Railroad

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Coolish morning, Mr E,’ said Bilton. ‘What’s it to be?’ Collis, who hadn’t yet eaten breakfast, looked up at the blackboard behind the counter and ordered a plateful of sausage and fried apples and a pint of black coffee. Then he went over to Theodore’s table and pulled out a chair.

  ‘You seem a little out of place here in Sacramento, if you don’t mind my saying so,’ said Theodore.

  ‘I don’t mind. You’re an East Coast man yourself, aren’t you?’

  Theodore nodded. ‘Raised in Bridgeport, Connecticut, as a matter of fact. But when you’re a railroad engineer, you don’t ever have a place you can truly call home. Your home is where the tracks are.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought there was much work for a railroad engineer around these parts, not at the moment.’

  ‘There isn’t. After the gold mines at Folsom gave out, the directors of the Sacramento Valley suspended all their construction. But they’re short-sighted, like everyone else in California. They don’t understand the implications of building a road across the Sierras, or if they do, they’re afraid of them.’

  Collis picked up the salt cellar and looked at the tiny distorted reflection of his own face in the shiny top. ‘You really believe it’s possible?’ he asked Theodore.

  Theodore nodded. ‘It’s not only possible, it’s urgent. Economically urgent, socially urgent, and politically urgent. Let me tell you something. Three years ago, the Secretary of War recommended to Congress that a transcontinental road should be built along the Southern Trail. It’s madness, of course. The Southern Trail goes across country so desolate that Kit Carson says a wolf couldn’t make his living off of it. Not only that, the Southern Trail actually dips below the Mexican border, and the Southern politicians had to cook up a scheme to buy land from Mexico to give the railroad a right of way. But it’s what they desperately need, of course – a Southern-route railroad. The future of the South’s economy depends on it. And that’s why Jeff Davis, our unbiased and impartial Secretary of War, who also happens to have all his wealth tied up in his Mississippi plantation, has been so enthusiastic about supporting it.’

  Collis sat back in his chair as Bilton laid a heaped-up plate of spicy sausage and apple in front of him, with sourdough bread, fresh creamery butter, and a chipped enamel mug brimming with black coffee. He dug in with his fork as Theodore watched him. Theodore looked like the kind of man who could admire food, even feel like eating it sometimes, but whose appetite was usually killed by what went on in his head.

  ‘Davis has ordered a complete reconnaissance of the Southern Trail,’ said Theodore. ‘Flora, fauna, weather, natural resources, you name it. It will probably take years. But even if you leave aside the politics, even if you leave aside the fact that a Southern-route railroad will perpetuate slavery and give the South an economic bond with California that could isolate the North, Davis is completely wrong-headed. I’m a railroad surveyor and engineer, Mr Edmonds, and I know what’s needed. I built the Niagara Gorge Railroad before I was twenty-eight years old, and I worked for years for the Erie Railroad at Buffalo. What’s needed is a central, direct railroad that’s comparatively cheap to construct, and that will cross the Rockies and the Sierras at susceptible points. What’s needed is a railroad that will actually work.’

  Collis wiped his mouth with his napkin and took a swallow of hot coffee. A fly settled on the rim of his plate, and he brushed it away. It twiddled around and then came back again. ‘Can you find a way over the Sierra Nevada?’

  Theodore Jones lowered his head and watched the bubbles on the surface of his chocolate slowly circling. Then he looked up again. ‘I haven’t found the ideal way yet. There’s the Donner Pass, the old emigrant trace where all those poor people starved to death in ’forty-six, but that’s pretty steep. Too steep, probably. There may be other ways. I’m sure there are other ways. But it takes months to survey those mountains, and you can take it from me that the conditions are pretty difficult.’

  ‘You seem confident enough,’ said Collis.

  ‘Oh, I’m confident all right,’ said Theodore. ‘I’m not only confident, I’m sure. I know the people call me Pacific-railroad-crazy, and I know they’ve dubbed me the railroad pest. Even my wife says that nobody cares for what I say, and that I give my thunder away. But I say that this thing will happen as sure as next year is 1859, and that we must keep the ball rolling.’

