Railroad

by Graham Masterton

  ‘I wish my feet were as pleased as my eyes,’ said Wang-Pu.

  They climbed slowly for the next two hours, leaving the American River behind them and crossing the ridge northwards to the valley of the South Yuba River, which busily foamed and splashed between the granite mountains. It was penetratingly cold up here, and as they approached the cleft where the South Yuba cut through the summit of the Sierra Nevada, more than seven thousand feet above sea level, the first few whirls of snow danced around them and clung to their clothes.

  They stumbled across the summit at 4.17. The snow was thicker now, flying over the dark ridges like clouds of frosty locusts, and Collis could hardly make out the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada all around him. But he paused for a while, his collar turned up against the wind, and breathed in the freezing air in painful satisfaction. These were the mysterious mountains that had been beckoning him for so long. This was the place where his whole life was going to change. He wished he could shout out loud that he’d shown them all at last – his father, his mother, his miserable sister; Knickerbocker Jane and Charles Tucker, Leland McCormick and his plain-faced wife. All those people who had patronised him, or nagged him, or treated him as nothing more than a ridiculous rake. All those people who had loved him, or who had claimed to love him, and then denied him love. All those people who had died, because of him. And most of all, himself.

  ‘Come on, Collis,’ Theodore called. ‘We don’t want to get caught up here in the dark. Doc says this snow could get worse.’

  Collis brushed the snow from his hair. ‘We’ve beaten them, Theodore. Do you know that?’

  ‘Not yet we haven’t. We still have to find a negotiable way through to Nevada.’

  ‘You think that there’s really a way?’

  ‘I hope so. Doc seems confident enough.’

  Wang-Pu was waiting for them beside the trail. He was wiping the inside of his hatband with a clean white handkerchief. It was sweaty work, climbing mountains, even in the snow. ‘We should leave the last word to the mountains themselves,’ the Chinaman said. ‘Only the mountains will show us if they wish to be conquered or not.’

  ‘You think mountains have a will of their own?’ asked Collis. ‘Like women?’

  Wang-Pu replaced his hat and tugged the straps of his knapsack tighter. ‘These mountains have,’ he said quietly.

  They were walking downhill now, beside the tumbling gorge of the South Yuba River, but they were protected from the worst of the wind and the snow by the crest they had just crossed. Towards nightfall, the snow died down, and they came through a silent skirt of pines to Donner Lake, where Doc Kates loosened his knapsack and dropped it to the ground.

  ‘We can spend the night here,’ he said. ‘In the morning, we’ll make our way down to the Truckee River.’

  The lake was still, an amber mirror under a slate-coloured sky. It was edged all around with a sawtooth pattern of pines, through which the cold wind whistled a remote, selfish song. They seemed like the loneliest men in all of America. On the far side of the lake, two snow-crested mountains gradually faded into the darkness and the mist.

  Wang-Pu, still in his tall hat, gathered chips and kindling and started a fire. They sat by the edge of the lake, and Doc Kates stirred up a mess of beans in a billy can, and brewed some coffee, and by the time they’d finished eating and drinking it was completely dark. While the fire flickered and died down, they settled back in their blankets and lit up pipes and cigars, smelling the clear ice-cold water of the lake, and the scent of pines, and the smoky aroma of an outdoor camp. They talked for over an hour about the way they’d walked during the day, and the way they’d walk in the morning; and then they wrapped themselves up as warm as they could and went to sleep.

  During the night, a gust of freezing wind blew out their fire, and scattered its embers along the shoreline.

  By noon the next day the sky was the colour of tattered rags, and the wind had veered so sharply that it was blowing from the northwest, from Alaska, down the Coast Mountains of Canada, and the Cascades, until it complained and worried over the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada like a mangy hound with teeth of ice. There were more flecks of snow in the wind, and Theodore’s thermometer showed the temperature was way below freezing.

