"Major North, me call him," said the Pawnee scout, who was watching over
the wounded man.

A moment later the gallant Major was leaning over Bradford, encouraging
him, assuring him that he was all right, but warning him of the danger
of making the least bit of noise.

IV

With all his strength and pluck, it took time for Bradford to
recuperate. His next work was in Washington, where, with notes and maps,
his strong personality and logical arguments, he caused the Government
to overrule an expert who wanted to change an important piece of road,
and who had arbitrarily fixed the meeting of the mountains and plains
far up in the foothills.[1]

When Bradford returned to the West he found that the whole country had
suddenly taken a great and growing interest in the transcontinental
line. Many of the leading newspapers had dug up their old war
correspondents and sent them out to the front.

These gifted prevaricators found the plain, unvarnished story of each
day's work as much as they cared to send in at night, for the builders
were now putting down four and five miles of road every working day.
Such road building the world had never seen, and news of it now ran
round the earth. At night these tireless story-tellers listened to the
strange tales told by the trail-makers, then stole away to their tents
and wrote them out for the people at home, while the heroes of the
stories slept.

The track-layers were now climbing up over the crest of the continent,
the locaters were dropping down the Pacific slope, with the prowling
pathfinders peeping over into the Utah Valley. Before the road reached
Salt Lake City the builders were made aware of the presence, power, and
opposition of Brigham Young. The head of the church had decreed that the
road must pass to the south of the lake, and as the Central Pacific had
surveyed a line that way, and General Dodge had declared in favor of the
northern route, the Mormons threw their powerful influence to the
Southern. The Union Pacific was boycotted, and all good Mormons
forbidden to aid the road in any way.

Here, again, the chief engineer brought Bradford's diplomacy to bear on
Brigham and won him over.

While the Union Pacific was building west, the Central Pacific had been
building east, and here, in the Salt Lake basin, the advance forces of
the two companies met. The United States Congress directed that the
rails should be joined wherever the two came together, but the bon