Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Omaha, Nebraska 1867
August 6, 1867, Omaha, Nebraska
August 7, End of Track, West of Lodgepole Creek, Nebraska
August 8
Evening
August 9
August 10
August 11
August 13
August 14
August 16
August 17
August 18
August 19
August 25
August 26
August 27
August 28
August 29, Antelope, Nebraska (mile 451)
September 5
September 15
September 18
September 19
September 20
September 21
September 22
September 24
September 26
October 1
October 4
October 6
October 8
October 10
October 15
October 21
Wyoming
October 26, Hillsdale, Wyoming (mile 496)
October 28
November 1
November 9, Archer, Wyoming
November 10
November 18, Cheyenne, Wyoming (mile 516.4)
November 15
November 17
November 20
November 22
November 28
November 29
December 1
December 5
December 25
December 31
January 10, 1868
January 14
January 17
January 20
February 10
February 12
February 18
February 17
March 10
March 12
March 23
March 25
April 1
April 5, Sherman Summit, Wyoming
April 11
April 12
April 14
April 22
April 23
April 24
May 3
May 16
May 30
June 8, Laramie, Wyoming (mile 573)
June 12
June 14
June 20
July 1, Carbon, Wyoming (mile 656)
July 11
July 13
July 14
July 19, St. Mary’s, Wyoming (mile 679)
July 21, Benton, Wyoming (mile 696)
July 22
July 24, Rawlins, Wyoming
July 25
July 27
July 28, The Red Desert, Wyoming
August 1
August 10
August 11
August 15
August 20, Creston, Wyoming (mile 737)
September 1
September 6
September 18
September 19
October 1, Green River, Wyoming (mile 845)
October 4
October 7
October 15, Granger, Wyoming
October 25
October 26
October 27
October 29
November 3
November 11
November 14
November 16
November 18
November 19, Bear River City, Wyoming
November 20
November 23
November 26
November 28, Aspen Station, Wyoming (mile 937)
December 4, Evanston, Wyoming (mile 955)
December 5
Utah
December 10, Wasatch Town, Utah (mile 966)
December 16
December 24
December 25
December 26
December 28, Echo Summit, Utah (mile 969)
December 29, Castle Rock, Utah (mile 975)
December 30
January 3, 1869
January 5
January 8
January 15, Echo City, Utah (mile 991)
January 16
January 17
January 18
January 20
February 16 (1,000 miles)
February 18
February 19
February 23
February 29, Devil’s Gate, Utah (mile 1,018)
March 1
March 4
March 6
March 7, Ogden, Utah (mile 1,028)
March 8
March 9
March 10
March 11
March 12
March 13
March 14
March 24
March 25
March 27, Corinne, Utah (mile 1,055)
April 7
April 8
April 9
April 10
April 12
April 18
April 22
April 28
April 29
April 30
May 1
May 3
May 6
May 7
May 8
May 9, Promontory Summit, Utah (mile 1,086)
May 10
May 11
May 12
May 19
May 20
Afternoon
May 21
Epilogue
Life in America in 1867
Historical Note
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Copyright
August 6, 1867
Omaha, Nebraska
I saw my first scalp today and I have to admit that it scared me good. I arrived at the train depot in Omaha, scheduled to meet my pa. His train was a few minutes late, so I walked around the station, studying all the activity. Peddlers were hawking everything from fruit and motion-sickness pills to accident insurance and real estate. INVEST IN THE WEST, one sign read, and under it sat a man with slicked-back hair, who was selling stock in a silver mine.
When the big Union Pacific steam engine finally chugged up to the platform, I walked over to greet Pa. I figured it wouldn’t be hard to find him, since he was riding in on a freight like workmen sometimes do. The first man to get off the train was a pale fellow with a bloody bandage wrapped around his head. His neck and right arm were also bandaged with strips of red-stained cloth. He was carrying a water pail in his left hand. When a lady behind me let out a squeal, a crowd immediately gathered.
“Excuse me,” the conductor said, stepping forward to help the man get through the curiosity seekers, “there’s been an accident.” As the pale man passed by, I glanced down into his bucket and saw what looked like a drowned muskrat without a tail.
I was staring openmouthed when Pa walked up beside me and touched my shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to see that, Sean,” he said. Normally there is no missing my pa in a crowd — he’s six foot three and has lively green eyes that get your attention from a long way off — but I was so rattled that I never even saw him until he spoke.
“Was that a — ?”
“A scalp.” Pa nodded. He said he hoped that the Indian trouble would be over by now, but that the
re had been a little flare-up lately. Pa stopped and stared at me. “Are you all right, Sean? I hope it wasn’t a mistake to bring you out here.”
