We razzed Mac hard as we pulled out of town on the Northern Missouri line. The big kid looked sheepish. He and Allison had sneaked out to a beer hall the previous night. Mac had made advances on one of the Pretty Waiter Girls—the generic sisters of dance-hall women, with their plump arms, short boots, and skirts displaying a few prurient inches of pale tights and flesh—and promptly landed in a fight and then in jail. Harry had had to vouch for him. Fortunately the St. Louis cops were ball fans.
The passing countryside began to take on a different look: more grazing land, with fewer farmhouses and haystacks; rolling hills with clouds piled high behind; tree rows stretching in dark lines across paler land; wildflowers—golds and purples and blues—along the embankments, their smells, with those of grasses and nettles, drifting to us at the country stations where we stopped for water and coal.
Sweasy conducted a seminar on Indians in our car, recounting a succession of lurid stories: A Swedish settlement on the Saline River had been overrun only two months ago by marauding Sioux. A soldier had taken the scalp of a live Indian prisoner after witnessing the same done to a white settler. A copper-skinned killer named Red Cloud, who stood taller than Gould, was even now roaming the plains with two thousand bloodthirsty painted horsemen.
“Truly, Sweaze?” said Andy. “I mean, out where we’re goin’?”
“Listen to this.” Sweasy opened a copy of the St. Louis Republican. “‘We have received particulars of the Indian massacre: The tongues and hearts were cut out of the dead bodies; the calves of their legs were slit down and tied under their shoes; pieces of flesh were cut from their back; pieces of telegraph wire were stuck into the bodies; the ears were cut off and heads scalped. The Indians boiled the hearts of their victims for medicine.’”
He looked grimly pleased at the shock it produced.
“Where’s the damn army?” said Gould.
“‘Companies A and D of the Seventh Cavalry, under Colonels Weir and Custer,’” Sweasy read, “‘are to be sent after the depredators.’”
“Seems they’re a mite late,” Waterman said. “Answer what Andy asked, Sweaze—these things happening close by or ain’t they?”
“Just down in Kansas,” Sweasy said ominously. “Near Hays City, where that Hickok feller shot some men just last month. Not more’n a hundred miles from where we’ll pass. Course you gotta keep in mind that Injuns travel all over the countryside. There’s trouble up in Montana, too, so it’s my hunch we’ll pass right through the middle.”
“But I saw in the paper,” Harry said, “that everything was peaceful along the Pacific Railroad.”
“I read that,” Sweasy admitted. “But it’s likely temporary.”
Like the rest, I wanted to see real Indians. Herds of buffalo rolling like thunder over the plains. The Wild West—even now already sensationalized and romanticized.
“On the Washita River, not three hundred miles due south of here,” Sweasy went on—he’d obviously done his homework—“is where Sheridan took on Black Kettle last November. Sent Custer to surprise ’em in their winter village. Left a hundred savages dead in the snow.”
“No women or children, of course,” I said.
“They went in a-shootin’,” he said. “At anything that moved—and some as didn’t.”
It got a laugh.
“Are we supposed to cheer about a massacre?”
He looked at me coolly. “They didn’t stay on their reservations like they’re supposed to.”
“Like we say they’re supposed to.”
This produced a general silence.
“You Quaker?” Sweasy demanded.
“Why?”
“You talk like a John Injun-lover.”
At that point Champion, who seldom participated in our conversations, moved down the aisle. “I’ve studied military tactics,” he said. “I’m certain that Sheridan ordered a winter attack because the Indians’ lighter ponies could outdistance cavalry mounts in summer, laden as they are with weaponry and equipment.”
Thanks, General, I thought. Go back and play with your toy soldiers. “A tactical consideration,” I said, “but morally—”
I stopped as Harry touched my arm. “They haven’t developed the land, Sam.” His tone was mollifying, the voice of reason.
I took a breath, realizing I was up against the century’s dominant ethos: progress—meaning whatever could be profitably exploited.
“One of the Empires knew California Jack personal,” said Allison, changing the subject.
