The Iron Dragon Never Sleeps Read online

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  YEARLING BOOKS are designed especially to entertain and enlighten young people. Patricia Reilly Giff, consultant to this series, received her bachelor’s degree from Marymount College and a master’s degree in history from St. John’s University. She holds a Professional Diploma in Reading and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Hofstra University. She was a teacher and reading consultant for many years, and is the author of numerous books for young readers.

  Published by

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers

  a division of

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  1540 Broadway

  New York, New York 10036

  Text copyright © 1994 by Stephen Krensky

  Illustrations copyright © 1994 by John Fulweiler

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press, New York, New York 10036.

  The trademarks Yearling® and Dell® are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-81596-5

  v3.1

  For Betty Clark

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Afterword

  “WHOOOOOOOO!”

  Winnie Tucker jumped. The shrill blast of the train whistle had surprised her. Then she blushed. Only babies and cats were scared of train whistles.

  She looked around quickly. Had anyone noticed? Her mother was reading a newspaper. The rest of the train car was mostly empty. Four men sat dozing, their heads slumped on their chests. A young woman rocked a baby in her arms.

  Across the aisle, though, a man was grinning at her. He had a scraggly gray beard and a scuffed hat. Winnie’s grandfathers both had looked like that. They had been miners. Maybe this man was a miner, too.

  “A bit loud, eh?” he said.

  “A little,” Winnie admitted. Actually she was in awe of the train. The great locomotive up front, eating fire and breathing steam, was like an iron dragon chained to the track.

  “First train ride?” the man asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Her mother put down the newspaper. “The first for both of us,” she said.

  The man tipped his cap. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. I’m Jack Perkins. But call me Flap Jack. Everybody does.”

  “Why is that?” Winnie asked.

  “On account of my favorite food. After panning for gold all day, I can eat a stack a mile high.”

  I was right, thought Winnie. He is a miner.

  Winnie’s mother smiled. “Well, Flap Jack, I’m Marjorie Tucker. This is my daughter, Winnie. We’re on our way to Cisco.”

  “Going to Cisco myself,” said Flap Jack. “To visit my brother. He’s the Stationmaster there.”

  The train wheels squealed as the train rounded a curve. This time Winnie didn’t jump.

  Flap Jack looked out the window. “Making good time, I see.”

  Winnie pressed her nose against the glass. Flap Jack was right. The train was going fast. The trees and orchards of the California countryside were flying by. The conductor had boasted that the train sometimes went as fast as twenty-five miles an hour. It was hard to believe.

  Winnie and her mother had left Sacramento early that morning. Winnie’s best friends, Rose and Julia, had come down to the station to say good-bye.

  “Three months,” Rose had moaned. “That’s longer than forever.”

  Julia had nodded sleepily. “She will get to live in a hotel, though.”

  “Not a hotel,” Winnie had reminded them. “A rooming house.”

  “Well, it won’t be the same summer without you,” Rose insisted.

  Winnie had sighed at the time, and she sighed again now. What Rose had said was true. And she was going to miss them, she knew that.

  Still, she was excited. In a few hours she’d be with her father again. She hadn’t seen him in months. He was a mining engineer for the Central Pacific Railroad. It was a job that kept him on the move.

  This summer, though, he was living in Cisco. At first, when her mother had suggested they come stay with him, he had been against the idea. “Cisco’s no place for a girl like Winnie,” he had written. Her mother had then written back: “Considering how little you’ve seen of her lately, how can you judge what Winnie is like these days?”

  In the end he changed his mind.

  Her mother patted Winnie’s shoulder. “We’ll be meeting Papa before you know it.”

  “Do you think he grew his beard again?” Winnie asked.

  Her mother laughed. Eli Tucker hated to shave. His stubble was stiffer than a boar’s hide, he complained. Whenever he traveled, he always managed to lose his straight-edge razor.

  “Tickets! Tickets, please!”

  The conductor was lurching his way up the car. He looked very grand, with his frock coat, stiff collar, and bow tie.

  “Tickets?”

  Winnie held hers up to the conductor.

  “I’ve done yours already, miss,” he reminded her. “One punch to a customer.”

  He punched a hole in Flap Jack’s ticket.

  “All bound for Cisco, eh?” said the conductor.

  “We’re going to see my father,” said Winnie. “He’s working on the Summit Tunnel. Maybe you know him—Eli Tucker?”

  The conductor shook his head. “Those fellows don’t get back here much. Digging out No. 6 keeps them pretty busy.”

  No. 6 was the official railroad name for the Summit Tunnel. It was part of the railroad line from Sacramento eastward through the Sierra Nevadas. Someday the line would be part of a transcontinental railroad across the whole United States.

  All the railroad tunnels were numbered in order. Winnie frowned. Numbers were so ordinary. She would have named the tunnels after book characters—like Hans Brinker or Rip Van Winkle.

