Free California Gold by John Jakes

dog’s flank. Mack heard the yelp above the rising roar. He flashed a look toward the looming train as the dog limped a couple of steps, then fell sideways against the near rail.
    “Ruff,” the dog’s owner shouted, already out of ranks and running toward the fallen animal.
    The foreman pulled and cocked his side arm. “Stand fast, O’Malley. You know the governor’s order.”
    “For Christ’s sake,” Mack yelled, bolting forward, with the priest a step behind. The leviathan was almost on them, rumbling the earth and sucking up great clouds of dust. As O’Malley pulled the collie off the track, he somehow lost his footing and toppled backward. Mack’s warning shout went unheard; the cowcatcher struck O’Malley and tossed him into the air in front of the onrushing engine. It sliced his head off, hurled his body aside, and flung a great fan of blood along the trackside. Mack caught a flash of large gilt letters on the side of the engine— EL GOBERNADOR —and a similar decoration on the tender— S.P.R.R. A lacquered coach hurtled by, all windows empty save one. There, an obese man with a chin beard raised a hand to acknowledge the workers at attention. As suddenly as it came, the special train was gone, leaving a settling rush of torrid air.
    Mack rocked back on his heels, bug-eyed. It had all happened so fast that he wasn’t sure he’d seen it. But the face of the passenger was already seared into his memory, and the red heap on the gravel shoulder was certainly real. It came to him that his face was wet. He rubbed it and stared at his fingers: red. There was also red stippling the faces of the three other men nearest O’Malley. The collie kept whining, trying to rise but unable to.
    A worker advanced cautiously to the body. “Jesus, where’s his—?” He choked, fell to his knees, and vomited uncontrollably.
    Marquez walked up onto the track and eyed the disappearing train, his dark face almost purple. “God curse them—the poor man never even had a chance for last rites.” He noticed Mack and threw a bandanna to him. “Wipe off that blood.”
    Mack scrubbed and scrubbed, feeling he’d never get clean. “Who was that fat bastard?” In the silence, the collie’s whine was much louder.
    “Governor Leland Stanford. One of the four who built this railroad.”
    “The damn engineer must have seen that man next to the track.”
    “Surely. But he was going too fast to stop even if he wanted to.”
    “Stanford must have seen the blood flying.”
    “I doubt it, but what if he did? What’s it to him if some day laborer loses his life? When he and his partners pushed this railroad through the Sierras, it happened hundreds of times. One more thing: That train never stops—not for anything or anyone.” Marquez glanced past Mack’s shoulder and covered his mouth a moment. “Do you have the stomach to help me with the body?”
    “You going to bury it?”
    “No, there’s a town about five miles from here. I’ll take the remains there and try to locate relatives. I must do it soon, or what’s left of him will rot in this heat.”
    “All right, I’m ready,” Mack said with a gargantuan swallow and a prayer that his guts wouldn’t come heaving up.
    They unloaded the water barrels and laid O’Malley’s remains in the wagon under a tarpaulin. Twice Mack almost vomited because of the blood, the buzzing flies, and the smell. Somehow he and the priest got through it, with the white-faced foreman offering feebly to help at one point. Marquez gave him a withering look and the foreman slunk off to goad his disheartened men back to work. On its feet, the collie whined, limping badly.
    The slow-moving wagon started toward a crossroads about half a mile south of the right-of-way. Mack walked along beside it. “Tell me about Stanford and his partners, Father.”
    “As I said, their construction work in the mountains took the lives of hundreds. If ten died, they hired ten more; human beings were like parts