It drew immediate interest. Recently a Pennsylvania bank had been relieved of twenty thousand dollars by a robber of that name.
“Said he lived only a few doors away,” said Allison. “Wife and kids, right there in St. Louis.”
The notion of a bank robber having a family life stirred discussion. Gould claimed that the country’s first train robbery had happened outside Cincinnati in the spring of ’65, when a gang of roughs derailed a baggage car and looted its safe.
“Anybody heard of Billy the Kid?” I asked. Nobody had. I tried the Jameses, Youngers, Daltons, Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane, Joaquin Murietta, Bat Masterson. None got a glimmer of recognition. Either it was too early or the Stockings were abysmally ignorant. “Zorro?” I tried.
“Sam, you’re talkin’ queer,” said Andy.
In northern Missouri we crossed level prairies thatched with wild strawberries and freshened by clear streams. For lunch we had catfish—fried, breaded, served with corn fritters—in Hannibal, the town where Twain had grown up. It had doubtless changed a good deal since he left fifteen years ago. The railroad’s arrival had brought a booming lumber business. Sawmills crowded the foot of town, along the river. New buildings stood everywhere.
I walked to the Mississippi. In the distance kids shouted as they jumped from a half-submerged log, splashing into placid water, which looked leaden on this blazing day. It was weird to think that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn hadn’t yet been written. I looked around, considering the sluggish river, the drab frame structures and dusty trees, the buzzing flies. Maybe it was idyllic to be a boy here, but for me it would be brain-killing, stifling, a long deadly summer of monotony. Small wonder Twain romanticized but seldom revisited his roots.
We swapped our spacious sleeping car for a dilapidated Hannibal & St. Joseph coach that swayed and lurched so crazily we could scarcely stand up. Glasses and books and decks of cards were thrown periodically to the floor. Sweating through the heat-blasted Missouri landscape, we were hardly comforted by the evidence of past wrecks along the tracks. In one place seven smashed cars formed a triangular heap, their locomotive nose-down in a swampy hole.
Our slow pace worried me. The Pacific Railroad began at Omaha, jumping-off point for all transcontinental traffic. It was a likely place for McDerrnott to intercept me. Was he already there, waiting with Le Caron? We poked through St. Joseph, crossed into Iowa, dragged westward. Twenty-four hours on that wretched line.
At last the conductor called, “Council Bluffs! All for Omaha change to the stage!”
We changed with a vengeance, stampeding to omnibuses lined before the station. Andy and George got choice seats inside; Brainard, Gould, and I—the lead foots—had to sit on top with the luggage. For one solid bone-rattling hour we were jolted and tossed as a four-horse team moved over muddy ruts—“defects in the road,” the driver termed them. We climbed down shakily at the ferry landing on the Missouri River. Before us on the opposite shore, set on a hill and crowned by a white-domed capitol, lay Omaha City.
We crossed Big Muddy’s silt-laden current on a flat-bottomed steamer—it was hard to comprehend these boats journeying two thousand miles up the Missouri, farther than we still had to go to San Francisco—and we duly disembarked in Nebraska, proud new thirty-seventh state.
The Union Pacific depot was a scene of vast and boisterous confusion. There were dandified easterners in stovepipe hats, their women richly bonneted and shawled, children cavorting on piles of luggage; haggard miners; loudmouthed agents pitching stocks and myriad get-rich-quick schemes; Jewish pack peddlers; soldiers; hucksters who shilled for saloons and gambling houses; hunters carrying long Sharps rifles; German and Irish and Swedish emigrant families.
That day’s Pacific Express to Sacramento was packed to the last inch of space. Worse yet, nearly a thousand would-be passengers waited to pay higher rates for an express with guaranteed Pullman cars—exactly what we wanted. I felt the old tension in my shoulder blades. We would be stuck here for some time. I pressed close to the others and kept a nervous watch. Le Caron could be anywhere.
“Hey, Sweaze!” somebody yelled. “Injuns!”
