‘It would have to be legitimate,’ Leland said dubiously. ‘I’d have to send the geologist along to make indisputable tests.’
‘Sure you would,’ said Andy. ‘But maybe Collis has got something. The government’s going to lend us forty-eight thousand a mile for every mile of track we lay over the Sierras; and if the Sierras start right here in Sacramento, then we’re going to make ourselves nearly a million dollars in extra cash. And let’s face facts, we could use it.’
‘If you have a word with the state geologist,’ Collis said to Leland, ‘I’ll have a word with Congressman Watkins by telegraph. I’m sure he’d be only too happy to present our reports to the President.’
‘All right,’ said Leland. ‘It’s kind of a humbug, but I guess it’s worth a try.’
‘The trouble is,’ put in Charles, ‘it still doesn’t solve this forty-mile qualification problem. Even with some of the track attracting forty-eight thousand dollars a mile, we’re still not going to be able to lay forty miles without some kind of extra financial help.’
‘That’s what I was coming to,’ said Collis. ‘I’m planning on making another trip to Washington, to see what I can do about amending the 1862 Railroad Act. This time I’m going to take some money with me, and I’m going to pass it around wherever it’s needed. Straight, no-nonsense bribes. I’ve learned by now that Congress is nothing but a wolf-pack, and that the only way to sway the opinions of a wolf pack is to throw it some raw meat.’
‘How much do you reckon it’s going to cost?’ asked Charles.
‘A quarter of a million dollars. But, believe me, I’ll get results.’
Leland raised his eyebrows, and Andy Hunt whistled.
‘A quarter of a million?’ said Charles. ‘That’s a hell of an expensive risk to take.’
‘It’s either that, or bankruptcy,’ said Collis.
‘But we could use that quarter of a million to lay track,’ put in Leland.
‘How much track? Three miles? Four miles, at the most? No, Leland, there’s only one way we’re going to get out of this, and that’s to buy our way out. That’s the way Congress works. If you want legislation, you have to pay for it.’
Leland sighed. ‘Very well. I believe you know what you’re doing. I just think it’s a very sad reflection on the integrity of the administration.’
‘Wouldn’t you take a bribe, if it were offered?’ asked Collis.
Leland looked at him huffily. ‘Only a decent one,’ he said. ‘And only from somebody I liked already.’
Collis saw Delphine twice in the next few weeks. He didn’t get close enough to talk to her, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to. But from the way she was riding with Mrs Pangborn and two or three of Mrs Pangborn’s prettier and more favoured parlour girls, all decorated and frilled in a shiny green landau, he guessed that she had made up her mind to stay for a while in Sacramento before moving on.
He found it difficult to believe that she was the same pretty and provocative girl he had known in New York; but then she had always been sexually uninhibited, and he supposed that once her father had gone bankrupt and her family life had collapsed, the parlour circuit was all she had left. It was a pretty rough and degrading way to go, though. All the myths about college-educated girls and famous French dancers going on the parlour circuit to amuse themselves during their vacations were based on nothing more than male fantasy. The kind of men that a girl had to entertain in Nevada City and Alder Gulch were demanding and crude, and even a high-spirited girl like the notorious Martha Jane Canary was soon worn down. Miss Canary had won herself the nickname Calamity Jane. Collis wondered what they would be calling Delphine in years to come.
The second time he saw her, on K Street near the post office, she turned towards him, nodded her head, and smiled. He gave her only the briefest smile in return, but he found when he thought about her afterwards that his feelings had softened towards her, and that he was quite inclined to see her again. He decided to look her up again when he returned from Washington.
The journey to Washington in the spring of 1864 was tiresome and uncomfortable. In Panama, it rained for days, and the railroad was delayed by mudslides. There was Confederate shipping action off the coast of Georgia, too, and the steamer had to heave to for eight hours in a heavy swell.
In Washington, Collis had to stay at the second-rate Capitol Hotel, although he spent most of his time lobbying for votes for a fresh and improved Railroad Act, and saw his room only when he needed sleep, or a shave, or a change of clothes. In the hotel opposite was Thomas Durant, the vice-president of the Union Pacific Railroad – a thin, energetic man with a dark goatee beard – and he was in Washington for the same purpose and with just as much money for buying Congressional votes.
