The Last Spike | Page 2

we want men to drive mules and stakes, to grade, lay track, and fight Indians--but engineers? We've got 'em to use for cross-ties."
"I am able and willing to do any of these things--except the Indians--and I'll tackle that if nothing else offers."
"There's a man for you," said the General to his assistant as Bradford went out with a note to Jack Casement, who was handling the graders, teamsters, and Indian fighters. "No influential friends, no baggage, no character, just a man, able to stand alone--a real man in corduroys and flannels."
Coming up to the gang, Bradford singled out the man who was swearing loudest and delivered the note. "Fall in," said the straw boss, and Bradford got busy. He could handle one end of a thirty-foot rail with ease, and before night, without exciting the other workmen or making any show of superiority, he had quietly, almost unconsciously, become the leader of the track-laying gang. The foreman called Casement's attention to the new man, and Casement watched him for five minutes.
Two days later a big teamster, having found a bottle of fire-water, became separated from his reasoning faculties, crowded under an old dump-cart, and fell asleep.
"Say, young fellow," said the foreman, panting up the grade to where Bradford was placing a rail, "can you skin mules?"
"I can drive a team, if that's what you mean," was the reply.
"How many?"
"Well," said Bradford, with his quiet smile, "when I was a boy I used to drive six on the Montpelier stage."
So he took the eight-mule team and amazed the multitude by hauling heavier loads than any other team, because he knew how to handle his whip and lines, and because he was careful and determined to succeed. Whatever he did he did it with both hands, backed up by all the enthusiasm of youth and the unconscious strength of an absolutely faultless physique, and directed by a remarkably clear brain. When the timekeeper got killed, Bradford took his place, for he could "read writin'," an accomplishment rare among the laborers. When the bookkeeper got drunk he kept the books, working overtime at night.
In the rush and roar of the fight General Dodge had forgotten the young man in corduroys until General Casement called his attention to the young man's work. The engineers wanted Bradford, and Casement had kicked, and, fearing defeat, had appealed to the chief. They sent for Bradford. Yes, he was an engineer, he said, and when he said it they knew it was true. He was quite willing to remain in the store department until he could be relieved, but, naturally, he would prefer field work.
He got it, and at once. Also, he got some Indian fighting. In less than a year he was assigned to the task of locating a section of the line west of the Platte. Coming in on a construction train to make his first report, the train was held up, robbed, and burned by a band of Sioux. Bradford and the train crew were rescued by General Dodge himself, who happened to be following them with his "arsenal" car, and who heard at Plumb Creek of the fight and of the last stand that Bradford and his handful of men were making in the way car, which they had detached and pushed back from the burning train. Such cool heroism as Bradford displayed here could not escape the notice of so trained an Indian fighter as General Dodge. Bradford was not only complimented, but was invited into the General's private car. The General's admiration for the young pathfinder grew as he received a detailed and comprehensive report of the work being done out on the pathless plains. He knew the worth of this work, because he knew the country, for he had spent whole months together exploring it while in command of that territory, where he had been purposely placed by General Sherman, without whose encouragement the West could not have been known at that time, and without whose help as commander-in-chief of the United States army the road could not have been built.
As the pathfinders neared the Rockies the troops had to guard them constantly. The engineers reconnoitered, surveyed, located, and built inside the picket lines. The men marched to work to the tap of the drum, stacked arms on the dump, and were ready at a moment's notice to fall in and fight. Many of the graders were old soldiers, and a little fight only rested them. Indeed there was more military air about this work than had been or has since been about the building of a railroad in this country. It was one big battle, from the first stake west of Omaha to the last spike at Promontory--a battle that lasted five long years; and if the men had marked