Through a tiny temporary town of corrugated iron shanties, crude
log-and-brush and rough-plank sheds, white canvas tents, ran the raw,
heaped earth of the embankment. About it swarmed a thousand swarthy
laborers, chattering in a tongue less easy to his ears than the harsh
scoldings of the squirrels he had seen while on his way. Back behind
them stretched two lines of shining rails, which, even as he watched,
advanced, advanced on the embankment, being firmly spiked upon their
cross-ties so as to form a highway for the cars which brought more dirt,
more dirt, more dirt to send the raw embankment on ahead of them.

At first the puffing, steam-spitting, fire-spouting locomotive with its
deafening exhaust and strident whistle, clanging bell and glowing
fire-box actually frightened him. As he stood close by the track and it
came on threateningly, he backed away, his rifle held in his crooked
arm, ready for some great emergency, he knew not what. A laborer laughed
at him, and his hands instinctively took firmer grip upon the rifle. The
laborer stopped laughing.

Some lessons of the temper of the mountaineers already had been learned
along the line of that new railroad, and, driven from his wrath by the
appearance of new marvels, Joe, at greater distance, sat upon a stump
and watched, wide-eyed, and undisturbed, unridiculed.

For a long time his resentment wholly drowned itself in wonder at the
puzzle of the engines, the mechanism of the dump-cars, the wondrous
working of the small steam crane which lifted rails from flat-cars, and,
as a strong man guided them, dropped them with precision at the time and
place decided on beforehand. He noted how the men worked in great gangs,
subject to the orders of one "boss," a phenomenon of organization he had
never seen before, with unwilling admiration.