To the North, around a small promontory, and under a wide wooden bridge, lay the flooded land called Sutter’s Slough. To the South, about a mile away, behind a stretch of trees, there was a plume of black smoke rising, slow and thick, and leaning slightly to the East.

‘That’s where the Sacramento Valley Railroad comes in from Folsom,’ remarked Charles. ‘I’ll take you down to see Colonel Wilson in a day or so, unless he calls by the store beforehand.’

Collis eyed the distance between the plume of smoke and the faraway foothills. He had always known that the West was open, and almost endless, but to arrive here in Sacramento on a hot afternoon and see miles and miles of flat valley floor was almost enough to make him doubt his ability to build a branch line from one side of the city to the other, let alone a transcontinental railroad.

‘I never guessed,’ he said quietly.

‘You never guessed what?’ asked Charles, pleased to be back.

‘I don’t know,’ said Collis. ‘The distance, I suppose.’

‘The distance?’ said Charles, almost as if he had invented the whole idea of distance. ‘Well, that’s what California’s all about. Valleys, and mountains, and wide-open spaces. It’s a place you can breathe in.’

From the riverbank they heard a baritone voice come out with a loud ‘Halloo,’ and there on the roadway stood a tall, whiskery man in a buttoned-up morning coat; a man with a dark, Scottish-looking countenance, as if every angle of his face had been chipped out with a broken flint, and a chest that filled his coat as deeply as an oil barrel. He was standing by a small varnished surrey, in which two chestnut horses were harnessed, but it looked as if he were as capable of carrying them, the surrey and the horses, as they were of carrying him.

‘That’s my partner, Leland McCormick,’ said Charles, and waved to the riverbank with both arms. McCormick waved back, and raised his hat.

‘I got the barbed wire!’ shouted Charles. ‘Enough to fence off the whole of Northern California!’

‘Did you get the stoveblack?’ McCormick called back.

‘Enough for everyone in the whole damned city to make up in blackface!’ Charles told him.

McCormick guffawed. A few feet away, on deck, Billy the coachman gave a sour grin. But then the gangplank was let down to the riverbank with a hollow bang and a cloud of dry dust, and it was time to disembark.

They shook hands with Leland McCormick as they stepped on to the warm, hard-baked shore, and Collis was introduced.

‘How’s Andrew?’ asked Leland. ‘Still doing well with his food wholesale business?’