The Journey of Josephine Cain

by Nancy Moser

He hesitated a slightest moment. “He lives in New York.”

  She’d had the impression they both were alive. But when he didn’t elaborate, she let it go. “Come, sit down.”

  Lewis avoided the ladies’ chairs and moved to the end of the sofa. He waited until Josephine had taken a seat at the other end.

  “Well then,” he said.

  “It is nice to see you,” she said.

  “I’m surprised to hear you say that after the abominable way I treated you at the dinner last night, and afterward.”

  “It’s all right.”

  He reached for her hand. “No, it isn’t. I can blame nerves or frustration or any number of things, but nothing gives me the right to treat you in any way but with the highest respect. For I do respect you, Josephine. I do prize you highly.” He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and removed a small drawstring bag. “This is for you.”

  He handed her the velvet bag, which was little larger than her palm. It felt a bit weighty, though not overly so. “You did not need to do this.”

  “I wanted to. Open it.”

  She emptied the contents into her hand, then ooohed. “It’s beautiful,” she said, picking up the bracelet of gold chain. At the clasp there was a single red stone, hanging as a teardrop.

  “It’s a ruby. Or at least that’s what my mother always said it was. I’m afraid I don’t know a gemstone from a piece of glass.”

  She held it to the light. It certainly looked real. And if it was his mother’s? That made it extra-special. “Help me on with it.”

  He fastened the clasp with an expertise unusual for a man. She turned her wrist this way and that, loving the movement of the teardrop. “Thank you ever so much. I am honored that you trust me with something of your mother’s.”

  Lewis stopped her movement with his hand, and drew her hand to his lips, where he offered the lightest of kisses. “Thank you, Josephine, for being the woman I can never deserve.”

  The past was quickly forgotten, and Josephine’s thoughts focused on the future.

  Her future with Lewis.

  For the second time that day, the train slowed to a stop. The first time they had stopped at Fremont, Nebraska, where supplies had been cached all winter.

  “What’re we stopping for now?” Raleigh asked.

  Hudson carefully got to his knees atop the railcar and looked west. He saw a line of graded land and ties stretching forward—ties waiting for rails. “It’s the end of the line, men! We’re here!”

  When they climbed down he wasn’t sure if what surrounded him was a foreign netherland or hell. For they had indeed come to the end of the track. What happened next was a muddle of confusion and chaos. The men tumbled out of the boxcars like fleas jumping off a dog. No one knew where to go. They had been told what their jobs would be, but none of them had laid any actual track. Rumor was that up until now, when no one knew exactly what to do, the men before them were lucky to lay a half mile a day. Now with the new reinforcements and the general’s organization, the bosses expected nearer to two.

  Two miles. It didn’t sound like much, but when he broke it down to laying one rail at a time, hitting one spike at a time . . . Hudson could feel his muscles aching already.

  The men wandered around until hope stepped forward. General Cain stood atop a crate and directed them this way and that.

  “Don’t we get no time to check out the town, to take it all in?” Raleigh asked his brother.

  “Guess not.”

  All was Columbus, Nebraska, an odd assortment of buildings and tents, scattered on either side of the track. Crude signs announced their purpose: Saloon, Railway Office, Sawmill, Store.

  But there wasn’t time to explore, as the general and Boss gave directions. Everyone had a purpose. Months before, another Union general, General Grenville Dodge, had scoped out the best route. His surveyors had marked the way, and graders smoothed the land, while other crews laid the wood ties like a ladder stretching toward tomorrow. Now it was the tracklayers’ turn. Hudson had heard it was General Cain who’d come up with the idea of giving each group of men a specialized job.

  Two generals who were used to getting men to do what needed to be done. Somebody was mighty smart putting them in charge.

  Raleigh and Hudson were handed their spike mauls. Raleigh ran a hand along the foot-long head with two tapered ends. “I bet we’ll go through a few of these before we meet up with the Central Pacific.”

  Hudson weighed it in his hands. “It’s not so heavy, about the same weight as a sledgehammer—ten, twelve pounds?”