  The train rumbled softly.

  “Are we slowing down?” Mrs. Tucker asked.

  Winnie looked out again. There was no room here for a depot. They were high on the edge of a cliff.

  “This is Cape Horn,” said Flap Jack. “All the trains stop here for ten minutes. Gives us time to enjoy the view.”

  The train jolted to a halt.

  “Passengers may disembark to inspect the view,” the conductor announced.

  Winnie was not afraid of heights. At least she didn’t think she was. And if the
Central Pacific Railroad thought this place was worth stopping for, she would take a look.

  Cape Horn was a sheer granite bluff rising fifteen hundred feet above the American River. The train tracks ran along a ledge carved out of the mountainside. It was not very wide.

  Winnie took out her sketchpad. She loved to draw, but it had been too bumpy while the train was moving.

  She sketched quickly. Beyond the ledge was a steep canyon. Trees grew straight up its sides, like teeth on a comb. At the bottom was the American River. It was there, but farther downstream, where gold had been discovered in 1848.

  Nineteen years had passed since then. The California gold rush was part of Winnie’s family history. Her grandparents had been among the settlers flocking to California to make their fortunes. Her parents had met on a slag heap. Neither family had ever struck it rich, “but we found gold in each other,” her mother liked to say.

  Winnie looked up at the cliff above them. “Is this a natural ledge?” she asked.

  “Not at all,” said Flap Jack. “And believe me, building it was tricky work. Actually the Chinese crews did most of this. They were lowered down the side of the cliff with baskets of tools and blasting powder. They chipped out this ledge a piece at a time.”

  “It sounds dangerous,” said Winnie.

  The old miner nodded. “You could say that. Sometimes the ropes slipped. Other times the poor devils were caught too close to the exploding blasting powder. Hundreds of them lost their lives.”

  Winnie took a last look down. She tried to imagine herself being lowered down the cliff. Just the thought made her head spin.

  “Come on, Winnie,” said Mrs. Tucker. “It’s time to go.”

  Chinese workers must be very brave, thought Winnie as she followed her mother back on board.

  CISCO WASN’T SACRAMENTO. That much Winnie realized at once. There were no three-story hotels. There were no wooden sidewalks. The one wide street was lined with low buildings that looked as if they would blow over in a stiff wind.

  I don’t think Rose and Julia are missing much, thought Winnie. She had hoped Cisco would feel like a frontier town, a place of adventure. At first glance it just looked small.

  “I don’t see Papa,” said Mrs. Tucker, looking from the platform to the street.

  They looked inside the station. The waiting room was filled with benches and a potbellied stove. The Stationmaster was just filling the oil lamps by the door.

  Flap Jack sneaked up behind him.

  “Bert, you old pickax!”

  “Flap Jack, you old grizzly! You look as poor as ever. How was the trip?”

  Flap Jack winked at Winnie. “Bert, I’ve ridden burros that bucked less. The ride wasn’t a total loss, though. I met up with the Tuckers.”

  “Eli Tucker’s family?” said Bert. “How do you do, ma’am? Eli told me you were coming. He should be here directly.”

  “I saw a general store, Mama,” said Winnie. “Can we go in there while we’re waiting?”

  “You go ahead,” said her mother. “I’ll wait outside. I don’t want Papa to miss us.”

  Winnie found the general store to be true to its name. It sold a little bit of everything. There were stores like this in Sacramento, thought Winnie, but they were bigger and had more of a selection. Here the goods were put closer together with little attention paid to the display.

  Up at the counter two miners were picking out some pots and a woman was inspecting a bolt of cloth. Winnie’s eyes, though, were drawn to two large jars on a nearby counter. One was filled with licorice; the other with peppermints.

  Winnie walked up to the jars and tapped the glass. The peppermint was a sea of red swirls. The licorice was black.

  “It is a hard choice, yes?”

  On the other side of the jars stood a Chinese boy, a Celestial. Everyone called the Chinese Celestials because they called their home in China the Celestial Kingdom.

  The boy was no bigger than she was, but she was tall for her ten years. Still, he looked older. She could tell that from his expression. He was wearing a blue cotton shirt, the kind all the Celestials wore. His black hair was long, and tied in the traditional pigtail. It was not hanging down his back, though, the way Chinese men wore it in San Francisco. It was coiled around his head.

  Winnie had never seen a Celestial up this close before. She stared at his face, especially his eyes. They didn’t really slant, she thought. They just came to more of a point at both ends.

  The boy was waiting for an answer.

  “Um, yes,” said Winnie. “It is a hard choice. Licorice is sweet and stretchy. But peppermint tastes like winter in your mouth.”

  “Winter in your mouth,” the boy repeated. He thought it over.

  “Hey, boy! Aren’t you finished yet?”

