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