  Collis put down his fork. He looked across the table at this young energetic man with his neat beard and his grey but lambent eyes, and he couldn’t help smiling with the pleasure of what he was hearing and what he was feeling.

  ‘Let me tell you something,’ he said, a little hoarsely. ‘One night, in Aspinwall, on the Panama isthmus, I stepped outside my hotel and went to look at a locomotive that was standing on Front Street. It was raining, and that locomotive looked like some kind of great glistening monster that could sweep people away, willy-nilly, into all kinds of adventures and all kinds of unexpected futures.

  ‘Well, that was the romantic side of it. I won’t deny that my interest in the hardware of trains is more romantic than technical, although since I’ve been here in Sacramento, I’ve tried to make a reasonable study of the latest locomotives and passenger cars, and how they work. But I have a vision, too, that isn’t romantic at all, but more to do with what this nation is, and how power and money can be harvested out of her, for the benefit of everybody, including me. And that vision is of great twelve-wheeler locomotives, drawing endless trains of freight and passenger cars, winding their way through the peaks of the High Sierras.’

  Theodore licked his lips. ‘You’re not trying to make sport of me, are you, Mr Edmonds?’

  ‘I daren’t,’ said Collis.

  ‘You daren’t? What do you mean?’

  ‘I have thousands of dollars in bets riding on the certainty that I can survey and prepare a pass through the mountains for a transcontinental railroad. Half of San Francisco’s banking community would scalp me if I failed. The less reputable half, I admit. But it looks as if you’re the only person who can do it. So don’t think I’m making sport.’

  Theodore frowned. ‘You made certain bets on this railroad even before you knew it was technically possible?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Theodore let out a long breath. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it seems you have even more faith in it than I do.’

  ‘Not faith. Certainty. I’m certain, since I left New York, that God creates currents of history on which we all float. I’m not particularly religious, so don’t question me too close about it. But I know that when I’ve offered up prayers to God, they’ve worked, after a fashion; and that when I’ve needed some kind of aim in my life, God has let me loose in one of his – what shall I call it? flows of destiny.’

  Theodore finished his chocolate, watching Collis over the rim of his mug. Then, wiping his moustache, he said, ‘Would you be prepared to support me? Have you seen my pamphlet?’

  ‘Yes, I would, and no, I haven’t.’

  ‘My God, this is excellent!’ said Theodore enthusiastically. ‘My God, this is a real stroke of good fortune! You’re right, God must have borne you here! That’s the only way to account for it! You must come to dinner with Annie and me when you’re settled! It won’t be grand. Pot luck, probably, but I’m sure you won’t mind.’

  ‘Strictly entre nous,’ Collis said, ‘anything at all would be better than Mary Tucker’s Brunswick stew. I think her John cooks with candlewax and iron filings, brushed out of the store.’

  ‘Well, we don’t have a John. Annie does all her own cooking. She’s a rare woman, you know. She’s had to move twenty times in six years. She’s followed me from New York State to California with scarcely a murmur of protest, and she’s had to put up with all kinds of deprivations, not to mention my ceaseless talk about the great Pacific railroad. But she’s always cheerful. We’ve only been back from Nevada Territory for a while. I was out surveying wagon roads for the silver miners. But she�
�s managed to settle back here in Sacramento without any complaint, and make our home a picture. She’s brought up our daughter, too, through all of this, as if everything else hadn’t been quite enough for her.’

  Collis forked up the last piece of apple and ate it. ‘I suppose you know we’ll have to go to Washington, if we’re going to think about building a railroad with any seriousness. The first thing we’re going to need is support from Congress, especially if Jeff Davis is promoting his southern route so strongly.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Theodore. ‘I was planning to make a trip back East in February, and see what I could do to rouse some support among the Republicans.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Collis. ‘I think that I’m going to have to grow some political teeth as well as some business teeth, and I might just as well start right away.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll grow teeth all right.’ Theodore smiled. ‘And claws, too. Some of the strongest men in both houses are right behind Davis. And they’re fighting for their lives, too. A central continental railroad would leave their plantations and their slave economy isolated and abandoned, to shrivel on the vine.’