  The four of them walked eastward, climbing and sliding down the rocky slopes, their shoulders hunched against the wind, their mouths muffled with scarfs. Collis had never been so damned cold in his whole life, and the excitement of crossing the summit had been spoiled already by painful blisters, aching calf muscles, and tiredness. Doc Kates might have been used to striding over the granite terrain of the Sierras, but Collis wasn’t, and neither was Theodore, who was hobbling twenty yards behind the rest of them with an expression that reminded Collis of St Sebastian. Wang-Pu’s feet probably hurt, too, but he had his Buddhism to help him through, and he walked tirelessly and quietly, as if he were doing nothing more strenuous than strolling out to Mission Dolores on a Sunday afternoon.

  Doc Kates paused from time to time on rocky outcroppings to let them all catch up; but as soon as they had, he was off again, scrambling along the valleys like a white-bearded goat.

  Collis kept up with him for a while, and they talked. ‘I guess my life would’ve turned out wholly different if my wife hadn’t passed on,’ said Doc Kates. ‘It was our third child, and I tried to save her, and the child, too, but all the doctors in California couldn’t have done nothing more than I did, and they both died. I buried them out back. A big grave, and a tiny grave, and the words “Joined in Motherly Love”. But once I’d gotten over my grief, I knew that she would have liked me to carry on, and live my life peaceful and helpful, and so that’s what I did. I guess in a way that it was Wilhelmina’s dying that led me to find my way through the mountains, because I never would have gone exploring if she’d been alive.’

  ‘I get the feeling that your Wilhelmina won’t have been the last person to lay down his life for this railroad, one way or another,’ Collis told him.

  Doc Kates rubbed the filaments of ice from his beard. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s the way a country’s made, ain’t it? Not out of houses or bridges or railroads, but out of people. Still, I’d sure be pleased if you could name one of these passes for her, or maybe a railroad crossing or something.’

  Collis looked at him. ‘I’ll try,’ he said, in a gentle voice.

  They were walled in by forests and high granite peaks as they made their way along the South Yuba valley, but the gradient was still gradual enough for a twelve-wheeled locomotive. Once the loose boulders had been cleared away, and the most awkward outcroppings of rock had been penetrated with picks and brought down with high explosives, there wasn’t any doubt at all that a full twelve-car train of passengers and freight could steam its way from Sacramento, up the natural ramp between the American and the South Yuba rivers, through the crest of the Sierra Nevada where the South Yuba had etched its own valley, along by the Donner Lake, and as far as Collis and Theodore and Doc Kates and Wang-Pu had already managed to walk.

  Theodore, in spite of his blisters, was growing more and more excited. He kept tugging at Collis’s sleeve and nodding his frost-whitened beard in glee. ‘It’s fine so far,’ he said. ‘It’s really fine.’

  ‘You can really run a railroad through this valley?’

  ‘No doubt about it. No doubt at all. We don’t have to follow the riverbed – that twists and turns too much. We can cut a railroad bed into the slopes at the side. I did the same kind of thing at Niagara. It’s not technically difficult. There’s only one curve that I’m not too sure about, just above the lake, but we can always fill the side of the mountain, and that won’t cost too much.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ asked Collis. ‘That looks like solid granite to me.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s loose, most of it,’ Theodore told him. ‘Weathered down, and easy to shift. It won’t take more than a few weeks to clear it away.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said Co
llis. ‘I hope you’re not being wildly optimistic.’

  Theodore stopped walking and stared at him. His eyes were red-rimmed with cold, and his hair and beard were a thicket of sparkling icicles. ‘I want to tell you something, Collis,’ he said, in a hoarse, intent voice. ‘A railroad is going to run through here, even if these mountains are made of solid iron.’

  Collis stared back at him. Then he looked across at Wang-Pu, who was waiting a few feet away with silent patience, his coat tails blown by the wind. Wang-Pu gave him a look which meant, ‘Time will tell’.

  ‘Okay, Theodore,’ Collis said and walked on.

  The most dramatic moment of all came quietly. They were struggling down a slope of loose granite boulders when they came at last to a deep, sheltered valley. Behind them was the high crest of the Sierra Nevada; ahead of them was yet another crest, steep and forested and dark, and drifted with snow. From their right, from the south, splashing and bubbling over the black rocks of its granite bed, they saw a river, making its way down the valley until it forked, only a few hundred feet below them.