Sure enough, near some foul-smelling frontier types in greasy animal skins stood a shabby group of Indians in white people’s clothing, wearing feathers in their braids and necklaces of beads and talons, the men’s black eyes glassy—from whiskey, we learned—as they begged from new arrivals by silently holding out their hands; one woman, more aggressive, offered peeks at her baby for ten cents.
Sweasy, shoved forward by Mac and Gould, forked over fifty cents to actually hold the infant. As he did so, a strange softness came over his face. We watched in amazement as he made cooing sounds and tried to nuzzle the baby. Alarmed, the mother snatched it away. We burst into laughter. From then on she was known as “Sweaze’s squaw.”
A ragged black huckster emerged from a line of baggage and express wagons and approached us, shouting the merits of the Cozzens House. Brainard finally yelled, “That’s enough! We know about it!”
The man paused, doffed his hat with comic politeness, and bowed deeply. “Which road does you own, suh, de Union or de Westun?”
Brainard’s cheeks burned.
Hatton and Champion decided it would be better to take the next day’s express rather than wait around for a mixed train—freight and passenger—which would stop at every station. I felt relieved when we finally shouldered our bags and set out in search of the Cozzens House. I wasn’t wild about staying overnight in Omaha, but at least I wouldn’t have to feel like a clay pigeon at the station.
We’d anticipated a woolly frontier town. Instead we found a bustling city of twenty-five thousand. The mud in the broad streets looked rich enough to yield crops, but downtown boasted clusters of four-story brick buildings.
The Cozzens House turned out to be owned, like much of Omaha, by an eccentric promoter, George Francis Train, who’d had the foresight to buy hundreds of acres of prime land, including the port area now called “Traintown,” at nominal prices. The coming of the transcontinental line made him a multimillionaire. The desk clerk told us that Train expected Omaha to mushroom to one hundred thousand, making it the largest city after New York and a veritable Athens of the West.
Don’t hold your breath, I thought.
The local ball clubs quickly found us and took us around in open carnages. We saw dizzying numbers of UP supply yards and storage sheds. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about railroad construction. But I did enjoy seeing the Lincoln Car—the famous coach in which the President’s body had been conveyed from Washington to Springfield—reserved now by the UP for ceremonial occasions.
Our hosts showed us new frame dwellings going up by the hundreds. Single lots sold for a thousand dollars and up. Housing was at a premium.
“Shoot,” said Allison, eyeing one tract. “Them dinky things’re crabbed so close they’d all go together in a fire!”
Champion gave him a sour look.
“I been counting,” Waterman informed us. “It’s a close thing, but the grog shops lay over the churches.”
As though picking up on his cue, our guides deposited us at the Tivoli Gardens, where we hoisted schooners of lager that evening under gaslit locust trees and swatted mosquitoes the size of bees. George purchased pennyroyal leaves to rub on our skin, but it didn’t repel them.
“Interestin’ out this way,” said Andy, examining a bite on his hand. “But I wouldn’t fancy it.”
“Me neither.” I sat against the wall, gun in pocket, keeping watch on the entrance.
A noise at the door. Had I dreamed it? I sat up in a sweat, eyes straining in the early light. It came again, a faint tap. Heart racing, I looked around. The others—Andy, Sweasy, and Mac—were asleep. I moved to the door, gun in hand. Would they really try it here?
Again a tap. I pressed against the jamb and muttered, “Who is it?”
“Sam?” came a whisper. “It’s me.”
It was Johnny’s voice.
Distrusting my ears, I opened the door a crack. He stood in the hallway holding a battered valise. I pulled him inside. He waited silently while I slipped into shirt and pants. We stepped into the hall.
“How’d you find us?”
“Followed you,” he said tentatively, as if fearing my reaction. “Got on the next train after yours. Didn’t figure to catch you till Frisco.”
“Why’d you come? What about Helga?”
“She took it hard, but she understood I had to make a change. I sold my wheel to buy my ticket.”
“What about the money you won?”
