Omaha, Nebraska
Every muscle ached.
Hudson Maguire groaned as he sat up in bed and let his feet touch the floor of the boardinghouse.
“Don’t groan so loud,” came a complaint from the other bed.
Using his foot, Hudson shook the neighboring mattress. “Get up, Raleigh. Time waits for no man.”
Raleigh sat up on his elbows. “All work and no play makes Raleigh a dull boy.”
“Dull but rich.”
“Hardly.”
Hudson tossed a pillow at his little brother’s face. “Hurry up or they’ll run out of ham again.”
That got Raleigh out of bed. Working fourteen hours a day in the rail yard of the Union Pacific caused a man to need some hefty fuel to get going: eggs, ham, bread and butter, potatoes, and coffee strong enough to eat through metal. But at the boardinghouse it was first-come, first-served, and with every room occupied with two workers—with a few sleeping in the halls besides—there had been a few mornings when he and Raleigh had been left with only bread and butter. Live and learn.
Hudson washed in the cold water in the basin. He looked in the mirror, wishing he had a pair of scissors to trim his beard. Even though it occasionally itched something crazy, he’d grown used to it during the war. Besides, there was never time or hot water to shave. He ran a comb through his hair, which touched his shoulders. He had no idea where there was a barber in Omaha. And who had the time and money to waste on vanity?
Not him. Every nickel Hudson earned was for his girl, Sarah Ann, back in Pennsylvania. He’d gone home to Allegheny City after the war, and checked in on the cotton mill where he and his entire family worked. Their oldest brother, John, had been killed in battle, moving Hudson to the top of the hierarchy of the remaining three boys. As the new eldest, it was his responsibility to do everything he could to keep the family stable. But for that they needed more money than the mill could provide.
When Hudson heard General Cain was going to head up the work crews on the new Transcontinental Railroad—and was going to pay good wages—he’d known it was the best way for him to earn seed money he could plant for the rest of his life. So he and his youngest brother, Raleigh, had left their middle brother, Ezra, to work at the mill and take care of their mother, father, and Sarah Ann, who lived nearby with her family. Once the railroad was completed, Hudson would go home, marry Sarah Ann, move away from the Pittsburgh area, and find another way to make a living. Maybe carpentry. He liked building things.
Sarah Ann had promised to wait for him, and he’d vowed not to disappoint her.
The West held so many possibilities that he considered bringing his entire family out to join him. Anything to be away from the stagnant and difficult life in the mills. He’d build them their own houses with plenty of windows, and a porch where they could all gather in the evenings to watch the sunsets. There was something about the prairie sunsets that fascinated him.
He heard the thunder of feet going downstairs to eat.
Sarah Ann might wait, but breakfast wouldn’t.
Raleigh ran a finger across the front of his teeth while he and Hudson walked to the work site. “I think that butter was rancid. I feel it coating my teeth.”
“You could consider brushing them.”
He held up his index finger. “This’ll be fine. Back home a stick or a feather did the trick.”
“You make us sound like hicks. We had toothbrushes. That you chose never to use one is your problem.”
“Yes, it is,” Raleigh said, stretching his arms high. “I like being on our own.” He pointed west. “We’ve got the whole world in front of us.”
Hudson hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “And our responsibilities back in Pennsylvania. The family’s depending on us to earn enough to make their lives better too.”
Raleigh shrugged. “I’m not going back.”
Hudson stopped his brother, shoving his shoulder to confront him face-to-face. “Neither of us wants to go back there for good. But we can’t forget about them. You know Da’s back makes it hard for him to work like he used to.”
“That he ever thought he could load that barge like he was still twenty . . .”
“See? He needs us. So does Mum and . . . Mum.”
Raleigh grinned. “Mum and Sa-rah-ann.” He sang her name.
Which was fitting because Sarah Ann was like a song, a gentle melody that hung in the air.
Hudson pushed his brother to get him going again. “It might do you good to find a woman to tame your mangy hide and get you to settle down.”
Raleigh shook his head. “I’m only eighteen. You had your time for adventure during the war while I was stuck at home with Mum and Da. I’m not near ready to settle for anything.”
“I’m not settling. I’m working toward a goal.”
Raleigh rubbed his fingers together. “So am I. I’m aching for the dough. The greenbacks. The silver.” He slapped the pocket of his coat. “I can’t wait to be weighed down with the money.”
“Money to send home.”
It was Raleigh’s turn to stop. “Not all of it. Right off the top the railroad’s going to keep twenty dollars a month for room and board, so that’s already near seven days a month we’re working for free. A man deserves to keep a decent amount for all his trouble. Don’t he?”
Hudson felt bad for his little brother. He understood the attraction of being off on his own. When Hudson joined the Union Army with John and Ezra and they’d first marched off to battle, he’d felt puffed up inside, like he was finally a man. They were doing something noble and good by fighting for their country and the cause of freedom.