  Doc Kates stopped. He made a sweeping gesture with his arm. ‘This is it,’ he said, in a voice congested by cold. ‘This is the key to the whole thing. That river flows down from Lake Bigler, until it reaches here, and then it divides. This fork to your left is the South Yuba, which flows back the way we came, and into the Donner Lake, and then down through the mountains into California. But the other fork, ahead of us, that’s the Truckee River, and that flows northeast, right around the base of these mountains, into Nevada.’

  Theodore shaded his eyes and peered ahead, into the course of the Truckee. To the east, the river valley was wide, and far gentler than the twisting gorge of the South Yuba. A few gusts of snow made it difficult to see for very far, but Doc Kates said, ‘It doesn’t get any worse than what you can make out from here. It’s pretty well straight all the way.’

  ‘It’s incredible,’ Theodore whispered. ‘Look at it, Collis. It’s incredible.’

  Doc Kates added, ‘If you walk straight ahead from here, you can cross into Nevada Territory in two, maybe three hours. Then the river crosses Steamboat Valley, and runs into the Washoe Mountains. From the Washoes, it bends northwest, but that doesn’t matter, because you’re out on to the Great Basin by then, and I shouldn’t think you’d have any more need of it.’

  Collis wiped snow from his face with the back of his glove. ‘Well, professor,’ he said to Theodore. ‘It looks as if we’re in the railroad business.’

  Theodore looked across at him, and he was smiling irrepressibly. ‘I believe you may be right.’

  ‘It seems as if the mountains have given us their answer,’ put in Wang-Pu with a smile.

  ‘Very poetically put,’ said Collis. ‘But do you think your Chinese people could tackle this rock?’

  ‘The Chinese are masters of persistence,’ answered Wang-Pu. ‘They will tackle this rock for you, no question at all. If you ask them to cut it, they will cut it, no matter what it takes.’

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Doc Kates said proudly. ‘Didn’t I tell you I’d found a trail?’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Theodore, ‘I think this moment calls for a celebration.’

  Doc Kates opened his knapsack and produced a bottle of home-distilled whisky. He wiped off the neck and passed it around, and each of them lifted it in turn, and then took a large swallow. The snow hurtled around them as they toasted the new railroad route, and on that dim slope of the Sierra Nevada they looked as tiny and faint as smudges on a frosty window.

  ‘Here’s to the Sierra Pacific,’ Collis said and drank a mouthful. He coughed, and for a moment he could scarcely breathe. ‘What’s in this stuff?’ he asked Doc Kates. ‘Kerosene?’

  ‘That’s the finest sour-mash whisky,’ protested Doc Kates. ‘I always add a little surgical alcohol to give it pep.’

  ‘I was damned lucky I wasn’t smoking,’ said Collis, passing the bottle back. ‘I could have blown myself up like a keg of powder.’

  It was nearly three o’clock now, and the snow was falling thicker. The clouds had turned a threatening shade of weathered lead, and the wind was getting up again. ‘Unless you want to make camp in the Truckee valley, I’d say we’d do well to beat the retreat,’ Doc Kates said.

  ‘It’s only October,’ said Theodore. ‘This snow can’t last too long.’

  ‘You want to bet?’ asked Doc Kates. ‘Up at this height, I’ve been caught in snowstorms in late September. It depends on the wind, see. If the wind’s from the northwest, you’re in trouble.’

  They tightened up their knapsacks, put away their whisky, and began to make their way back along the South Yuba valley, leaving the Truckee behind them, with its promise of Nevada, and the Great Basin, and the Rockies beyond. The wind was blowing so fiercely now that the snow flew horizontally, and they could hardly see which way they were going. Collis slipped twice into soft, knee-deep drifts, and he had to claw at the rough granite slopes to save himself. Ahead of him, as he struggled along, he could see Theodore’s dark, bent figure; and a little way in front of Theodore, so blurred by the snow that he was hardly visible, except as a tantalising phantom, was Doc Kates. Collis turned once or twice, and there was Wang-Pu, his head lowered, coming up behind him.