“Used most of it to settle up with Helga.” He smiled faintly. “Still have most of what’s left, since they’ll only let me ride third class. Said there ain’t special colored cars yet—but took my money quick enough. Damn near a freight car, what I been in.”
“Johnny, why’re you doing this?”
His amber eyes blinked. “Gonna make a new life out West.”
I was thinking that the fairgrounds race had hurt him more deeply than I’d thought when his next words startled me.
“And I knew you weren’t coming back, Sam.”
I stared at him. “That’s a hell of a lot more than I know. How can you say that?”
“I only been close to a few people,” he said. “They all went away. By now I know when it’s set to happen.”
It gave me a funny chill. “I’m just taking a trip.”
He shrugged and said, “Me too,” as if each of us had our little delusions.
“Johnny, what is it you want with me?”
“What if I said when it got down to brass tacks, I didn’t want you going off without me?”
“I’d say that was pretty hokey,” I told him.
“I could pass as your manservant. Hell, I’d be your servant to go first class!”
I considered it. We were already short of space; his presence would hardly be welcome in our car.
“I’d pay the extra fare, wouldn’t cost anybody—”
“I don’t think you can come with us, Johnny,” I said, and felt bad when I saw his expression.
“How about you take a different train, Sam? We go to Frisco together.”
“But I’ve already paid for my ticket with the club.”
He looked at me silently.
“Damn it, Johnny, you shouldn’t have come all—”
“Okay,” he interrupted. “I’ll be going on then. See you in Frisco.” He started down the hall, then turned. “Oh, one other thing. Remember the dark breed who got away from us, set the boat afire?”
“Le Caron.” My blood slowed abruptly.
“I saw him with that red-haired gambler, the one that laughs real loud when nothing’s funny.”
“Jesus, where?”
“A few stations out of St. Joseph, can’t recall which one. Just caught sight of ’em for a second climbing on a different train.”
“Oh, shit. Heading this way?”
He nodded and turned away again.
“Wait a second.” My thoughts spun in new directions. “You know when the next westbound’s scheduled?”
“In an hour, at seven, but it’s not an express.”
I made up my mind. The club had no chance of departing until much later. “Meet me at the depot in forty-five minutes.”
“Okay!”
I dressed and packed, knocked on Champion’s door. He looked silly in a nightcap and sleeping gown. I gave him my contrived story.
“That anxious to see your folks, eh?” He didn’t look heartbroken at the prospect of my departing. “Well, all right, though you’d probably make swifter time waiting for the express.”
“Thanks, sir, but I’m awfully anxious to see ’em—more so every minute.”
I woke Andy just before I left. “You in trouble again, Sam?” “Naw, just itchy.”
“Stay out of hot water this time, hear?” “I’ll try,” I told him. “See you on the coast.”
The depot was not nearly so crowded; by now only parties reserving entire cars, like the Stockings, still waited. The individual fare was $133 to Sacramento, $76 due then as the UP portion, another $57 to be paid the Central Pacific at Promontory, Utah, where all passengers changed trains. We had no problem converting Johnny’s ticket to first class. I broke one of my hundred-dollar bills grudgingly, hoping I could get a partial rebate from the club.
“Maybe I’ll strike it rich out West!” Johnny exclaimed as we put our bags on a loading cart.
I breathed the cool air, aromas of leather and hay and coffee. “The gold rush is over.”
“Money’s lyin’ around everywhere, so I hear.”
“Good luck picking some up.”
“With you familiar out there, Sam, I figure I’ll get a start.”
Great, I thought.
A shill shouted, “Last chance for train insurance! Spare yourself loss or injury! Reasonable rates!”
I thought about my cash and letter of credit. How dangerous was this trip?
“Just a dodge,” said Johnny. “Scare the suckers, then sell ’em your cure. Saw it plenty around the circus.”
We boarded a dismal day car that converted to a sleeper by means of hinged benches folding from the walls. Imagining the Pullman awaiting the Stockings—velvet carpets, spacious berths, ventilation, suspension system that removed all but the most severe bounces—I was already envious as we sat on threadbare upholstery, breathed stale air, and were jolted as the cars lurched forward.
