The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 10, 1901, Page 9

THE ARUNDAY CALL. 9 ed States of Amerls end of the track. The Atlantic and the ca by D Pierce. o 8t. Lawrence say at the rafl teleph Are 3 We're the Pacific and the Columbia the Fraser, “we're <aw the \ — here, v He stood //II The : not lived tn such moun- b — tain air or listened to the music of tha side with his storm cymbals of the crash o Aicayh of snow the echo of it now and 1 Eph as he > = . catch the men’s kitchens - = ¢ b mingle th the odor of stripped bark lake and pine chips and saw dust saw he 1 eagle ¢ mill e the creek h he ax talks S bl B 1 the distance, when the tree gives . ering the question to its volce, like.a rog in . s a far off marsh, Overhead the snow glit- 4 rs and the frosty p are prin . plumes 3 r (the oth » western side ¢ ssons) are M ror sand, alkall, hot su betwixt K pent-in Fraser th so big a as t A scale of and of ded on this itish Colum- walked upon thelr m was a silent man, T for he but the heery as a camp *possible,” Dis- two men nder out ere ritted past in h ith giants be I b Barrow: emulous hi went rip, like a rotten topsail In a squalll away from nervy speck in the wilder- and the grade grew Bissons howled and rioted, and the long- ness. The notion intoxicated all; even nearer. er th booted and red-shirted danced til! danc- Harris, the bear, emacked Sisson on the interest Ing entered their brains and conscio shoulder e news came in. f‘(&x’r’r&nd‘f}c\,,. ness waltzed out, turning head over heels, The end of track is at the summit! too great; men stood satherine wheelwise into the darkness. tihe. sobekent dnitedd = Wor Schidvenent . Rantmers; hars fnd They lay in piles. They stacked them- ke maize. The federa- thelr work done : e 3 . selves in fine disorder, }ike the truck shot tion's labor was nearly over. stood by in immine 3 . o >t a capsized wagon on a rough toat was to commence fruition road. They lay like spelicans, and no one souid disentangie Bill from Jack, or Hans the* biggest railroad on earth! om the United from Mike, or Peter from Paul. There ped and d ged, and & -~ " : was a universal federation on the beach bucked up. ! declared th of d from the calen- - »f the silver lake. "The stars looked the border it cou!d have in SR 3e Rl e o Jown on international quietness at last. about forty-seven ynds and three-fifths ot B S ber in Wash- and And now the railroad crawl d-best chronon It came down from the ea ed up from the west. Hard men buil where drink w i nearer. by the t ,and it crawi- ington. They were give it the lie, and some joined b s not. Only in the middie “You ain't got the r ss space was such a spot hev,” said a Missourian sons knew now that the seen a mount 1 e steam of an them stood and can from t. partner? s bound for g « 1 ain’t. Sissons is stern-wheeler ssons. Tk a Crossing ey dropped In pped down ty rott Harris, who % she hums,” said was Siss s was ched floor- P ‘ gs, of bark . 3 one house in hwap nblers led th buck the tiger f Faro, of tune, the Only d there was more so- he law behind him, and ninth parailel of lati- parallel You cer- of it to the soil of ldaho and be—yep, that's what!” they say bia a warrant ruus when Todd cleared, and especially lighte it for home on a Sa ns burned and blazed and ed and bulged, and went on a tearing amboree, and painted itself as red, as 4 their cheeks in the Houses with Law might grow, but order Eed must be driven not so Columbia. lieve it was a big r anvhow. You'll fill up: what's Fill them up e one vourself. » of the Canadian me? Oh, hap- . happy than he who laid stone on the at Pyra- mil. ‘r he who one day shall =it in Lati- Nothipg on the chair of the Assem- . these people, and thev sweated joy. What time the tall pagodas of the spruces fe nd odorous hemlocks trembled, and the ruddy barked fir de- clined on meaner brush, their hearts beat 1 and happy. The surveyed line be- came real and broadened; pick and shovel, bar and drill labored; rock cu‘s opened, thelr currents whirled into fills, and dynamite spoke sharply to gunpow- der. The cliffs threw themselves Into the river, and gave way to the road. It was the road to Sissons._ And below the forest slipped aside like a split crowd when police enter and the tracklayérs fought with the weight of f.on and steel. The makers of tles toiled aside in little camps where