  “Not heavy just holding it, but swinging it from dawn to dusk?” Raleigh squeezed Hudson’s biceps. “You may even get yourself some real muscles.”

  Hudson could’ve argued with him, saying something about Raleigh’s build, but the truth was, his little brother already had the physique of a spiker. He seemed to thrive on physical labor.

  Hudson was fine with labor, but he preferred a mix of mental and physical. He enjoyed the chance to plan and organize, to think of what things could be.

  But there was no call for thinkers here. Though they were all men, they were hired to work like machines. Or animals. He only hoped they would become neither.

  “Here we go,” Raleigh said as he headed to the end of the line. “Another day, another dollar.”

  “Three dollars,” Hudson corrected. “Come on. Let’s do this.”

  Within half an hour, the work began in earnest. A horse-drawn lorry car filled with iron approached the end of the line. Four men removed each rail and trotted forward, laying it on the ties. When the lorry was empty, a man unhitched it from the horse, and it was pushed off the rails, into the ditch, making room for another one to move forward.

  The men who’d been assigned to be “bolters” and “gaugers” stepped forward. The first group fastened the rail sections together, the second aligned them.

  Then it was Hudson’s turn. As a “spiker,” he hammered the rails into place. The feel of the heavy maul racing through the air and hitting the spike made his muscles ring, as if the sound itself became physical. The music of metal hitting metal sounded like an anvil chorus.

  “Come on, men,” the general yelled. “Spikers, keep the handle horizontal or you’ll bend the spike and ruin the head. Three strokes to a spike, ten spikes to a rail, four hundred rails to a mile that runs over three thousand ties. It should only take you thirty seconds for each section. In twelve hours we should lay three hundred tons of rail.”

  One of the rail layers yelled out, “Yer making me tired just listening to you, General.”

  Hudson saw two young boys run past, dumping the iron spikes on the ground on either side of the track. They were in constant motion, dumping and running back for more. The way everybody was working together made Hudson want to move faster.

  But by the end of the day, the music of the anvil chorus had turned into a dirge of moans. Two hundred men sat shoulder to shoulder on the benches in one of the dining cars, their shoulders slumped, their heads hanging heavy. A hunk of meat and a pile of cubed potatoes lay on each plate, and each plate was nailed to the table.

  “I can’t even pick up my fork,” Raleigh complained as he flexed his raw fingers.

  “It’s my arms that are a’hurting,” said another man, who’d had to carry the rails into place with tongs.

  “Shoulders,” was all Hudson could manage. He focused on the meat. He’d never been so hungry, because he’d never worked so hard. Back at the mill they worked long days, and though it also involved repetitive movement, it wasn’t backbreaking work. Tedious and boring, but not backbreaking.

  A man across the table pointed his fork at Hudson’s plate. “You want yer potatoes?”

  “I believe I do.” He stabbed a chunk to claim them.

  “Did you even chew, Oscar?” Raleigh asked the man.

  “I chewed,” the man said. “But I need more.”

  Just then a kitchen worker came into the car carrying a platter a
nd bowl.

  Second helpings were had by all.

  “Come on, Hudson. There’s whiskey to be had.”

  Hudson settled in the empty dining car with his paper and pencil. “I need to write to Sarah Ann.”

  Raleigh shook his head. “You’re one strange man, choosing letter-writing over whiskey.”

  “So be it. Don’t you think you should write Mum and Da?”

  “You say my howdys for me.”

  Hudson looked up at his brother, his little brother who was a man. “Behave yourself, all right?”

  “I most certainly will not.” Raleigh winked and hurried away, joining the throng of men who were finding solace in the saloons of Columbus.

  Sarah Ann. She was Hudson’s solace.

  He smoothed the page and wrote the date and salutation: June 4, 1866. My dearest Sarah Ann . . .

  But then he hesitated. What should he tell her? If he was truthful about the grueling work, she’d worry. So he looked out the window and wrote about that.