I swallowed deeply and shook my head. “I’m fine,” I lied. For a whole year, I’d been begging to join Pa in his work on the Transcontinental Railroad. I wanted him to know I was grown up enough to handle this.
“That poor Englishman.” Pa shook his head. He explained that the man’s name was Bill Thompson. Last night, he’d gone out with a crew of five men to check a dead telegraph line, but it was a trap. Their handcar hit a tie that the Cheyennes had laid across the tracks. The men and all their tools flew into the air. They never had a chance. The Indians shot and scalped everyone. Only minutes later the crew of a night freight steamed into that same barricade. The train crashed, impaling engineer Bully Bowers on the throttle lever and pitching his fireman face first against the firebox, where he roasted to death. Meanwhile, Thompson, who had lain still and pretended he was dead, saw that his scalp had dropped off a brave’s belt. He picked it up and started back toward the Plum Creek station, where he was rescued by a troop train.
“Where’s he headed now?” I asked, stunned that anyone could be that tough.
“He hopes the doc here in Omaha can patch him back up.”
August 7, End of Track
West of Lodgepole Creek, Nebraska
Yesterday passed in a dizzying rush. I still can’t believe I’m here. Our train passed through a string of railroad towns that everyone back in Chicago is always talking about: Elkhorn, Fremont, Columbus, and Grand Island.
There isn’t much to the prairie — it’s just big patches of dry yellow grass stretching as far as you can see. Pa says there’s millions of wildflowers in the spring, but it’s hard to believe.
Just west of a place called Kearney, we saw a dozen covered wagons. Pa pointed and said, “That’s what’s left of the Oregon Trail.” I see why they call them “prairie schooners.” With their big canvas tops puffed out in the breeze, they looked like they were sailing over the grass.
Near Elm Creek, I saw my first buffalo herd. The shaggy-haired animals were more than a quarter of a mile away, but I could tell they were enormous. The next thing I knew, someone fired a rifle right behind me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I turned to see a half-dozen rifles pointed out the train windows and shooting away. The noise was awful, but the buffalo, who were well out of rifle range, kept meandering along. When the gunfire stopped, a man near the back of the car shouted, “I got one,” and another said, “So did I.”
“They never came close,” Pa sneered. “We call them ‘excursionists.’” Though Pa is normally not much of a talker, I could tell he was proud to teach me about the West. “They are itching to go back East and brag that they shot a buffalo,” he said, “but the cowcatchers — we call them ‘pilots’ out here — on the front of our trains kill more buffalo than all these silly fools added together.”
Just before we got to the Plum Creek station, the passengers checked their six-shooters and rifles and made sure they had extra ammunition in case of an Indian attack.
I must have looked nervous, because Pa told me not to worry. “Plum Creek is filled with soldiers right now,” he said. “The redskins ain’t about to take your hair here.” I was about to say something about him calling the Indians “redskins” — Mother had never allowed him to use that word — but I decided it wouldn’t be right to start an argument on our first day together.
Though Mother’s been dead for three years, I can remember how she’d chew him out whenever he spoke badly of the Indians. “Patrick Sullivan,” she’d say, “those natives have been here a lot longer than you Irish.”
And when Pa would remind her that she was Irish, too, she’d toss her red hair back and say, “It’s not my better half.”
I knew she was teasing him then, because though she was part German, she was just as proud of being Irish as Pa is.
Another reason I let Pa’s remark pass was that I wanted to see what things were really like out West. Maybe working on the prairie and seeing what happened to men like Bill Thompson could turn anyone against the Indians.
We had a short stop in North Platte, the final destination for everyone who wasn’t going on to Ogallala or Julesburg. Since the Oregon Trail crosses the river here and swings north, there were quite a few covered wagons in town. Pa said it was foolish of the settlers not to wait for the Union Pacific to finish the railroad. “They could cover in a day what they’ll make in a whole summer in those wagons,” he said.
After we ate at a little hotel, Pa showed me the town. “There’s the Platte River,” he said. “People joke that it’s a foot deep and a mile wide.”
That looked pretty close to the truth to me. The Platte was just a big mudflat with a trickle of brown water headed no place in particular and crossed by a shaky-looking trestle. Beside the tracks was a big, ten-stall brick roundhouse, a wood-frame depot, and a hotel. The other buildings on Main Street looked new but empty. I asked Pa what was wrong.
He kicked at a dry stalk of yellow weed and said, “North Platte’s dying fast. This place had three thousand people in it last spring and now it’s down to one hundred fifty.” He explained that the railroad was the only reason the prairie towns came to be, and when the road builders moved on, the money moved with them. He said that people are always tagging along with the road, “hoping to make a fast buck, or chasing a dream.” And whether it’s gold or silver or good land they’re after, they all keep heading West.