  The storekeeper had come around from behind the other counter. His hands sat sharply on his hips.

  “Hurry up, China boy! The railroad isn’t paying you to stand around bothering my customers.”

  The Celestial bowed slightly. “I need a bowl, please. Metal. This wide.” He held up his hands.

  The storekeeper snorted. “You panning for gold?”

  The boy shook his head. “No, no, it is for cooking.”

  “Oh, right … for that foolish peanut oil.” He pointed to a far corner. “Pots and pans are over there.”

  Winnie took a step back. She wondered what the boy had done earlier to make the storekeeper so mad.

  The storekeeper turned to her with his best smile. “He won’t be bothering you anymore, miss. Now, how can I help you?”

  “Um, just some licorice, thank you.”

  She took out her money.

  “Winnie, he’s coming!” her mother called from the doorway.

  Winnie ran out just as Eli Tucker pulled up in a buckboard.

  He turned toward the general store.

  “Afternoon, ladies,” he said, tipping his hat. “I do believe I’ve found the two prettiest women in this fair city.”

  He jumped down from the wagon.

  “Oh, Papa,” Winnie said, giggling. She ran forward to give him a hug. His beard had more gray in it than she remembered.

  He returned her hug and looked up at her mother. “I’m sorry I’m late, Marjorie. It’s been an upside-down day.”

  Winnie smiled. That was her father’s way of describing a day when nothing went right.

  “The powder got wet somehow,” he went on. “We had to wait for some nitroglycerin. Then we had to make a new hole for the nitro. And then …” He smiled sheepishly. “You don’t really want to hear all this, do you?”

  “I’m just glad to hear your voice,” said Marjorie. She came forward to join in the family hug.

  Eli Tucker looked down at Winnie. “Your hair’s as blond as ever. And I see you’ve been eating those growing pills again.” He grinned. “So how was the train ride? How long did it take?”

  “Only six hours. There was a lot to see.”

  Her father laughed. “You have to look fast when you’re averaging fifteen miles an hour.” He took a deep breath and looked around. “So, what do you think of Cisco?”

  “I just got here, Papa.” She looked around again. “But there’s not much of it to think about.”

  Her father laughed. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you.” He lifted the bags into the wagon. “And I haven’t seen any children hereabouts. But come on, let’s get you settled in. Nothing but the best for you, Winnie. Swanson’s Rooming House is the finest lodging establishment in Cisco.”

  Marjorie laughed. “As I recall, Eli, it’s the only lodging establishment in Cisco.”

  Her husband smiled. “Now that you mention it, that may be true.”

  “I’m hungry,” said Winnie. She pointed to the railroad eating house beside the depot. “Are we going to eat there?”

  “Certainly not!” said her father. “They charge fifty cents for a meal. Can you believe that? Only kings and presidents and folks who don’t know any better eat th
ere. For fifty cents you can eat all day at Swanson’s.”

  On their way to the rooming house they passed a mountain mud wagon. The Chinese boy from the general store was sitting in the back. He held up some peppermints for her to see.

  Winnie just looked away. If this boy was trouble, she wanted nothing to do with him.

  WHEN WINNIE WOKE up the next morning, it took her a moment to remember where she was. Her room at home had flowered wallpaper and three sunny windows. This room was painted green. And the one window didn’t let in much light.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Come in,” she called out.

  Her father walked in. “Good morning,” he said. “I hope you slept well.” He glanced out the window. “Not much to see. There’s no garden like at home.”

  Winnie gave him a hug. “I didn’t come here for a garden, Papa. I came here for you.”

  He pushed a strand of hair away from her face. “Then you should be more careful to keep this out of your eyes.”

  “Oh, Papa …”

  He smiled. “So, what do you have planned for today?”

  Winnie’s eyes opened wide. “I’d like to go in the tunnel with you.”

  Her father sighed. “Now, Winnie, you know that’s not possible. We can’t have girls wandering around, getting in the way.”

  “You’d let me go if I was a boy.”

  “Maybe so. But you’re not a boy, and that’s that.”

  Winnie sighed.

  Her father scratched his beard. “Anyway, I have a surprise for you.”

  Winnie perked up again. “You do? What is it?”

  “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise. You’ll find out after breakfast.”

  Winnie never remembered afterward whether that morning’s cornmeal mush was any good. But her father made her eat it all. After she was done, he led her to the livery stable.

  A horse was waiting in a stall.

  “Goodness, Papa!”

  “He’s yours to ride while you’re here. His name is Handsome. His owner says he has a high opinion of himself.”

  Winnie patted Handsome’s mane. “Well, he should. Thank you, Papa.”

  Her father cleared his throat. “Remember, not too much galloping till you learn your way around. And watch out for snakes. And don’t go near the tracks. The men have more than enough to do without worrying about an audience. As for the—”