Weeks later, Neil nudged the brim of his Stetson. The lovely gift from Cordelia in Wyoming. Good as new, thanks to O’Malley.
Neil reckoned he was a mite ridiculous over the hat. And protective. But the hat reminded him of that perfect time in the meadow with Cordelia.
With the resilience of youth, Billy recovered quickly from his head injury. Neil reassigned Billy to the teamsters to manage the horses. Billy protested being separated from his mates. But being close to the horses soon stilled his grumbling.
They’d arrived at what would probably be the last end-of-rails town. The CP and UP had negotiated an agreement as to where the rails would link. For weeks, the two railroad crews lay track within sight of each other in parallel grades. It’d be a race to the finish.
But to Neil’s growing discomfort, he realized his time with Cordelia was also drawing to a close. And over the last few weeks, she’d become distant. Too quiet.
With a troubled look in her eyes, she’d stop midsentence to gaze over the hills. Was Cordelia already separating herself and preparing him for their inevitable good-bye?
Only two weeks old, end-of-rails town Corinne already boasted five hundred frame and tent dwellings. A blacksmith, livery, sawmill, a bank, opera house, and a newspaper office from which the members of the press telegraphed their articles eastward. One last time the gaming houses and soiled doves also followed the rails.
It was merely a matter of waiting for the work train to catch up with the progress of the tracklayers. He and the men could nearly taste the final victory. They’d worked in driving rain and through snowstorms. Enduring high winds and scorching heat. In the burning sun, none complained. They kept at the backbreaking work.
Every day. All day. His tireless Irishmen.
The weather had turned. Turned as lovely as Cordelia herself. The mud was drying fast. The grading camps were thirty miles west of Corinne now.
A continuous line of tents, wagons, mules, and men from there to here. And a farther twenty miles west were the blasting crews jarring the earth with glycerine. Hurling the limestone hundreds of feet into the air. Scattering rock in every direction.
Try as he might, he couldn’t imagine Cordelia keeping house in a prairie dugout. Although, the image of the intrepid reporter collecting cow patties for fuel brought a smile to his face.
Other pictures swept his mind. Cordelia and him sharing a life under the big sky of the Nebraska Territory. His child—their child—one day rounding Cordelia’s belly.
But the lady reporter weeding a garden patch? His imagination failed as hecontemplated her sure and quiet misery. An unhappiness that would destroy them both.
Neil was ready at last to admit it. The truth he could no longer deny. He loved Cordelia Cochrane.
He loved the way she smiled. He loved how her eyes crinkled when she laughed. He loved her intelligence. He even loved—which showed how far gone he was—her independent, fist-in-your-face spirit.
But loving her brought Neil only increasing confusion. About his own place in the world. Who he was and who he’d yet become. He could never hope to offer Cordelia the kind of life and future she deserved.
In a few short weeks, this grand adventure would end. She would return to New York—on the tracks Neil had laid—to pursue her career. And from New York, she’d sail for Europe.
He’d be free finally to stake a claim on a tract of land and build a life. But a life without Cordelia. An empty life. And he wrestled with an equally tough question.
After all these years of chasing the rail, would farming satisfy Neil in the way he’d believed? Was farming how God wanted him to spend his life? Or was that a wrongly placed yearning for a permanence only found in God Himself?
The more he thought about waving rows of golden wheat, the more restless he felt. He stared across the desert flats to the west. He’d come so far—from across the sea.
Across the grassy plains. Tunneling through mountains the likes of which he’d never have foretold. But something drove him to yet see the other side.
Surely he’d already had more adventure than one life could hold. More than his fair share.
He sensed there was more. He wanted more for himself. Further adventures awaited him, he was almost sure of it.
Almost… How selfish and greedy to want more when he’d been allowed to be a vital part of the grandest race in history. Suddenly, farming wheat the rest of his livelong days held no appeal.
But what else could a poor man born in Ireland do?
And like so many times over the last few days, Neil found himself on his knees pouring out his heart, his doubts—and beyond words, the longings he didn’t rightly know how to express. Into the safekeeping of the One who’d always loved him the most.
Loved him on a ship from Ireland. In the Irish tenement in New York City. On a war-scarred battlefield. In the midst of brutal conditions, implacable enemies, and the herculean task of bridging a continent.
For now, Neil could only finish what he’d begun with the UP and his Irish brothers. And wait in faith for what the Lord would have him do next.
But loving Cordelia while waiting on God’s direction was proving for Neil the most challenging task of all.