When I asked where all the people had gone, he waved his hand to the west and said, “Most of them are just up the line in Julesburg. But there’s lots of fellows over there who never had a chance to move on.”
Pa pointed to an unfenced cemetery. The irregular rows of wooden grave markers were tilted at wild angles.
I asked him if a big storm had tipped the markers.
“We see plenty of wind out here,” he said, “but that’s not the problem. The earth settles real fast over a fresh-dug grave, and there’s nobody left in this town to care.”
August 8
I just woke up and have a world of things to tell. Since we got in late last night, I didn’t have a chance to mention the biggest surprise of all. It happened in Julesburg, a place known as a “hell-on-wheels” town because the U.P. workers go there to blow off steam. As we pulled into the station to take on wood and water, Pa told me that the town was so wild that they averaged a killing every single day.
I figured he had to be stretching things, so while he was chatting with a conductor friend of his, I took a walk. Since it was late in the day, piano playing and loud talking were already coming from the saloons. A lady in a shiny black dress walked by. She was wearing the tallest hat I’d ever seen. It was made of green silk and white feathers and swayed from side to side when she walked. There are lots of fancy women back in Chicago, but I’d never seen one dangling a silver derringer from her pocket chain. She smiled at me and said, “Hey there, Junior.” I lowered my eyes and walked on real fast.
I crossed over to the far side of the street and hustled back toward the depot. That’s when I saw a pair of boots sticking out from behind a building. I peeked around the corner and nearly jumped out of my skin. A dead man was lying flat on his back with his eyes fixed straight up at heaven.
I sucked in a quick breath and took off running. Though I was gone in the tick of a second hand, the picture of that man froze in my mind: the blank stare, the dried-blood patch on his shirt, the cigar stub on the ground still giving off a tiny wisp of smoke. But the thing that told the most was the man’s pockets: Every single one was turned inside out.
When I got back to the train, I was busting to tell Pa what I’d seen, but the moment I saw him, I remembered what he’d said back in Omaha about it being a mistake to bring me out West. So all I could do was swallow my words and try to calm the pounding of my heart
.
Evening
Though I start work tomorrow, I’ve promised myself to make time to write in this journal as often as I can. I owe that to my mother and, as I found out shortly after she died, I owe it to myself, too. The journal was my mother’s idea. The Christmas before she died, when I was twelve, she gave me a blank notebook. On the top of the first page she wrote a quote from a fellow named Sir Francis Bacon: “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.” The quote made sense to me, but I had to smile when I saw that name. It would be bad enough being called “Francis,” but having a last name like “Bacon” would make it a hundred times worse. Can you imagine all the teasing he had to put up with when he was young?
Mother was a teacher but had to quit when she married my pa, because her school only hired single ladies. She missed teaching a lot and kept in practice by helping me and my brother, John — he’s two years younger than me — with our schoolwork and sharing stories and quotes from her favorite writers. John and I both got tired of studying at times, but before we got bored, she’d switch to something lively like Robin Hood or Finn MacCool or King Arthur. We could never get enough of her tales about Arthur’s magician, Merlin.
Mother also copied some lines from a poem that I didn’t understand. It went something like, “What oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed.” Mother loved fancy language like that. She explained the lines of that poem by saying, “Lots of people claim to think great things, but it’s a rare man who has the discipline to write them down.”
Though she said those words nearly four years ago, I’ve never forgotten them. And I’ve learned firsthand that writing can help a person. After Mother died, I put my journal away and I didn’t write in it for two or three months. Then one day for no reason I started writing about how I was so angry at her for dying that I was never going to write again. But after I’d scrawled out a page filled with questions like why did this have to happen to me? and why would God take away a good woman who was only trying to have a baby? I suddenly realized that writing could help me sort out my sadness.
Now I write all the time. Putting my thoughts down on paper helps me understand what I’m feeling. That might sound strange, but sometimes I’ll pick up my pencil because I’m hot mad at someone like my aunt Katie. Yet before I’ve written down even half of what I aimed to, my anger seems to dry up.
By rights, I shouldn’t ever be mad at Katie. She and Uncle Willy were the ones who looked after me and my brother back in Chicago after my mother died. It happened so sudden that me and John would have been in a bad way if they hadn’t helped out. Pa was off in the war when Mother had her trouble. She was grinnin’ and jokin’ one day, then the next thing you know she and her newborn baby were dead. With Pa gone, I hate to think what would have happened to us if we hadn’t had Katie and Willy.