  ‘I know some of them already,’ said Collis. ‘Preston Brooks, of South Carolina. Stephen Douglas, of Illinois, who used to be a dinner guest of ours in New York. Alexander Stephens, of Georgia.’

  ‘And don’t forget William Stride, either,’ put in Theodore. ‘He’s in so deep with the Southern Trail railroad that some people say they’re going to name it the Stride & Pacific.’

  ‘William Stride?’ asked Collis intently. He had a vivid, momentary memory of the Astor Place Hotel, in New York, facing an aquiline man with side whiskers who kept his face in shadow. A man who had deliberately betrayed, and ultimately brought about the death of, his father, Makepeace.

  ‘You know him?’ asked Theodore.

  Collis turned his face aside and squinted through the drifting smoke towards the dust-mealed window.

  ‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘I believe I do.’

  Charles was annoyed when Collis returned an hour later. He had finished his accounts, and tidied the shelves, and now he was pacing the boarded floor of the hardware store, tugging at his stiff collar from time to time and working himself up into a state of proprietorial indignation.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, as Collis walked in, blowing his nose. ‘You’re back, at last.’

  ‘Yes, I’m back,’ said Collis, hanging up his hat.

  Charles pulled at his whiskers. ‘I suppose you know you were away from the store for more than an hour.’

  ‘Was I? I was talking to your railroad pest, Theodore Jones.’

  ‘What is it about you and railroads?’ Charles snapped.

  Collis took off his coat and hung that up, too. ‘I’m not at all sure,’ he said in a bland tone. ‘I might just as well ask, what is it about you and hardware? What is it about you and rope? What is it about you and Hancock inspirators?’

  Charles tilted his head on one side, angry and suspicious. ‘Perhaps you need reminding that you arrived on Broadway Wharf without a single friend, apart from Andy Hunt, and that you carelessly left your trunk where any Sydney Duck could have walked off with it. Perhaps you need reminding that it was I who showed you around San Francisco, I who introduced you to all the palaces of pleasure, and I who brought you out here to Sacramento and gave you employment and lodging.’

  Collis rolled up his sleeves. ‘You’re quite right, of course, Charles. You did all of those things, and I’m grateful.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Did I say but?’ asked Collis.

  ‘No, you didn’t. But you implied it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Collis, in a quiet voice, ‘it does seem that you’re expecting more than gratitude.’

  ‘I’m expecting a full day’s work, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Come on, Charles, this isn’t like you. In San Francisco you were friendly and bluff and ready for amusement at any time of the day. Girls, drink, faro. And we were equals, too, wouldn’t you say? Well, what’s happened to all that now?’

  Charles tugged uncomfortably at his whiskers. ‘You have to remember that I’m a respected citizen here. One of the pillars of the whole community.’

  ‘So you can’t be friendly?’

  ‘It isn’t that,’ said Charles. ‘It isn’t that at all. It’s just that Leland thinks you ought to serve some kind of apprenticeship into the trade, and so does Mary.’

  ‘Mary thinks I ought to spend my days counting up bushels of nails?’

  Charles looked away, embarrassed. ‘She’s, well, she’s right in a way. It takes years to learn this business. You can’t find out all there is to know in two weeks.’

  ‘Is that your opinion, or Mary’s? Or Leland’s? You haven’t told me what Jane thinks I ought to be doing with my life.’

  ‘We are all of a similar opinion,’ said Charles. He was blushing.

  ‘Then you’re all wrong,’ said Collis. ‘And you’re the wrongest of all, because you got to know me in San Francisco and you saw what kind of a fellow I can be. When I gamble, I win. When I live any part of my life, I try to come out of it with credit and success. That’s how New York gentlemen are brought up, Charles. It’s natural to them. And even though I hate to pull social rank on you, it’s about time you and your dismal business partner, and your worthy wives, understood me for what I am.’

