Theodore sat sheepishly in one of Collis’s large library chairs while Collis finished a column of entries in his accounts books. Then Collis took off the small blue skullcap which he had grown into the habit of wearing while he worked, and smiled at Theodore in a way that made Theodore feel that he was not quite there, that he was only a shade of his real self.

‘Well,’ said Collis. ‘Annie tells me it’s eastward ho for you again.’

‘Yes,’ said Theodore.

‘You’re going to try to do what you’ve always threatened? Buy us mealy-mouthed merchants out?’

‘Yes,’ said Theodore.

‘It hasn’t occurred to you that we may be the only men on earth who are actually capable of carrying this venture through? That more squeamish men might have backed out years ago?’

‘Leland’s talking of ending the road in Nevada. That doesn’t do much to inspire me.’

Collis opened the humidor on his desk, took out a long cigar, and cut it. ‘You can’t blame Leland for that. He’s simply looking for a practical solution to our present financial problems. A short-term plan to balance the books.’

‘The transcontinental railroad was never meant to be a short-term plan, ever,’ Theodore said angrily. ‘It was conceived on the grand scale, and only men of grand vision can ever complete it.’

Collis lit his cigar slowly. ‘You know something, Theo?’ he said. ‘You and I could still be friends, and working partners.’

Theodore shook his head. ‘You’re probably right when you say that you and Leland are the only men on earth who could ever build the Sierra Pacific. I hope you’re not, and I’m going to Washington to raise enough money to buy you out, and try to prove that you’re not. But it’s the only course left open to me, Collis. I cannot be party to building a railroad that may or may not be completed, according to the temperament of its owners; or to a railroad whose tracks will be laid on so much bribery, and blackmail, and plain human suffering.’

Collis thought about that, and then walked around his desk. He extended his hand to Theodore as if he were congratulating him on twenty years’ service with the company, and wishing him a happy retirement. Theodore couldn’t help noticing for the first time the deeply engraved lines around Collis’s eyes, and the way that his hair was beginning to recede from his forehead. He looked like a man of forty, rather than a man in his early thirties.

The room seemed to be suddenly much darker, as the last diffused light of the sun faded away outside. Theodore gripped Collis’s hand in both of his and said, ‘Goodbye, Collis. I hope we shall never turn out to be enemies.’