sudden can- vas, seen through opposing enticing brush, showed white like a cataract or a snowdrift. For the rails stepped eas:- ward on the ties. Eastward to Sissons, to a last handshaking, to a lock-fast grip of east and west. The papers talked, adding to the uni- versal noise which roared along the rails from Montreal east a to Winnipeg, east and away to Medicine Hat, and east to Cajgary and the stone steps of moun- taing to one summit. Each community elled in print; what the crowd sald ir bseriptions—cash, hash or promises—the tor poured* forth in a flood of ink 'he most notable event of the cen- ury,” for what the thunder is the rest of the world? Uprisin», enterprising east and west—we have pretty nigh cor- ralied the universe! So! And all this merged into two chutes verging cn Sissons, the dumping ground of Hope, Work and Achievement. What wonder that Sisson. almost paled, poor man, and then trembled—he being an op- timist—and turned to the Advocatus Dia- boli Harris, invoker of Disaster and the Dark Side of Things. “By Gosh, it's great!” He said so to the stars and the lake In front of him. ““The way you chaps howl,” sald Har- ris, gloomily, “would or should make tha earth upen; why the blue biazes don't you do things quietly?” For they were roaring a new song in a hundred saloon bars at Sissons about the Last Spike. “yne last mall in their coffl ga- Joots,” said that bear Harrfs. *ih. irink sellers have their money and we have their labor and the financlers have us, and when the spike is driven they ars out of a job!" 3 put the crowd sald that one jobh was monotonous, and a raflrcader couldn't sit down by a built road and admire his own work even - for seventy-five dollars u month. They hankered now in the back of their minds for new roads. Every man jack of them was a pick and shovel Al- exander. “We ain't looking for no soft seat!" Good to hear fhat in these days when the soft seated howl softly on cushions and do not know their complaint 15 sup- pressed energy. Rise up, rise up, and _come to the meeting of the rails! Even now one end of the track cin almost catch the clink of hammer oa spike at the other g never been t St 3 ngines. ngers tk was a fellow e a ot produced up- am explained means referred Christmas tres rackec be to-morrow Sissons quivered and almost kn. me I'm going to-morre you—you will =ta greater, soder glory of Slsso ow, you virtuous and you temperats must unders 1 how it was that £ proceeded to rais » and get too full, of va ported ad tions. They s illuston, on clad with iilusion, and when the w over began to feel cold. For som thelr last work; for some thelr fir faced idleness. some faced seekin n ended job is a cold day always. Who shall provide? Sissons could therewith proceec o get 3 over the border of ct sobriety. Be remembered, without tellites, were hushwap Lake. ike men. and t nd pride of plac biggest shake hands wit sons’ meanest” And it wasa't a either. Humanity was fusec They drove that golden spike, and as the roar of en applause loosened snow. the wires' carried echoes to the East and West, to Montreal, to New York, to Lon- don. to the world. “We have been and gone and done it! The biggest ra d on this earth is done. That is—it 18 be thei the “Hip. hip, hip. hurrah! H lemen, the Queen! The gres er marquee strained a its supports, anc do rise like 'a “To the Pre: onder wondered that it on. of the United States!™ Why not ! Yel, yell, yeo inside and_outsi, “To t road:” Ay, to the president through road, this only road under one management from the A ¢ to the Pa- cifie! K in your breath and send balanced snow ides down! “Hurrah! Hurran! Hurrah!” The locomotives hooted. The is road, thia fired off its gu The steamers lake whooped deliriously and ec a swered from a thousand precipices—“It's done! It's doge, it's done!" Sissons flame] with lights and was a constellation till an r day dimmed its sparkling crown, Old Ephraim came out of t through the b toward the 1 the lake side was quict agaln of curiosity, led by some en curlous odors, scrambled over o the where ¢ where ev P less, with its windo and sashes gone. He went through the dead city with his suspicious red eyss : now and 8 head fror came to the water he saw, as he the white steam of a locom across the narrows. The locomo fore holing up t and went “Hoo! p-0ot.” And Ephraim sniifed conter What he t man