Collis cut the leg from his duck and picked it up in his fingers. ‘There’s only one thing that’s still worrying me,’ he said as he chewed, ‘and that’s the fact that we don’t have a route over the Sierra Nevada. What happens if we go to Washington and all they do is ask us to show them the route?’

‘Then we show them the route. We draw a red line across the Sierra Nevada and say that’s it.’

‘Just any red line, anywhere?’

Theodore nodded. ‘That’s one thing you’ll learn when you get down to serious political infighting. Bluff is ninety-seven per cent of the battle. And anyway, most of the representatives are so ignorant they don’t even know the topography of their own back yards, let alone the Sierra Nevada.’

‘But we still have to find a route, don’t we?’

‘Oh, sure,’ said Theodore. ‘As soon as the winter snow starts to thaw, I want to get up into the Sierras and make some preliminary surveys.’

Collis wiped his hands. ‘Do you really think it’s there?’ he asked Theodore seriously.

‘The pass? Of course it is.’

‘I wish I had your faith.’

Theodore laughed. ‘It’s not a question of faith. It’s a question of geographical probability, combined with engineering possibility.’

‘A probability and a possibility don’t make a certainty.’

‘Listen,’ said Theodore, ‘why don’t you come with me when I try to find a trace through the mountains next year? Maybe you’ll see what I’m talking about then. You should have seen the railroad I built along the Niagara Gorge. Three experienced topographers said it wasn’t humanly possible. I didn’t worry about that. I just built it. It was only when it was finished that I realised they were probably quite right. It wasn’t humanly possible.’

Collis smiled in amusement.

‘You must come, anyway,’ Theodore said. ‘If you’ve never been up into the Sierras, you’ve got yourself a treat in store. The air’s marvellous. Good for the respiratory system, and even better for the bowels.’

‘All right,’ said Collis, ‘I’ll come. Maybe we ought to take Wang-Pu with us, too.’

‘Oh, sure. Then he could go back and tell all his would-be Chinese labourers what they’d be letting themselves in for.’

The waiter brought them two fresh glasses of steam. Collis raised his. ‘Here’s to Washington, then.’

Theodore nodded. ‘To Washington. And to the day we can travel there by railroad.’

Collis spent a quiet winter in Sacramento. The days passed like slices of light falling through the spokes of a carriage wheel. Each morning he would be up at six, dressed in his clean collar and his grey coat, and walking down to the store. Each day would be spent in selling fuses and screws and gunpowder, in organising the stock, in compiling inventories and arranging for deliveries.