In a few minutes, Hannah was lying awkwardly on the table, her head propped up by a pillow, her underskirts raised up, and her thighs spread so that Mrs Pangborn could get to work. Mrs Pangborn washed her hands, and then brought the oil lamp closer, so that she could see what she was doing.

‘Would you care for a drink?’ she asked Hannah. ‘I’ve got a bottle of brandy in the cupboard.’

Hannah shook her head, ‘No, no. Just — do what you have to do.’

She lay back on the pillow as Mrs Pangborn reached for her instruments, and closed her eyes. This is the second and last time, dear God. I promise you that. Next time, the Railroad Act will have been passed, and Collis will have his charter, and the child can live. Next time, when I get pregnant, it will be the most important event in Collis’s life.

She let out an ‘Ah!’ of pain as Mrs Pangborn thrust two fingers deep inside to feel the neck of her womb.

‘Well, that looks dandy to me,’ she heard Mrs Pangborn saying. ‘That all looks dandy to me.’

Then she leaned over Hannah and said loudly, ‘You won’t even know what’s happened.’

Hannah looked across at a cheap etching on Mrs Pangborn’s parlour wall. It showed a dour Indian overlooking the Mariposa Trail in Yosemite. She thought that she had never seen an Indian. How curious, to come to the West, and never to see an Indian.

She thought of Collis, too, and tried to imagine his face in her mind. My dear Collis, she thought, and for some reason her eyes filled with tears.

Mrs Pangborn said, ‘Am I hurting you, my love?’

But Hannah whispered, ‘No. You’re not hurting me at all.’

The letters crossed at Panama City. Collis’s letter had just reached the Pacific after being carried across the isthmus by train; and Jane McCormick’s letter had just reached Panama on the Pacific Mail steamer Icarus.

Collis’s letter read:

Great and wonderful news! Today, President Lincoln at last signed the Railroad Act, and we have been granted nearly all the money I wanted. I am so pleased that I cannot describe my feelings, although somehow after all these years of trial and struggle the final Presidential signature has come as something of an anti-climax. Theodore and I are proceeding instanter to New York, where we are going to order up all the rails we will need, and all the railroad equipment. We will also establish the Sierra Pacific Railroad as a New York company and try to raise extra money. I expect to be back in Sacramento by September at the latest, so do take heart.

Jane McCormick’s letter read: