Separate Roads (6 page)

But with the growing success of the Central Pacific’s line came a growing attention from the outside world. Charlie had shared not more than two days earlier an article in the
Sacramento Union
in which editor Lauren Upson praised the railroad’s efforts. Two members of the CP’s “Big Four,” as the railroad’s founding fathers were called, had taken a party of some thirty visitors from Sacramento to the end of the line, which fell just short of Newcastle, California. The party had included Upson, and he had been most enthusiastic about the line. Charlie had been glad for this bit of news, telling Kiernan that a bad report might well have found them washed up without hope of continuing—at least not until the problems of bond issues and government monies could be sorted through. With a good report, however, folks might be given over to purchasing stock with the railroad, bolstering support for their sagging coffers.

Upson had been generous with his praise, citing proposed plans as though the details were already well in place. He even predicted that once the official passenger cars were in use, the smoothness of the line would allow a man to read as comfortably as if seated in a rocking chair in his own home.

Kiernan would like to believe it might be true. He wanted also to believe that the war back East would be resolved and focus might be given to the building of this transcontinental railroad, but no one thought that likely. He knew full well that the lack of money was only one issue slowing the progress of the line. A lack of men and supplies was equally to blame for the delay. It was now believed that the railroad might take upward of twenty years to complete. By then Kiernan would be fifty and doubted he’d still have it in him to swing a hammer.

Straightening and stretching, Kiernan pulled his cap from his head and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. His assignment at Newcastle Gap had presented an ever escalating problem. The Gap would mark the end of the first division for the Central Pacific. Newcastle, a small town some thirty miles from Sacramento, was a challenge to reach merely for the altitude of some additional one thousand feet. But an even bigger challenge lay just beyond Newcastle and had taken the name of Bloomer Cut.

Kiernan had never known a more obstinate piece of land in all the world. The Cut itself was to be a deep trough, wide enough for at least one line of track to pass through. Cut through a compressed gravel of natural glacial drift, it had been as hard as granite and nearly impossible to blast through. The laborers were growing deaf from the constant blasting of black powder charges, and still the land would barely yield to them.

Charlie had determined early on that the trough was to be some sixty-three feet deep and eight hundred feet long, and the very thought of such an undertaking exhausted Kiernan. We can scarcely keep men on to do the job, Kiernan thought, slapping the cap back on top of his auburn hair.

“O’Connor!” a voice called out, and Kiernan caught sight of Charlie as he plodded up the trail atop his heavily burdened sorrel horse.

It was payday, and as usual Charlie himself was paymaster. He had loaded his saddlebags with gold coins, at least with what little gold the railroad could spare, and had come to pay his meager troops. Kiernan waved and leaned against the wooden handle of the shovel he’d been using all morning.

The robust man brought his mount to a stop and tossed the reins down to Kiernan. “You look fit to be tied. Tell me it ain’t that bad.”

Kiernan raised his brows and looked heavenward. “If I were to go tellin’ ya a lie, then I’d have to be answerin’ to the good Lord.”

“Better Him than me,” Charlie declared with a laugh. He climbed out of the saddle and groaned as his boots hit the ground. “Ain’t harder earth in all the world.”

“Well, I can be agreein’ with ya on that matter,” Kiernan assured his employer.

“So what is it that has you lookin’ all hang-dogged?”

“Look around ya,” Kiernan replied. “We’re gettin’ nowhere. I can’t keep men on the line when gold fever calls them to the hills. This trough won’t go blastin’ and clearin’ itself. We need workers.”

“I know we do.” Charlie looked up and down the line at the dwindling crew. “I’ve been trying to come up with a solution for the situation. I’ve checked into everything from prisoners of war to allowing Chinese to work the line.”

“Chinese? Prisoners?” Kiernan questioned. “Why not just ask the government to go load up me kinsmen in Ireland and ship them directly to California?”

Charlie laughed heartily at this idea. “If it weren’t so costly to transport them, I would. And why not, if they can swing a hammer and carry a load? We need men, as you so clearly pointed out. Does it really matter who we bring on, so long as they do the work? Would it be so bad to have the Celestials workin’ the line?”

Kiernan had heard the almond-eyed Chinese called by this name on many an occasion, but it was the first time he’d heard Charlie use it. It surprised him, because it seemed more a term given over to the ladies, but it surprised him even more that Charlie was serious about bringing the Chinese on as laborers for the railroad. “I can’t say that I’d be carin’ as for meself, but there are those who would,” Kiernan began. “Ya know most of the men don’t take to workin’ with the Chinamen. Why, they’re scarcely civil to them when they’re doing little more than offering their laundry or food services. I’ve seen men take to beating a man nigh to death just for bein’ Chinese.”

“I’ve seen the same thing, but with the proper incentive I believe it might be possible to keep both parties at their appointed task. Maybe issue a ‘no pay’ rule. If they fight, they get no pay. If they attack a Chinaman—no pay.”

“Oh, and for sure that would be settin’ them against each other if nothin’ else did the trick. Besides, thar not much on size. Could ya really be expectin’ a small Chinaman to do the work of a brawny ol’ Irishman?”

“I think they’ve answered that question for themselves. Have you ever heard of the Great Wall of China?”

Kiernan shook his head. “Can’t say as I have.”

“It’s like nothing you can imagine. I’m told it’s thousands of miles long and all built by the Chinese centuries ago. If they can accomplish a feat like that, surely they would have the stamina to build a railroad.”

