"Grey, Zane - The U.P. Trail" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grey Zane)

times, and always with the mighty project of a railroad looming in
his mind. It had taken years to evolve the plan of a continental
railroad, and it came to fruition at last through many men and
devious ways, through plots and counterplots. The wonderful idea of
uniting East and West by a railroad originated in one man's brain;
he lived for it, and finally he died for it. But the seeds he had
sown were fruitful. One by one other men divined and believed,
despite doubt and fear, until the day arrived when Congress put the
Government of the United States, the army, a group of frock-coated
directors, and unlimited gold back of General Lodge, and bade him
build the road.

In all the length and breadth of the land no men but the chief
engineer and his assistants knew the difficulty, the peril of that
undertaking. The outside world was interested, the nation waited,
mostly in doubt. But Lodge and his engineers had been seized by the
spirit of some great thing to be, in the making of which were
adventure, fortune, fame, and that strange call of life which
foreordained a heritage for future generations. They were grim; they
were indomitable.

Warren Neale came hurrying up. He was a New Englander of poor
family, self-educated, wild for adventure, keen for achievement,
eager, ardent, bronze-faced, and keen-eyed, under six feet in
height, built like a wedge, but not heavy--a young man of twenty-
three with strong latent possibilities of character.

General Lodge himself explained the difficulties of the situation
and what the young surveyor was expected to do. Neale flushed with
pride; his eyes flashed; his jaw set. But he said little while the
engineers led him out to the scene of the latest barrier. It was a
rugged gorge, old and yellow and crumbled, cedar-fringed at the top,
bare and white at the bottom. The approach to it was through a break
in the walls, so that the gorge really extended both above and below
this vantage-point.

"This is the only pass through these foot-hills," said Engineer
Henney, the eldest of Lodge's corps.

The passage ended where the break in the walls fronted abruptly upon
the gorge. It was a wild scene. Only inspired and dauntless men
could have entertained any hope of building a railroad through such
a place. The mouth of the break was narrow; a rugged slope led up to
the left; to the right a huge buttress of stone wall bulged over the
gorge; across stood out the seamed and cracked cliffs, and below
yawned the abyss. The nearer side of the gorge could only be guessed
at.

Neale crawled to the extreme edge of the precipice, and, lying flat,
he tried to discover what lay beneath. Evidently he did not see