Elaborate arrangements had been made for transmitting the news of the celebration to the world.  All the important telegraph offices of the country were connected with Promontory, Utah, that day, so that the blow of the hammer driving the last spike was communicated by the click of the instrument to every office reached by the wires.  From the Atlantic to the Pacific the people were rejoicing and celebrating the event, but the worn heroes who had dreamed it over and over for five years, while they lay in their blankets with only the dry, hard earth beneath them, seemed unable to realize that the work was really done and that they could now go home, those who had homes to go to, eat soft bread, and sleep between sheets.

Out under an awning, made by stretching a blanket between a couple of dump-carts, Bradford lay, reading a ’Frisco paper that had come by Governor Stanford’s special; but even that failed to hold his thoughts.  His heart was away out on the Atlantic coast, and he would be hurrying that way on the morrow, the guest of the chief engineer.  He had lost his mother when a boy, and his father just a year previous to his banishment, but he had never lost faith in the one woman he had loved, and he had loved her all his life, for they had been playmates.  Now all this fuss about driving the last spike was of no importance to him.  The one thing he longed for, lived for, was to get back to “God’s country.”  He heard the speeches by Governor Stanford for the Central, and General Dodge for the Union Pacific; heard the prayer offered up by the Rev. Dr. Todd, of Pittsfield; heard the General dictate to the operator: 

“All ready,” and presently the operator sang out the reply from the far East: 

“All ready here!” and then the silver hammer began beating the golden spike into the laurel tie, which bore a silver plate, upon which was engraved: 

“The Last Tie
Laid in the Completion of the Pacific
Railroads. 
May 10, 1869.”

After the ceremony there was handshaking among the men and some kissing among the women, as the two parties—­one from either coast—­mingled, and then the General’s tent boy came under the blanket to call Bradford, for the General wanted him at once.  Somehow Bradford’s mind flew back to his first meeting with this boy.  He caught the boy by the arms, held him off, and looked at him.  “Say, boy,” he asked, “have I changed as much as you have?  Why, only the other day you were a freckled beauty in high-water trousers.  You’re a man now, with whiskers and a busted lip.  Say, have I changed, too?”

“Naw; you’re just the same,” said the boy.  “Come now, the Gen’s waitin’.”

“Judge Manning,” said General Dodge, in his strong, clear voice, “you have been calling us ‘heroes’; now I want to introduce the one hero of all this heroic band—­the man who has given of muscle and brain all that a magnificent and brilliant young man could give, and who deserves the first place on the roll of honor among the great engineers of our time.”