He is very enthusiastic about the route we discovered with Doc Kates, and he has privately promised me that, if elected, he will push ahead with a bill for a transcontinental railroad as soon as possible. The only thing that worries me is that if Lincoln believes the railroad to be so urgent, he must seriously be anticipating the secession of the South and even war. The Southern politicians certainly hate him here. They call him an African gorilla and a slang-whanging lawyer.

There was a long postscript. Collis took the letter to the window and read it by the last light of the sun. Hannah, who was sitting reading a book, looked up at him and saw by his expression that he was both moved and disturbed.

I met Sen. Stride twice. He said adamantly that he had invested enough in the railroad and that these were difficult times for a hard-shell Southern politician to be putting money into Northern industrial projects. However (spontaneously, and much to my regret) I reminded him of his responsibilities to Miss Delphine Spooner, and what had befallen her. Whereupon he agreed to subscribe twenty-thousand dollars more to the railroad, sufficient for a full survey of the Sierras, and I am sorry to say that I accepted. I believe I owe you an extensive apology, and I only hope that I have done nothing to harm Miss Spooner.

Collis threw the letter down on the white lace tablecloth. He looked down at the scattered pages, his hand over his mouth, and said nothing.

Hannah stood up. ‘Is there something the matter?’ she asked him.

‘What?’ he said distractedly.

‘I said, is there anything the matter?’

‘Oh. No, there isn’t. Just a letter from Theo.’

‘You look upset.’

He shrugged. ‘Yes, I suppose I am. It’s funny how your own way of working, when other people try it, always seems so tawdry.’

Hannah didn’t pick up the letter, but came instead to stand beside him and lay a hand on his shoulder.

‘Go to the back of the house,’ she said. ‘There’s still light enough to see the Sierras.’

Chapter Thirteen

What happened during the fall and winter of 1860 and the early spring of the following year — the election of Abraham Lincoln as President and the subsequent breakaway from the Union by South Carolina and six other cotton states — all of these events seemed peculiarly remote and unreal to the people of San Francisco and Sacramento. They were part of a distant political nightmare which they could only hear about secondhand, either from weeks-old dispatches carried by the Pacific Mail steamers, or from the riders of the Pony Express. Suddenly the self-satisfied isolation of northern California became a source of champing frustration, and in the drawing-rooms of South Park and the lobby of the San Francisco Stock Exchange, rumour and feverish fear were both heightened out of all proportion by the latest news reports from the East.