In the rush and roar of the fight General Dodge had forgotten the young man in corduroys until General Casement called his attention to the young man’s work.  The engineers wanted Bradford, and Casement had kicked, and, fearing defeat, had appealed to the chief.  They sent for Bradford.  Yes, he was an engineer, he said, and when he said it they knew it was true.  He was quite willing to remain in the store department until he could be relieved, but, naturally, he would prefer field work.

He got it, and at once.  Also, he got some Indian fighting.  In less than a year he was assigned to the task of locating a section of the line west of the Platte.  Coming in on a construction train to make his first report, the train was held up, robbed, and burned by a band of Sioux.  Bradford and the train crew were rescued by General Dodge himself, who happened to be following them with his “arsenal” car, and who heard at Plumb Creek of the fight and of the last stand that Bradford and his handful of men were making in the way car, which they had detached and pushed back from the burning train.  Such cool heroism as Bradford displayed here could not escape the notice of so trained an Indian fighter as General Dodge.  Bradford was not only complimented, but was invited into the General’s private car.  The General’s admiration for the young pathfinder grew as he received a detailed and comprehensive report of the work being done out on the pathless plains.  He knew the worth of this work, because he knew the country, for he had spent whole months together exploring it while in command of that territory, where he had been purposely placed by General Sherman, without whose encouragement the West could not have been known at that time, and without whose help as commander-in-chief of the United States army the road could not have been built.

As the pathfinders neared the Rockies the troops had to guard them constantly.  The engineers reconnoitered, surveyed, located, and built inside the picket lines.  The men marched to work to the tap of the drum, stacked arms on the dump, and were ready at a moment’s notice to fall in and fight.  Many of the graders were old soldiers, and a little fight only rested them.  Indeed there was more military air about this work than had been or has since been about the building of a railroad in this country.  It was one big battle, from the first stake west of Omaha to the last spike at Promontory—­a battle that lasted five long years; and if the men had marked the graves of those who fell in that fierce fight their monuments, properly distributed, might have served as mile-posts on the great overland route to-day.  But the mounds were unmarked, most of them, and many there were who had no mounds, and whose home names were never known even to their comrades.  If this thing had been done on British soil, and all the heroic deeds had been recorded and rewarded, a small foundry could have been kept busy beating out V.C.’s.