Collis had dinner with Durant one evening, and they discussed in detail how they should most effectively hand out their ‘educational funds’, as Durant liked to call them. The Union Pacific, which had been granted a charter under the 1862 Act to build a railroad westward, out of Omaha, was completely bogged down by debt. They hadn’t even reached the city limits, although Omaha in 1864 was not much more than a couple of square miles of wooden houses on the banks of the Missouri.
Durant wrestled with a veal cutlet for a while, and then drank a very large glass of red wine. ‘We have a divine duty to force through this railroad by whatever means at our disposal,’ he told Collis. ‘We cannot be judged by the same legal or moral standards as other men. Our task is too great and too urgent. And, besides, if we conduct ourselves too scrupulously, we’ll never make a profit.’
Collis smiled. ‘I think you’re a man after my own heart.’
Durant shook his head. ‘Not me. I’m not a visionary. I believe in the pursuit of wealth by the few, because that’s what brings the larger benefit to the many. This railroad can make us rich, Collis, beyond any imagination. That will be our just reward for our efforts. The nation’s reward will be to have a fast and effective means of transporting its people and its goods from one side of the continent to the other.’
Collis spent almost all of his $250,000, and gave out promises of special bonuses and favours to every Congressman he met. Durant did the same, even more professionally and even more energetically. He had come to Washington with $437,000 of U.P. funds, and although he was later accused of having pocketed the larger part of it for himself, he was proved to have spent nearly $19,000 entertaining Congressmen at Willard’s Hotel.
Collis himself was particularly proud of having enlisted the enthusiastic support of Congressman Oakes Ames of Massachusetts, by promising the contract for all the Sierra Pacific’s shovels to the toolworks owned by Congressman Ames’s brother Oliver.
By early summer, Collis and Durant had the situation fixed. President Lincoln was as eager as anybody to get the railroad started; and Congress had been happily paid off. A Pacific Railroad Act of 1864 was drawn up, passed through Congress ‘like a bullet through butter’, and signed by the President without a single qualm or query. It gave Collis everything he wanted.
Land grants for the railroad would be doubled. Instead of ten square miles in alternate sections on either side of the track, they were to be granted twenty square miles. Best of all, the federal loans of $32,000 and $48,000 a mile would not be deferred until the company had actually laid track. They would be given two-thirds of their money as soon as each twenty miles of roadbed had been prepared, and only one-third would be held back until later.
The Act of 1864 gave the Sierra Pacific and the Union Pacific between them the potential of becoming the largest private landowners in the country. They would eventually own more than twenty million acres – more than Connecticut, Massuchusetts, and Vermont all put together. It also gave them the ready money to start laying track.
Congressman Watkins came to the Capitol Hotel the night the act was signed and handed Collis an envelope.
‘You needn’t open it,’ he said, with a fat and satisfied smile. ‘It’s just an official confirmatio
n that the Sierras rise where the state geologist of California alleges that they rise. The President himself has agreed to it.’
‘Well,’ said Collis, ‘you must let me buy you a drink.’
Congressman Watkins raised his hands, as if to ask how he could possibly refuse. ‘It seems as if my pertinacity and Abraham’s faith has moved mountains,’ he said.
Collis telegraphed Andy Hunt in San Francisco at once. He was to use Collis’s credit with the San Francisco Banking Trust to lay as much extra track as he could. The Governor McCormick was already running between Sacramento and Roseville for the one-way fare of $1.85 – now Collis wanted to push it ahead as quickly as possible to qualify for all the federal loan money he could get.
He took the first steamer back to Panama. The war was going badly for the Union, and he was lucky to get away so quickly. Thomas Durant had breakfast with him the morning he left, and they shook hands on the steps of the Capitol Hotel.
‘We may meet again,’ said Durant. ‘Out there somewhere, on the plains, or on the Great Basin, wherever our two railroads conjoin. I hope by then that both of us will be happier and richer men.’