  The Nebraska plains go on forever, a softly undulating tan spotted with low-growing grasses and fields of wildflowers, bowing in the breeze. The sky is a bowl of blue, rimming the land on all sides. Periodically we pass piles of construction debris, proof that the line is stretching out before us, waiting for the rails.

  He read it over, nodding. She’d like to hear about wildflowers. Back home she was so proud of the zinnias and asters that she’d planted in a rickety window box.

  General Cain says we’ve reached the 100-mile mark. That’s a nice round number, but it’s more important than that. Congress gave us a deadline. We needed to measure 100 miles of track by July 1—with watering facilities, fuel facilities, and sidetracks, all good enough to have passenger and freight run out of Omaha—or the Union Pacific would lose its charter. And we’ve made it. I’m hoping my back and shoulders hold out for the next hundred miles.

  He hadn’t meant to mention his aches and pains and considered crossing it out. But he left it. It didn’t hurt to have her know how hard he was working.

  For her.

  Chapter Six

  “Le Grand Isle?” Raleigh asked, as the track they laid reached an existing town that was just sitting on the prairie, waiting for them to arrive.

  “That’s what some French fur trader called it seventy years ago. We’re supposed to call it Grand Island,” Hudson said.

  Oscar added, “It’s a forty-mile island in the Platte River.”

  Hudson liked the sounds of that. He missed water. Pittsburgh was built on a river. “I wouldn’t mind doing a bit o’ fishing at the end of the day.”

  Another worker shook his head. “We all need to be careful with that river. It’s not like most. I’ve heard it said that it’s two miles wide and will have six inches of water sitting over six feet of dangerous sand. It’s too thin to walk on, too thick to drink, too shallow to put a boat on, too deep for safe fording, too yellow to wash in, and too pale to paint with.”

  Hudson laughed. “Sounds pretty useless—as rivers go.”

  “Which makes me wonder why we’re following it all the way to Wyoming.”

  Hudson shrugged. But he’d heard a reason. “It’s a path. Along with the wagon ruts of the Mormons who’ve come before. When you have hundreds of miles of open land, some path is better than starting out from noth—”

  “Indians!”

  Every eye looked to the south. There, near the river, was a band of more than a dozen Indians on horses.

  “Guns! Get the rifles!”

  Workers scrambled back into the bunk cars where a cache of rifles was stored by the ceiling. Within seconds a line of men formed from inside the car to out, handing the guns down the line into eager hands.

  Some men climbed on top of the rail cars, lying low with guns pointed. Every man put the train between them and the Indians.

  Someone up top yelled out, “General! Come back!”

  Hudson and Raleigh hopped over the coupler between two cars, needing to see.

  General Cain was riding out to meet the Indians. “What is he doing?” Hudson asked.

  Raleigh crossed himself, mumbling a prayer. “He’s one brave man.”

  Or stupid.

  As one moment moved into the next, it became apparent that these Indians were not going to attack. And even more surprising was the fact that the general seemed to know the lead man. They spoke back and forth, and . . .

  They shook hands.

  Then they all rode toward the end of the line, toward the place where Hudson and the others would be laying track.

  When General Cain turned around and saw the workers and the guns, he raised a hand. “At ease, gentlemen. Spotted Tail is a friend. He and his men would like to see how we lay track.”

  “Well, I’ll be,” Raleigh said.

  Hudson watched the Indians surround the track on their horses. “They’ve told us not all the Indians are dangerous. The Pawnee are friendly, and the Sioux. It’s the Cheyenne we have to worry about. And the hotheads in every tribe.”

  “How can we tell them apart?” Raleigh asked.

  “I have no idea,” Hudson said. “But I think we’ll have to learn.”

  Hudson tried not to stare at the Indians, but as this was his first look . . .

  They were darker skinned than all but the Negros, and he let a quick question enter his brain: was that because they were outside all the time? Their hair was coal-black and straight as a horse’s tail, and not one had any facial hair—or hair on their chests. Most were without shirts, and their muscles were impressive. The clothing that covered them from waist to feet was more of a legging than a true pair of pants, and they wore soft shoes without hard soles. He hoped none of them stepped on a stray spike, lest their pain cause some commotion.