“But centuries ago, my people weren’t the defeated rabble ya see them as now,” Kiernan offered. “Who can be sayin’ that it’s any different for the Chinese?”

“Well, it’s just a thought, Kiernan. I have to look at all the possibilities, no matter how farfetched. Understand, we’ve enough troubles without a lack of laborers on our minds. There are still issues to be dealt with in the financial world—issues that refuse to be resolved and thus keep our funds ever dwindling without hope of renewal.” The big man looked past Kiernan to where men were shoveling out the latest blasting debris. Horse-drawn carts and weary laborers seemed to be an inadequate way to haul it all off, but there was no other recourse at this point.

“So are we to be havin’ a payday or not?” Kiernan asked, wondering with some concern just how serious the financial problems were.

“Oh, we’ll be having a payday,” Charlie assured. “At least this week. Who’s to say what’ll happen later down the road.”

Kiernan shook his head and walked Charlie’s horse over to the back of his debris cart. Tying the horse off, Kiernan could see that his dusty, rather discouraged friend was still contemplating the cut. “God hisself put that wall o’ rock in place,” Kiernan said, leaning back against the cart. “I’m supposin’ hisself would have the best chance of bringin’ it down.”

Charlie laughed at this and joined Kiernan. “God’s had to deal with old Charlie Crocker on more than one occasion. We’ve done our share of hagglin’ and wrestlin’, and God knows I’m a temperamental old cuss.”

Kiernan grinned. “Do say?”

“It’s true enough, and you well know it. But when I see a thing worth doing, I give it my best. The CP is worth doing. You believe that, don’t you, Kiernan?”

Kiernan remembered his now dead friend Ted Judah. It was Ted who had completely enticed Kiernan with the idea of a transcontinental railroad. Ted had died after leaving the Central Pacific over a disagreement of terms and conditions. En route to his home in the East, he had contracted yellow fever, leaving only his widow, Anna, to tell the sad tale. Ted had given his life to the idea of a transcontinental railroad, and Kiernan would have fought to see the thing built if only for the sake of Ted’s memory.

“Aye,” he finally answered. “I believe it’s worth doin’.”

“We need to be men of vision,” Crocker told him, with a heavy hand upon Kiernan’s shoulder. “The others may never see the dream or understand its importance, but we do, and we must fuel the fire that keeps the dream alive. We’re building from two separate directions—two separate roads, but the dream is the same from either end.”

“Yar soundin’ more and more like Ted,” Kiernan said, looking up at Crocker.

Charlie smiled and rubbed his whiskered chin. “We need more men like Ted Judah. He was full of fire and brimstone, and had he not been set on building a railroad, he would have made a good preacher.”

Kiernan laughed. “I suppose he would at that.”

“Do you still hear from his widow?”

Kiernan nodded. “The missus gets a letter now and then.” Even the thought of Victoria, now so far away in Sacramento, made Kiernan long to be back home.

“There you go with that look again,” Charlie said, dropping his hold. “I’m thinkin’ this has to do with more than just the railroad.”

“I’ve been thinkin’,” Kiernan said, although this was the first real thought he’d given the matter, “to bringin’ Victoria along with me on the line. I don’t like her bein’ alone in Sacramento.”

“She has friends there. Good women of the community who keep their homes open to her and make themselves available should she need someone,” Crocker countered. “You know full well this is no place to bring a lady.”

Kiernan knew what Charlie said was true, but he also knew the aching inside to see his wife—to hold her and keep her close and know she was safe from harm. It was a trial by sheer torture. He knew this was a difficult life. She had it much easier in Sacramento, but he knew she was lonely too. “Maybe I could just be movin’ her up to Roseville or Newcastle.”

“And keep movin’ her along from town to town?”

Kiernan nodded. “Maybe so.”

“What kind of life would that be?”

“And what kind of life would she be havin’ now? She works occasionally in the dry-goods store but otherwise has to get by on what I send home to her. She’s not as accepted in the homes of those quality women as ya might be likin’ to think. After all, many of their husbands are a-sittin’ on the board of directors for the Central Pacific. They’re not out here blastin’ and pickin’ at the earth to build the thing.”

“Perhaps they should be,” Charlie replied seriously. “Maybe if all of them, the troublemakers in San Francisco included, came out here to see what we were up against, they’d put a stop to arguing about bonds and stocks.”

“Mebbe,” Kiernan replied, looking overhead to the sun. “It’s time for lunch. “Do ya want to join me? I have some roasted pork that I bought off a vendor this morning.”

“Sounds good, and to that I’ll add the fresh biscuits, wedge of cheese, baked apples, and fried chicken that I brought with me from Roseville.”

Kiernan shook his head and grinned. “I suppose if ya insist.”

Charlie nodded. “Bring the saddlebags and come to the tent. We’ll discuss the problems of the CP over lunch. And maybe even the problems of the O’Connor family and their lengthy separation.”

6

Victoria O’Connor came awake in a slow, leisurely manner. She heard the melodic sounds of birds on the branches just outside her bedroom window and for a few glorious moments was taken back to her childhood home in Baltimore. Snuggling her chin to the top of her covers, she refused to open her eyes and pretended for a few moments that she was a child again.

Soon her mother would call her to get up and dress and help with her siblings. They would have a lavish breakfast of eggs and ham, sausages and apple fritters. She could smell the rich blend of Cook’s coffee and hear the chatter of her brothers and sisters. She had been so blessed as a child. Funny how she couldn’t appreciate it then. Now it seemed so very obvious. She had been loved and well cared for, never lacking for any good thing.