The Panama steamer caught the tail end of a hurricane off Florida, and Collis was ill for two days. At Aspinwall, the train was delayed yet again, and he had to spend three days in a seedy hotel, shivering with influenza, nausea, impatience, and the effects of unlimited Kentucky bourbon. He thought of Theodore, dead of the yellow fever, and he wondered if God intended to mete out the same punishment to him.
But late in May, he arrived back in San Francisco, and immediately called on Andy Hunt to find out how the railroad was going. Andy’s office was closed and locked, but he found Andy in the Bank Exchange Saloon, drinking with Sam Lewis and Lloyd Wintle. The saloon was thick with smoke and noise, although several conversations quieted and several eyebrows were raised when Collis walked in. News of the revised Railroad Act had reached San Francisco on the day that it was signed, and more than half of the regulars were uncomfortably remembering that they had wagered Collis two or three thousand dollars or more that he couldn’t cross the Sierra by train.
‘Sam, Lloyd, how are you?’ said Collis, shaking their hands.
‘Tolerably well, considering the latest reports from the war,’ said Lloyd. ‘You look as sick as a dog.’
‘I am, as a matter of fact. But it’s nothing that a couple of days’ rest and a few stone fences won’t put right. Andy – how’s the railroad?’
‘We’re getting along slow, but sure,’ said Andy.
Collis raised his hand to the barman for a drink. The barman already knew his taste in alcohol and nodded as unnoticeably as a horse trader.
‘That wasn’t what I wanted to hear,’ Collis told Andy. ‘The more miles we’ve laid, the quicker we’ll get hold of our federal loans.’
‘Well, we can’t work miracles,’ said Andy. ‘Charles has been out on the track night and day, and he’s managed to take it as far as Newcastle. We should be open for passenger business next month, a dime a mile.’
Collis reached past Sam Lewis and took his drink off the counter. ‘I suppose that’s better than nothing. At least we qualify for the first payment. But I want him to push the roadbed ahead, too, as well as the track-laying. It’s the roadbed that gets us the loans.’
‘We’ve had labour problems,’ said Andy. ‘Charles telegraphed me just yesterday asking for more men. We’ve got a couple of hundred Irish labourers grading the roadbed beyond Newcastle, but they’re slow, and they drink a lot, and they’ve started complaining about the wages already.’
Collis nodded. ‘That’s a difficulty I’ve foreseen for years. And that’s why I’m staying here in San Francisco for a few days. I’m going to have a word with Mr Yee, and see how many Chinese I can get together.’
Andy finished his beer. ‘You’re not serious about the Chinese? I always thought it was some kind of a joke. I know Charles won’t like it.’
‘Charles doesn’t know what the Chinese can do.’
‘But they’re pretty skinny and weak, aren’t they?’ put in Lloyd Wintle. ‘I mean, you take your average Chinaman and put him alongside your average Irishman, and there’s no comparison. Your average Irishman has muscle. Your average Irishman can move mountains. But your average Chinaman, what is he? You’re not going to build a railroad over the Sierras with funny little men in dishpan hats and blue pyjamas, are you?’
‘They eat queer, too,’ said Sam Lewis. ‘You wouldn’t be able to feed a Chinese crew on pork and beans. All that rice and seaweed and bamboo. How are you going to feed them on that?’
Collis gave them all a courteous but dismissive shake of his head. ‘None of you know what you’re talking about. I was close to Wang-Pu, remember, and I’m even closer to Kwang Lee. I know what the Chinese can do, and what they think about this railroad. I know about their food, too, and that’s no problem because they’ll bring along their own cooks. You wait until the day I can take you on a train ride to the summit of the High Sierras, and then tell me your average Chinese doesn’t stand up to your average Irishman.’
As he had promised, Collis called that afternoon at Dear’s restaurant, where he ate a simple meal of chop suey and pork, and waited for Mr Yee. Mr Yee arrived with a family from Canton, but he excused himself for a few minutes and came to sit next to Collis.
‘It is many months since I saw you,’ he said. ‘Are your enterprises going well?’
‘Have you heard about the new Pacific Railroad Act?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Yee. ‘Was that your doing? Are you ready to push ahead now and build your railroad?’