  He didn’t have time to ponder more, as the general started the rail-laying demonstration. When it was Hudson’s turn to hit the spikes, he did his duty. It only took him two hits to get the spike in, and it occurred to him he was showing off.

  No one would blame him. Showing strength to Indians was a good thing, wasn’t it?

  Yet was it wise to show these Indians how track was put in? Would they use the knowledge against the railroad and tear it up?

  Such questions were not his to ask. He’d trusted the general with his life before; he would do so now.

  A length of rail laid, the general invited the Indians to see a bunk car. Spotting Hudson, General Cain said, “Show them inside.”

  Hudson lost his breath for a moment but followed orders, getting in the car and even helping the Indians step up into it.

  One Indian paused a moment after Hudson helped him in, looking at him eye-to-eye. His eyes were nearly as black as his hair, which hung down his back. He had a scar on his cheek. A ripple of fear sped through Hudson’s gut. “Welcome,” he said, then felt stupid for it. For the Indians weren’t welcome. If he had his way, they’d never have gotten close to the train, much less come inside a car.

  And did they speak English? He certainly didn’t speak their language. “This is where we sleep,” he said to the group as they stood between the bunks.

  One Indian seemed to understand, for he immediately translated. A few of the Indians lay on the mattresses, marveling at the pillows, making comments to each other. A few others held their noses. The stench left behind by hundreds of working men was hard to take.

  But then one of them looked upward and pointed to a goodly number of rifles stacked horizontally along the roof. Their joviality left them, and they slid off the bunks. They whispered to each other, and one Indian put his hand out the window, measuring the thickness of the car’s wall. As he looked to another, Hudson could imagine him saying, “I wonder if a bullet could go through the walls.” Or an arrow shot from the other side?

  He quickly led them outside. Was their motive friendship—or were they on a scouting mission?

  “Now the butcher’s and baker’s cars, Maguire,” the general said.

  Again,
Hudson wasn’t sure it was wise to show them the store of meat and food supplies. But he did as he was told.

  The Indian interpreter spoke for the group when he said, “Much food. Hard winter.”

  Hudson could only nod. He knew that it had been a hard winter on the plains. Were the Indians hungry?

  By now there was a crowd of hundreds of workers watching the Indians step out of the food cars. One of them said, “Let’s see how accurate they can shoot their arrows.”

  Hudson thought that was a horrible idea, but other men hopped to, and soon there was a shovel placed in the ground, and the Indians were steered to a point fifty feet away.

  The general spoke to Spotted Tail through the interpreter. Then Spotted Tail instructed each brave to try to shoot through the shovel’s handle. The first arrow sliced through the air and went through the hole, to the appreciative shouts of the workers.

  Then another.

  And another.

  “They’re good,” Raleigh whispered.

  “Too good,” Hudson said.

  Others nodded.

  As the show continued, the encouraging shouts dimmed as every arrow was successful. Hudson could feel the nerves of the workers tighten, for in proving their accuracy, the Indians were also proving that if their mark was a railroad worker, they wouldn’t miss.

  Finally, the seventeenth Indian shot his arrow—and it hit the handle, knocking the shovel down. He looked to the ground, disgraced. But Hudson and the workers were relieved, and he heard more than one mumble of “Good” and “It’s about time.”

  “I don’t think it’s wise to give them confidence,” he said.

  “It’s just a game,” Oscar said.

  Hudson was not alone in shaking his head. “This may look like a game, but I assure you, it’s not.”

  “Let’s have a race!” someone yelled. “Ponies against our locomotive!”

  A cry of assent rose up. Hudson hated the idea. This day couldn’t end soon enough.

  He saw the Indians mount their ponies and get in a line. They seemed eager for the race.

  Hudson looked upon the scene, feeling wary. Then he heard the general’s voice from near the cab of the locomotive.