It was midafternoon by the time we pulled into Cisco, and Brina and I jostled our way down the aisle with everyone else and out into the breezy sunshine. The man who’d been itching to start a fight unexpectedly did a little shuffle step before giving me a hard shove. “Anytime, Mick.”
I saw red, instantly and everywhere! Before I could take a swing, though, the Necco man grabbed my arm and wrangled me away. “Not worth your hide, son,” he cautioned, though what did he know about how I valued my own hide? I was so boiling mad, struggling to get at that George fellow, who was braying like a donkey at my being pulled away from him, that some time passed before the man would release his grip on me. George, by then, was nowhere in sight.
“Do you have any family here in Cisco?” he asked. “Any friends?”
He said it with fatherly concern, though in a gentler manner than I’d ever known. I shook my head.
“Well, you’ve got a lot of gravel in your gut, so I’m not going to lose sleep over you. But a word of warning: This isn’t the city. Mind your temper and be careful.” He handed me the opened roll of candies and, with an understanding smile and a good-bye nod, struck out for the cluster of buildings along the town’s main thoroughfare.
I drank in a lungful of the frigid mountain air, shook off a shiver, and then went exploring with Brina. Didn’t take long to get our bearings, because Cisco was little more than a hodgepodge of steep-roofed buildings clinging to the mountainside, some teetering on stilts. Looked as if it had been hammered together overnight. And while stacks of firewood rose from the snowdrifts in every yard, the forest hemmed the invasion on all sides, waiting to reclaim its territory.
When we were climbing back up the main street, a thunderous boom from farther up the mountain pounded the sky. I felt its reverberations travel right through me, and the sheer power of it made me grin. Another boom ripped the air. My chest expanded. This was an exciting place!
The pungent fragrance of newly sawn wood that emanated from Cisco’s every pore tickled my nose. The clouds of smoke belching from warmed hearths and fire-hot engines stirred my blood. I began to notice the way people moved along the street, their windburned faces tipped skyward, seeking the dramatic curtain of mountains that curved around them. In their darkened pupils I saw a mirroring of my own exploding excitement, in their vaporous breaths, a similar readiness to meet any challenge.
A tingling surged down my arm like the spark on a fuse. It flamed in my empty palms. I, too, turned to face the mountains. Hand me a tool, any tool! I had to be part of this great effort, this joining of sinew and muscle and bone that dared to hurl itself against such an immense and impassive bulwark. We were only humans—ants, maybe—in comparison, but we were united in a swarm and intoxicated with a dream. We were ready. I was ready. Bring me my hammer!
Another explosion, and this time I saw a puff of white cloud drift above the distant trees. The heart of the action. How do I get there?
The leash went taut, yanking me into the moment. Brina was scrambling away from a rumbling wagon, its harnessed ox brandishing his horns. I reeled her to safety. Stroking her head, I searched the street for the railroad’s hiring office.
“Mr. Strobridge!” a man near me shouted. He was waving frantically, and I turned to see a rider on a lathered horse swinging his gaze left and right like a weathervane, seeking the caller. A black patch covered one of the rider’s eyes, and as he weaved through traffic, coming closer and closer, that funereal bandage served to dampen my fire some. My mind matched it to the mangled hand of the ticket seller in Sacramento, and that sounded an instant alarm. Explosions eat through more than rocks and trees, came the warning. They gouge out eyes and chew off fingers. Railroad building is not child’s play. A ratlike scurrying of fear traced my insides.
“Mr. Strobridge!” the man called again. “Over here!”
Screwing his face into a scowl, Mr. Strobridge kicked his horse toward where we stood. He rode right up to the man who had hailed him, a worried-looking sort who was juggling sheaves of paper and a couple of rolled maps. Mr. Strobridge crowded so close, in fact, that one paper tube skimmed a gob of lather from the horse’s chest.
“Confound it!” Mr. Strobridge spat. “I’ve not got a lick of effort from those bloody beggars Frank sent me! We’ve made not a hundred yards today, and there’s weather coming.” Abruptly, he swung out of the saddle, still towering over everyone by a full head. Ill temper poured from him like sweat.
A sound-minded person would have taken heed and stepped away, but I sidled closer. Couldn’t help myself. It was his voice: Irish, the sound of family.
He jabbed his finger on the man’s clipboard. “Tell Frank to get me more men, men who aren’t afraid to bend their backs. I don’t give a fiddler’s fart where he finds them. And spikes, too. There’s more rails than spikes at the head now, and if I find out who’s responsible for that oversight, I’ll string him up.” His short red beard jerked with each order and the pickax handle secured at his waist bobbed with an eagerness to enforce those orders. “Where are the elevations ye promised me yesterday? Do ye have them?”
“Yes, sir, they’re here. Just a minute while I . . .” The man began fumbling with his papers, but Mr. Strobridge reached in and grabbed a sheaf for himself.
“We’re losing money by the minute, do ye understand? If we don’t get inside the tunnel before the snows, this whole operation shuts down.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where is Frank?”
“Overseeing a problem with the blasting.”
“Well, tell him to get me more men first thing, Chinamen if he has to. Throw a net over them in San Francisco. They’re near as good as the white laborers, and they don’t cost as much.”
“Yes, sir.”
Whether it was his voice, his towering height, or that some people by their very nature can’t be ignored, Mr. Strobridge captured the townspeople’s attention like a teacher in a classroom. Up and down the street, conversations halted as his voice boomed over them. Men shifted their eyes toward every fervent outburst, noted each threatening gesture. Even Mr. Strobridge’s tired horse gave up rubbing his cheek against a foreleg to prick his ears at the man, lest he suffer a blow for not paying attention.
As the bellowing continued, I noted several men idling at a storefront across the street: toughs, by their swagger. They wiped at leathery faces, burnished a hot-poker red, with sun-rotted shirtsleeves; they repositioned hats that had wilted under rain and fog and snow. Beneath the droopy brims of those hats poked hanks of hair, variously bushy or scraggly but generally uncombed and untamed.
They, too, were watching Mr. Strobridge vent his temper on the poor map holder, but like overgrown hooligans in the back of the classroom, they watched with confederate smirks. Wasn’t long before one of them began mocking Mr. Strobridge’s tantrum. That spread like disease, and next thing you knew a couple of the more animated fellows were pantomiming his gestures as quickly as he made them. Passersby began to split their attention between the two shows. The hooligans were making such a racket, I was surprised Mr. Strobridge didn’t call them out.
The most exuberant character, a freckly sort with a corn yellow mustache, bent to whisper to one of his mates. Covering one eye, he began chasing them back and forth, lashing them with an invisible stick. They howled and danced in pretend agony, and onlookers laughed. But not until someone up the street hooted like an owl and pointed did Mr. Strobridge take notice. He left off his tirade to unleash a bull’s-eye glare at the would-be actors. That sent them scampering away, shoving each other and giggling. I laughed.
Mistake.
Mr. Strobridge whipped his head around, and that black eye patch of his blotted out the sun. I’m not kidding. Filled the whole sky with black. “Laugh again,” he said, “and it’ll be a sad day for your mother.” For what seemed an eternity, he pinned me under his glare. I heard Brina growl, but he took no notice, just spun his head away at last and returned his attention to the unfurled papers.
I was left blinking, stunned by my own misjudgment. Like the time back in my neighborhood when I’d poked fun at a drunkard who’d tripped over his own feet. I’d lost a couple of teeth and some memory for that one.
Brina stood watching the man, her hackles raised, but as the moment passed and he paid us no more attention, they smoothed. She backed up a few steps, shook herself, and rolled her eyes up at me. As plain as day her expression said, We shouldn’t be here.