Collis nodded. ‘I’m going back to Sacramento in two days, and we’re going to start laying track like you never saw.’
‘And you will keep your promise?’
‘You bet I’ll keep it. I want one hundred labourers now, and I shall want more later. Many more. Pass the word around that every able-bodied Chinese man is welcome to volunteer for work on the new railroad, and that they can reach me through you.’
‘I am pleased,’ said Mr Yee. ‘I hope that Wang-Pu is aware that you have kept your word.’
Collis looked at Mr Yee through the steam from his cup of green tea. ‘I don’t think that Wang-Pu ever doubted it, Mr Yee.’
He had one more call to make in San Francisco, to the house in South Park called Colusa. He took a cab out as far as Happy Valley and then walked the rest of the way, under a hazy, golden sky.
South Park was already showing signs of deterioration. Many of its houses were empty now, vacated by Southerners whose fortunes in cotton and tobacco had been ruined by the Civil War. The grass in the oval gardens was weedy and unkempt, and the railings needed a fresh coat of paint. The isolation from the city that had once been one of South Park’s most desirable features now made it seem abandoned and derelict.
Collis walked straight to the Melfords’ house and knocked. He waited for a long time before their black servant opened the door and said, without surprise, ‘Mr Edmonds. Come in, sir. Mr Melford saw you walking up here, and asks you to come inside.’
Collis held back for a moment. He had only come up to South park to enquire after Sarah’s health; and he had doubted if the Melfords would even speak to him. But the servant was patiently holding the door open, as if Collis was welcome, and after a moment or two, Collis decided it was probably safe to step in.
He found Laurence Melford in his drawing-room, standing by the French windows which gave out on to his neat and almost mathematical back garden. The drawing-room was severe, but opulent. There was an eighteenth-century English cabinet filled with rare Worcestershire dishes, and above the marble fireplace there was a dour portrait by Frans Hals. The drapes were rust-coloured velvet, and the carpet had been hand-woven in Belgium.
Laurence Melford himself was dressed in a black tailcoat and black tie, and wore a black ribbon around his left arm. He appeared older by ten years – white-haired, bent under the weight of sorrow and of w
ar, and with skin like an apple that has been left to lie in a dish for days too long.
Collis bowed slightly and said, ‘Mr Melford.’
Laurence Melford turned and acknowledged Collis’s appearance with a nod of his head.
‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked Collis. ‘A cigar?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Then sit down, at least. I won’t take up much of your time.’
Collis looked behind him, raised his tailcoat, and sat on a small English sofa, buttoned and braided in the same rust colour as the drapes. ‘You’re in mourning,’ he said to Laurence Melford.
Laurence Melford nodded. ‘Yes. Grant was killed six weeks ago, in Tennessee.’
‘I’m sorry. I really am.’
Laurence Melford stood against the light of the French windows. ‘Yes,’ he said, in a strangely slurred voice. ‘I believe you probably are.’
Then he came forward across the room. ‘You know something, Collis – I always believed that you were an upstart, a most objectionable young man, one of the new generation of settlers who had come to California to do nothing but exploit her natural wealth and give her nothing in return.’
‘I can understand your feelings,’ said Collis. ‘I think I would have thought the same myself, if I had been you.’
‘But,’ said Laurence Melford, ‘but … I now believe I was wrong. You weren’t dangerous or objectionable in yourself. Oh, I wouldn’t say I ever liked you, and quite probably I still don’t … but what you said to me about each of us acting out our historical roles … well, that was right. It wasn’t you I was frightened of. It wasn’t you yourself who alarmed me. What really frightened me was the prospect of those changes of which you were nothing more than the harbinger.’
He thought for a moment, stroking his cheek as if he wasn’t sure who he was. Then he said, ‘You weren’t the disease. You were nothing more than a symptom. The disease is greed; the exploitation of everything this land has to offer, regardless of its traditions or its natural beauties or the memory of those who fought to make a paradise out of a wilderness. It wasn’t really your fault at all. You were unscrupulous, of course, but then your destiny gives you the licence to be unscrupulous. I have been watching your progress, Mr Edmonds, and I am sure now that you will cross the Sierra by rail.’
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