The lofty feeling only lasted until the first shots were fired and he actually saw a Confederate killed by his bullet, and then saw John killed, right there beside him. A few seconds was all it took. Their first battle had been John’s last. How unfair was that?
Hudson and Ezra had nearly given up and gone home, right then. If it hadn’t been for General Cain riding through the stunned and hurting ranks that evening, pausing to offer his special condolences for the loss of their brother . . . And so he and Ezra had managed to stay on and fight—for John’s sake. They didn’t want him to have died for nothing. And Maguires were not quitters.
Fighting never became second nature, though Hudson had become numb to the blood. He’d had to. A soldier couldn’t be heaving behind every bush. Dysentery caused enough problems.
Hudson was thankful the war was over so Raleigh would never have to see such violence, never smell death, never be scared into thinking that it would be better to die rather than to endure the constant fear.
A swat to Hudson’s hat brought him back to the present. “Ah, don’t worry about me,” Raleigh said. “I ain’t as dumb as I pretend to be. I know what’s what with saving a little money. As a spiker we’ll get three dollars a day—which is ninety dollars a month. Even after the room and board, we’ll have seventy.”
“Glad to know you can add.”
They weren’t alone in their trek to the work yard. Hundreds of men swarmed forward like ants converging on a crumb. The crumb was work. The crumb was money. The crumb was hope. Many were soldiers needing work after the war, but many were immigrants from the East—and even Europe beyond—lured by the promise of steady work, decent pay, and the adventure of experiencing the mythical “West.” There were even ex-slaves working right alongside the men who’d fought to keep them enslaved. An odd thing, all around.
Hudson wasn’t as starry-eyed as some. There was fighting ahead. He’d heard awful tales from both sides of the Indian issue. There’d been Indian raiding parties and scalpings of railroad men. There’d been the Sand Creek massacre, where soldiers killed 150 Indians, including women and children. And the retaliation of a thousand Indians killing whites, pulling down telegraph wires, and burning Julesburg, Colorado, to the ground.
There seemed to be a lot of wrong going on, and very little right.
That’s what lay to the west, along with the hopes and dreams of a better future. Raleigh might still see the horrors of a different kind of war.
Hudson nudged his brother to get to the front of the group. There wasn’t work enough for every man, at least not until they got underway laying track. Hundreds had been waiting in Omaha, waiting for the Missouri River to be free of ice so supplies could come across. But finally the ground was thawed and they could get laying. The land ahead of them was mapped out and grading was underway. They had deadlines to meet or the Union Pacific wouldn’t get paid.
And if they didn’t get paid, all these men wouldn’t get paid.
Hudson and Raleigh shouldered past the crowd and settled right in front of the foreman. Hudson knew Boss had seen how hard they worked, so he was hoping—
“You and you,” Boss said, pointing at Hudson and Raleigh, then a couple dozen others. “I want these bunk cars finished by the end of the day.”
The men who weren’t chosen grumbled, but Boss yelled after them. “There’s a new shipment of ties to be loaded into the Burnettizer.”
The men ran toward that work, yet the Burnettizer was a mystery to Hudson. Somehow putting soft cottonwood railroad ties into a long cylinder, then taking all the air out and putting some chemical in, made soft wood hard. Supposedly. Hudson couldn’t help but think somebody at the railroad had been sold a bill of goods.
It wasn’t his problem. Hudson had to assume that Dr. Durant and Mr. Reed and all the others who were in charge had the best interests of the project at heart.
Boss interrupted Hudson’s thoughts with his usual, “Get on it, men!”
Hudson was not surprised that the bunk cars were General Cain’s invention. The general had always put his men first.
Up until these cars were built, the workers who’d laid the first forty miles of track had been forced to bring their housing with them. They’d slept in tents or shanties and moved their shelter as the work progressed. It was not entirely efficient. But these bunk railcars would let the workers move with the work without having to set things up from scratch at every stop.
Hudson climbed on top of the first car, which was taller than a normal railcar. There were three rows of windows mirroring stacks of three bunks. Both ran the length of the car, which was eighty-five feet long. Hudson knew. He’d measured and cut the floor planks to fit. Today, they were installing skylights on the roof.
“Catch,” said a worker on the ground. He heaved a rope up to Hudson. At the ground end, the rope was tied to a large pane of glass. “Careful now. Pull ’er up.”
They installed the glass and continued the process many times across the top of the bunk cars. After repeatedly squatting down to nail the mullions in place, Hudson stood and arched his back.
Raleigh laughed at him, though he also stretched. “What is it Da always says?”
“That which does not kill us makes us strong.”
Raleigh pointed his hammer at him. “Yeah, that’s the one. I hate that saying.”
Maybe so. But it was true. And Hudson knew that this work was nothing compared to laying rails.