  It seemed as if they had been walking for days. The cold was unbearable. Collis lost his hat in the wind, and soon his hair and his eyebrows were thick with snow. His nose and his ears seemed to have swollen to three times their usual size, and he couldn’t feel his hands at all. There was nothing ahead of him but flurrying white, and Theodore, and nothing behind him but Wang-Pu, and more flurrying white. If it hadn’t been for Doc Kates, stolidly pushing forward in front of them, they would have been lost in minutes. Collis felt as if he were dreaming some exhausting, ridiculous dream, in which the whole world had burst open like a pillow fight, whirling with goose feathers, and smothered in impossible softness.

  When they reached the crest of the Sierras, the snowstorm hit them with its full force. The wind was so devastating that Collis could hardly breathe. Doc Kates had waited for them, his face ghastly with cold, and he shouted, ‘Keep going! It’s mostly downhill from here! Just keep going!’ Theodore raised one snow-gloved hand to show that he understood.

  The next hour was an agony of white. Collis’ eyelashes were crusted with ice, so that even blinking against the wind was painful. And although it was past six o’clock now, and the sky was a grim, impenetrable grey, he still had to keep his face screwed up against the brilliance of the snow, and his cheek muscles felt as if they were frozen into a hideous grimace. The Yuba valley was deep with drifts, and so they had to lift each leg up out of the snow as they walked, like exhausted performing horses. Collis saw Theodore stumble and fall twice, and even Doc Kates was slowing up.

  Collis closed his eyes and concentrated on walking. The snow pelted against his eyelids. He knew that he was going to have to collapse soon, and give up this insanity for good. What was the point of walking when it didn’t get you any place at all, except a few yards further in the same shrieking wind, and the same numbing snow? What was the point of struggling when there was no hope of winning anyway?

  Collis opened his eyes. In front of him, Theodore had fallen into the snow. Collis pranced forward as quickly as he could, panting with effort. He took hold of Theodore under the arms of his frozen coat and tried to pull him upright. Theodore raised himself a little, but then fell sideways, and lay in the deep snow with his face coated white.

  ‘Theodore!’ yelled Collis. He glanced up desperately, and he could see Doc Kates gradually vanishing into the blizzard.

  ‘Theodore, get up, for Christ’s sake!’

  Theodore’s eyes were open, but he didn’t appear to see Collis at all. He gave a weak shake of his head and mumbled, ‘Can’t. Too cold.’

  ‘You have to! If we lose Doc Kates, then we’re finished! Get up off your ass and move!’

  The wind was whistling and whooping all
around them, and Collis had to lean forward to hear what Theodore was saying.

  ‘Go on,’ whispered Theodore. ‘Go on without me. Take my maps, notebook.’

  ‘Don’t be so damned stupid! Get up, and walk!’

  ‘I can’t, Collis. I’ve had it. I’m too cold.’

  Collis stood up, peering ahead for any sign of Doc Kates. But the ferocious whiteness enclosed them on every side, and Doc Kates was gone.

  ‘Theodore!’ he shouted. ‘Get up, you dumb bastard! Think about Annie!’

  Theodore closed his eyes. ‘I can’t.’

  Collis looked back the way they’d come, to see if he could make out any sign of Wang-Pu. But the snow was so thick that Wang-Pu could have walked straight past them only seven or eight feet away, and they wouldn’t even have seen him.

  Collis leaned close to Theodore’s ear. ‘Listen, you railroading idiot,’ he said tersely, ‘if you don’t get your carcass out of this snow and start walking, then none of this railroad is ever going to be named after you. Not one grade, not one curve, not one damned whistlestop. We won’t even have a Theodore Jones latrine.’

  Theodore raised his head. ‘Damn you, Edmonds,’ he said.

  Collis reached out his hand. Theodore stared at it for a long moment, blinking the snowflakes from his eyes. Then he slowly lifted his own hand and let Collis clasp it, and with numb, wooden movements, he climbed to his feet. Collis held him for a while, held him close, until he regained his balance against the wind; then Theodore nodded, to show that he was going to try to make it on his own, and he shuffled forwards, pausing now and again to rest. Collis stayed close, supporting him, pushing him, and keeping him upright when the wind was gusting its worst.

  They were protected for a while by pine trees growing along the ridge that overlooked the South Yuba River. The blizzard sounded strangely ghostly and hollow here, as if the mountains were haunted, and the pines waved at them like desperate people trapped in a nightmare.