‘You’re a damned devil, sir,’ said Laurence Melford.

‘Yes,’ Collis told him, ‘I am. And I think it’s just as well. It’s going to take a damned devil to build this railroad, if you ask me. It’s going to take a damned devil to clear his way through all the bribery and the time-wasting and the political favouritism that’s been holding this railroad back for so long. People are dying of yellow fever in Panama. Men, women, and children are dying of exhaustion on the emigrant trail. But what the hell does that matter, just so long as we don’t lay the track to the North, or to the South, or in between, or wherever it doesn’t happen to suit our unctuous members of Congress, and everybody else who’s tugging at their coat tails?’

‘I suppose your own interests are completely free of taint?’ asked Laurence Melford sarcastically. ‘You’ll donate your services to the building of this railroad out of the goodness of your very romantic heart?’

Collis finished his champagne. It was too sweet, but cold and refreshingly effervescent. ‘I’m going to build this railroad for lots of different reasons,’ he told Melford. ‘For money, of course. For power. For self-satisfaction, and pride. For a woman I once knew.’

‘But, Mr Edmonds, what in the world makes you think that you can do it?’ asked John Frémont. ‘It would be the greatest project ever attempted in the whole history of civil engineering. It would shake this nation by the very roots. It would demand surveying skills far beyond the average, as well as new methods of tunnelling, and cutting, and bridge-building. It would tax the mind of a genius, to be quite frank. And you’re not even an engineer!’

Collis rotated his empty champagne glass in his hand. ‘I can do it, Mr Frémont, because nobody else can do it, and because nobody else will. They can dream of railroads. They can sing of railroads, and draw up optimistic maps. They can send parties of surveyors up into the passes of the Rocky Mountains, to get themselves buried in snow. But they can’t build it. They’re too frightened of splitting the nation. They’re too frightened of losing money, and political power. But I don’t give a damn about any of that. And if I don’t do this with my life, then I’ll go to my deathbed with nothing else to my credit but drink, and whores, and games of cards, and some loves that I might have had but let slip by.’

Laurence Melford, his eyes lowered, took the band off a large cigar and carefully tapped it to make sure it was sound.

‘So the South is to be economically marooned because one New York elegantine is trying to make more of himself than a leg-jerking hound. Is that it?’

Collis shook his head. ‘No, Mr Melford. That’s not it. Although I’m not sure that I’d care if it were.’