  He finished rolling up his sleeves by giving each of them a sharp tug. ‘If you gave me the opportunity, I could learn this business in a matter of weeks. I already know what a Hancock inspirator is actually for. Lifting water by steam pressure, so there.’

  Charles gripped the edge of the wooden counter with both hands and pressed against it as if he were doing his daily exercises. ‘I don’t know what you want, Collis,’ he said, in exasperation. ‘I don’t know what you could possibly want, other than this.’

  He raised his head and looked along the rows of barrels of Peerless waterproofing compound, mineral barn paint, and carriage varnish. ‘This is a prosperous business, Collis, with a good future, and it’s founded on solid and respectable lines. In ten or twenty years, you could be a man of considerable means.’

  ‘Ten or twenty years? You’re fooling me, aren’t you?’

  Charles stared at him, perplexed. ‘It took me that long.’

  Collis stood close to Charles, and when he spoke his voice was very soft and conciliatory. His words, though, were the words of a New York society rake, still cutting and self-possessed, even if they had been tempered by bankruptcy, and Hannah West, and a hard crossing of the Panama isthmus. ‘Charles,’ he said, ‘it took you that long because you are a natural-born member of the merchant classes, who revel in merchandise. It took you that long because you know your place in the world, and because ambition seems to you to be improper and alarming. But I am not like you, Charles, no matter how kind and sympathetic you have been to my present plight. I am one of the upper classes, and a capitalist by instinct, whether I actually own any capital or not, and as such I have talents of leadership which need only the minimum of training to assert themselves in full and glorious bloom.’

  ‘What the hell are you saying?’ demanded Charles.

  Collis stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled. ‘I’m saying, Charles, that unless you treat me as an associate, rather than a dogsbody, then I shall have to consider leaving you. I’m quite willing to knuckle under, and learn the business, but so far I haven’t done anything but count the yardage of fuse, and the poundage of screws, and it really isn’t going to help either of us if that’s all I continue to do.’

  Charles rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. He sniffed. ‘I do sympathise,’ he said. ‘I do see what you mean, and I do sympathise.’

  ‘You sympathise?’

  ‘Well, you know what I mean.’

  ‘I’m not at all sure that I do,’ Collis told him.

  Charles was about to say something, but then the brass bell over the store door jingled
, and in walked Leland McCormick, his face contorted more than ever by the requirements of looking simultaneously dignified, disapproving, and heavily burdened by the retail hardware trade. He stood in the centre of the store, in his dark-grey tailcoat and his tall black hat, and he looked around it as if it were the most miserable discovery of his life.

  ‘We are so low on endless belting that it is chronic,’ he said, by way of greeting. ‘Either that, or Mr Edmonds’s latest inventory was not as thorough as it might have been.’

  Collis gave a sharp, provoked smile. But Charles quickly put in, ‘I let stocks of endless run down on purpose. We’ve had too many complaints. I’m recommending belts with laced joints now. At least they stretch when they’re required to, instead of snap.’

  ‘H’m,’ said Leland as if he was unconvinced, and continued his slow walk around the store.

  Collis took a cheroot out of his coat, where it was hanging on its peg, and then leaned over the counter to find a box of matches. He said evenly, ‘My inventory was thorough to the point of absurdity, Mr McCormick, but I suppose that’s just as well.’

  Leland stopped and turned. He had a way of looking at people who surprised or irritated him which involved making one eye bulge and stare, and the other close into a disapproving slit.

  ‘Why is that just as well, Mr Edmonds?’ he asked, with heavy wariness.

  Collis put the cheroot between his lips. ‘Because, Mr McCormick, it is the last I shall do.’

  ‘I see. You’re considering leaving us?’

  ‘Not unless we’re unable to come to some agreement about my position here.’

  Leland continued to stare at Collis for a moment. Then he gave a brittle cough and looked away. He put his hands on his hips.

  ‘An inventory is a task which anyone with the knack of counting up to one thousand can do with complete ease,’ added Collis. ‘I feel that my potential talents are being wasted. Perhaps deliberately.’