man raises his eyebrows challengingly at Will, and Will turns away.

  Quietly Will’s father says, “Van Horne came through for us in the end, Brogan. He kept his bargain.”

  “Let’s just say he got the better end,” Brogan says, and sniffs.

  “Ready when you are, Mr. Smith,” says Withers behind the big camera.

  Donald Smith positions the spike atop the final steel plate and grips the sledgehammer.

  “Everyone still now!” cries out the photographer. “And, Mr. Smith, I’ll need you to hold your pose once you hit the spike.”

  Smith strikes and freezes.

  “And . . . wonderful!” cries the photographer.

  But Smith’s aim was off, and Will sees he has only bent the top of the spike without driving it in properly.

  Van Horne gives a hearty laugh. “Smith, you’ve spent too long behind a desk.”

  “Let me straighten that out for you, sir,” says the assistant, trying in vain to yank out the spike with his hands.

  Van Horne steps forward and pulls it out with one swift tug. He takes the hammer from Smith and with a sharp blow straightens the priceless gold spike against the rail.

  “Do the honors, Van Horne,” says Smith good-n
aturedly. “No one has given more of his life to build this road.”

  “Perhaps.” Van Horne looks about the crowd, and his eyes settle on Will. “But this road is for a new generation that’ll use it long after we’re gone. Lad, would you like to try your hand?”

  Will is aware of every set of eyes in the crowd fixed on him, more intense than the sun’s glare.

  “Go on,” he hears his father whisper, and Will feels his hand upon his back. “You can do it.”

  “Yes, sir!” Will says, so nervous that his voice comes out much louder than expected.

  He steps forward, his legs feeling strangely disconnected from his body.

  He takes the silver sledgehammer Van Horne holds out to him.

  “One hand close to the top,” the rail baron tells him quietly. “Tight grip. Now you’ll want to raise it to your shoulder. Look at the spike the whole time.”

  Will can now see the diamonds set into the spike’s side and the name they spell. He murmurs the word: “Craigellachie.”

  “That’s the name I’m giving this place,” says Van Horne. “Now strike!”

  Will tenses his muscles and strikes.

  He doesn’t even know if he’s been successful until he hears the cheer rise up from the crowd.

  “Well done, lad!” Van Horne cries. “The last spike!”

  “You finished the railway, Will!” his father says, slapping him on the back.

  “All aboard for the Pacific!” shouts Donald Smith.

  From down the tracks the company locomotive blasts its whistle. Men take out their pistols and begin firing in the air. The shots echo between the snow-laden slopes, one great firework crackle.

  When the shooting subsides, the rumble is so low that it is barely audible, but Will can hear it, and he looks at his father in alarm. James Everett is shielding his eyes and staring at the summit. Will sees a patch of perfect snow pucker and slip raggedly away from the pack. A dreamy white haze rises like sea spume as it plows a growing crest before it.

  “Avalanche!” James Everett bellows, pointing. “Avalanche!”

  All is chaos as men run for cover, looking up at the plunging snow, trying to guess where it will hit. There are cries of “Not that way!” and “Climb a tree!” and “Stick close to the rock face!” Withers seizes his camera and tripod and pelts after the dignitaries toward the locomotive.