“Ah, the real goods,” Johnny sighed, envying no one, stretching on the seat beside me. He pointed to an omnibus disgorging some thirty immigrants into third-class cars. “See them? That’s how it was for me all the way here.”
“In that case you’d better shape up as my darky,” I said. “Or I won’t keep you on.”
“Sam, don’t you start believing that stuff!”
We left Omaha’s bluffs and chugged across a wide plain. Occasional trees or rock outcroppings crawled past. When a rotund black conductor punched our tickets I asked how fast we were going.
“Twenty miles each hour, suh,” he said, eyeing Johnny narrowly. “Maybe twenty-five just now. Steady work.”
But slow. Faster trains averaged in the forties on level ground, twenty-five to thirty-five on ascents.
“How long will it take us to go on through?” Depends on the traffic, but only a few days.” He beamed at me. “A revolutionary time, suh! New York to San Francisco in ten days! Down to six when the rivers are bridged. A revolutionary time!”
It took some four weeks, I knew, by the Isthmus route. If nothing went wrong. And just about everything could go wrong, from storms to fatal epidemics. For overland pioneers in ox-drawn wagons it had been worse: crossing from St. Louis to California required three months. The railroad had reduced that journey to less than a week. Revolutionary, indeed.
The passengers in our car didn’t resemble the usual first-class crowd. Most looked a bit down on their luck. There were only three women, one with a squalling baby who promised to make our lives miserable. Sheathed in heavy clothing, they already wielded fans as the day’s heat began to break upon us.
The first dining stop, at Grand Island, was typical of those to come. Informed that we had thirty minutes, we poured into a rough dining room (the sign simply said R.R. HOUSE) where we gulped beefsteak, eggs, potatoes, and cubes of some sort of mush—all fried in thick grease. As we moved westward the steaks would become antelope and buffalo, though I suspected it was all stringy beef, accompanied by hoecakes, sweet potatoes, and boiled Indian corn soaked liberally in syrup. Any variance from this—chicken stew, for example, which might really be prairie dog—was cause for discussion. Meals were expensive, too, usually at least a dollar.
About a hundred miles out of Omaha trees disappeared entirely. We entered a high barren prairie dotted with bluffs. Squads of antelopes raced the train—and generally won. We saw occasional elk and numerous prairie-dog villages, sights which excited the easterners in the car. But as the miles passed and no buffalo or wild Indians presented themselves, telescopes and opera glasses were put aside.
“Har har!” chortled a leather-faced, Popeye-sounding man several seats ahead. “That’s a rich ’un!” He read laboriously from a Leslie’s supplied for a fee by pain-in-the-ass vendors known as “train butches,” who paraded through the cars selling everything from tooth powder to guidebooks.
A plump Chicago dry-goods dealer named Beard bent my ear interminably, claiming that the UP was pulling a gigantic swindle in wrangling ninety-six thousand dollars for each mile in this so-called mountain section, which was actually level. The company was already paying its backers one hundred percent dividends, and the road had barely been open four months.
“Does sound a bit fishy,” I said, remembering that Grant’s administration was rocked by scandals. Had the transcontinental line been one? I couldn’t recall.
“Mark me, sir,” said Beard. “When everything comes to light a foulness will rise under heaven!”
Johnny yawned prodigiously and got up to pursue a train butch who’d passed through hawking plums.
Beard quit his polemic as my long looks out the window grew more frequent. Actually there was little to see: tumbleweeds blowing in acres of sun-blasted gray grasses that undulated like flowing water; it was as if we weren’t moving at all, but were adrift in a hot, monotonous sea. Not even the Platte, which we’d followed for miles, was now visible.
At length Johnny returned with plums. In a low voice he said, “I went up and down the cars. Looked in every one. There’s a passel of card games going on. I checked those especially close.”
“And?”
“No sign of them on this train.”
So far, so good, I thought.