The Railroad War Read Online Free PDF Page B

farmland to allow Tinker to support himself by selling what he cannot use himself, and when the day comes to build my railroad, I can rely on Tinker to let me put its rail through the passes.”
    A final entry in the same diary told of Alex taking the Captain to Hidden Valley and showing it to him, then delivering the deed to Tinker. Jessie did not search through the later diaries. From the three entries she’d read, she could understand why her father had given Hidden Valley to Captain Tinker, and why Tinker would feel that if he needed help, he could turn to Alex.
    â€œI can understand a lot more than that, of course,” she’d said to Ki when telling him of the diary entries. “Alex outbid the cartel for Hidden Valley when he was competing with them during the time he was first investing in railroads. They must have records too, but even without records, some of them would remember the valley and the passes.”
    â€œThey’d remember how your father beat them, too,” Ki had reminded her. “The cartel never forgets or forgives a defeat. The feeling you had when Bobby first showed up was right, it seems. The South Sierra Railway Company is just another name for the cartel. We’ll go help Captain Tinker fight them, of course.”
    â€œOf course,” Jessie had replied, and the matter was settled.
    Now, jouncing along in the stagecoach on the last leg of their journey to Hidden Valley, Jessie could appreciate her father’s vision even more. Looking at the rugged mountains to the east and west, she could see where a route across level land such as the valley floor would make the passes at each of its ends a prize almost beyond price.
    Ahead of the stage, Jessie saw a huddle of buildings lining the road, and as they drew closer to them, she recognized them as the railhead supply camp. On one side there were new and well-built structures; these were offices for the construction bosses, and storage buildings for tools and supplies. The buildings were flanked by stacks of ties and rails, and away from these at a little distance stood corrals for the oxen and mules that pulled the big freightwagons.
    On the other side of the road stood a motley miscellany of other buildings, most of them shabby, some fairly substantial, but many only false fronts with tents behind their façades. Some had identifying signs: rooming houses and restaurants, saloons, gambling houses, and a few stores. Some had no signs, but were easy to recognize; they were cribs for the whores who, like the gamblers, swarmed where men had money and few places to spend it.
    Jessie had seen similar shantytowns at other railheads, and remembered that the shanties moved with the rails. Many of them were even designed to be moved, built on sturdy timbers to which wagon wheels could be attached. This feature and the predatory character of their inhabitants had been combined in the name by which construction crews called them wherever railroads were being built: Hell on Wheels.
    At that hour in midafternoon, Hell on Wheels had not yet come to life, and the road was deserted on the side the shantytown occupied. The opposite side was as active as a disturbed anthill. Men hurried between the buildings, and crews of laborers loaded supplies on the big freight wagons—not only ties and steel rails, but spikes and fishplates, sacks of nuts and bolts and wrenches, mauls, shovels, sledgehammers, all the materials needed by the tracklaying crews up the line.
    Ki was sitting beside the window on the right-hand side of the coach, Jessie on the left side, and since there were no other passengers, Bobby was occupying the seat facing them so that he could slide from window to window and watch whatever interested him in the area through which they were passing.
    Ki’s interest had been caught by the activity in the supply yard. He saw a big flatbed wagon, piled high with a load of crossties, pull out of a loading area just ahead of