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Then the grading crew came with their mules and scrapers, and car-loads of ties and rails. Great construction trains congested all the sidings as they dumped off tools and supplies. A track-laying machine followed close behind them, and the race for the Tecolotes was on. What a pity it was that poor Rimrock Jones was not there to see the dirt fly! And there were other changes.
The stage brought all three into the town, and for the first time they saw the new steel and the track-laying engine beyond. Carpenters were building the roundhouse, and new buildings were going up all over the village. Ragtown turned out in a body to meet them.
While waiting for Stanley's inspection of the grading and track-laying, Bucks relieved at times the camp operator, whose principal business was the rushing of emphatic demands to Omaha for material and supplies. During other intervals Bucks found a chance to study the system that underlay the seemingly hopeless confusion of the construction work.
And since I could not be quite sure as to what the ministerial conscience might demand, I added, rather disingenuously, I fear, that he needn't reply to my letter, as I had no permanent address. It was some little time after my promotion to the commissary that Dorgan came on the job as a track-laying foreman.
The admirable organization of the contractors was something wonderful. The grading work was practically all done by sub-contractors, Messrs. Langdon, Sheppard & Co. confining themselves to putting in the supplies and doing the bridge work, surfacing, and track-laying.
"I hope, General," said he, "that our little movement won't develop into a dervish-dance. Anyhow, you will join in our congratulations upon the completion of the railroad. You know you once did some railroad-building yourself, down there in Tennessee I know, for I was there. And I've always taken an interest in track-laying ever since."
For now that the Rajah had withdrawn his opposition, Nature and the perversity of inanimate things had taken a hand, and for a fortnight the work of track-laying paused fairly within sight of the station at Argentine.
The horse and mule, with all their trappings, saddles, bridles, and holsters, were never seen or heard of afterward. Buffalo Bill, in less than eighteen months, while employed as hunter of the construction company of the Kansas Pacific Railroad, in 1867-68, killed nearly five thousand buffalo, which were consumed by the twelve hundred men employed in track-laying.
Among the officials, engineers and bosses, there were many who were ex-officers in the army. Thus the Chief Engineer had been a General, the Consulting Engineer, a Colonel, the head of the track-laying force, a General.
Grading was commenced in July, 1864, and track-laying the spring of 1865.
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