Union Pacific

Copyright © 2009 by Zane Grey, Inc.

First Skyhorse Publishing edition published 2015 by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency

An earlier version of this work appeared under the title The U.P. Trail. Copyright © 1918 by Zane Grey. Copyright © renewed 1945 by Lina Elise Grey. Copyright © 2008 by Zane Grey, Inc., for restored material.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

Skyhorse® and Skyhorse Publishing® are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

The name Zane Grey is a registered trademark with the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office and cannot be used for any purpose without express written permission.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Print ISBN: 978-1-63450-434-8

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0044-4

Printed in the United States of America

. . . When I think how the railroad has been pushed through this unwatered wilderness and haunt of savage tribes,—how at each stage of the construction roaring, impromptu cities, full of gold and lust and death, sprang up and then died away again, and are now but wayside stations in the desert; how in these uncouth places Chinese pirates worked side by side with border ruffians and broken men from Europe, gambling, drinking, quarrelling and murdering like wolves;—and then when I go on to remember that all this epical turmoil was conducted by gentlemen in frocks, and with a view to nothing more extraordinary than a fortune and a subsequent visit to Paris, it seems to me as if this railway were the one typical achievement of the age in which we live, as if it brought together into one plot all the ends of the world and all the degrees of social rank, and offered to some great writer the busiest, the most extended, and the most varied subject for an enduring literary work. If it be romance, if it be contrast, if it be heroism that we require, what was Troy to this?

—Robert Louis Stevenson

Foreword

by Jon Tuska

It was stories that Zane Grey heard told by his friend and guide, Al Doyle, about the building of the Union Pacific Railroad that inspired him in late 1916 to attempt what would be his first historical novel. He worked out an elaborate outline of the book he intended to write, detailing characters, events, and the themes he wanted to incorporate. For all of his enthusiasm for the subject, he was constrained by an ambivalence about the triumphalism usually attached to narrating epic historical events from American frontier history. Early on he noted about his character, the mountain man and trapper, Slingerland: “the beginning and end of book, his point of view. Beauty, lonesomeness, silence, wildness!” He also reminded himself at the beginning of the outline: “Last page—the Indian’s setting sun.”

Contrasting this outline with his holographic manuscript, Grey appears to have written disparate scenes having to do with various parts of the story somewhat out of linear sequence, then added new scenes and changed others. The problem for him became that under the inspiration and emotion of writing these scenes they did not always adhere closely to his narrative outline, so that transitions between scenes became awkward. Also in the writing of his story, the book became much longer than he had anticipated it would be. So it was a large, diffuse, and even at times confusing manuscript that he sent to Ripley Hitchcock, his editor at Harper & Bros. From his home in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, accompanying his submission, Grey wrote to Hitchcock:

My dear Critic and Friend:

In the light of my quotation from Stevenson it may be presumptuous for me to aspire to tell the story of the building of the Union Pacific Railroad.

But many a night by the camp-fire on the starlit desert have I listened to my old guide, Al Doyle, while he recounted his experiences as teamster, grader, spiker, and fighter during the construction of that great work. It is as though I had lived through the blood and lust and death, the “epical turmoil,” the labor of giants, the heroism and sacrifice of this wildest time in the opening of the West.

Your love of the West and your early travels there and your study of historical frontier days, from which I have profited, have been strong factors in my undertaking this book; and they, like Stevenson’s noble words, have made me see the wonder, the dignity, the importance of the subject.

For the romance, for the inspiration, I have my own love of the wild desert, plain, and mountain; I have Doyle’s stories of sudden death and terrible lust and alluring gold—unforgettable stories; and it seems as though all the labor and violence and havoc of those years have become embodied in my imagination.

So here I give you my book—for which I have written all the others—and I do it with hope and dread and fear and yet with joy.

Faithfully,

Zane Grey

As was usual with Ripley Hitchcock, given a Zane Grey manuscript, he set about rewriting whole sections, altering the sequence of events and what happened to characters. To give but one example: In Grey’s manuscript Warren Neale fights with the reprobate gambler Durade and brutally kills him. Hitchcock altered this scene and had Durade survive the fight, although fundamentally maimed. Grey accepted these many changes, although they made the story almost as much Hitchcock’s as his own, because it was his objective to rise to a higher plane of literature and he was convinced that Hitchcock’s editorial contribution could help him do it. After all, Ripley Hitchcock had been Stephen Crane’s editor. Harper & Bros. sold a condensed section of the Hitchcock version of the novel to Blue Book, a prestigious monthly pulp fiction magazine, where it appeared under the title “The Roaring U.P.