Collis had to return to Sacramento in late July to tidy up months of neglected business; but in mid-August he came back to the Sierras again in a rather rudimentary private passenger car pulled by the City of Sacramento. He climbed down a few hundred feet away from the entrance to the west portal of the Summit Tunnel, and Charles came across to greet him.

‘How’s it going?’ Collis asked. ‘Have we licked this goddam mountain range yet?’

‘You came just in time,’ said Charles. ‘We’re drilling the last of the charge holes right now, and we reckon the two headings should meet up this afternoon. I sent a couple of Chinese foremen back to bring some champagne.’

He followed Charles into the tunnel, and together they walked uphill through the gritty dust of drilled-out granite and the deafening clamour of sledgehammers. Collis took off his hat to wipe the grimy sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief, and coughed.

They arrived at last at the face of the west heading, where thirty or forty blue-pyjama’d Chinese workers were drilling at the granite with hand drills. The white foreman, with his tall cowboy-style hat and drooping moustache, came across and said, ‘Good morning, Mr Edmonds. We should be ready for blasting in a half hour or so. Then you’ll be able to see daylight all the way up to the summit.’

Collis looked around him. ‘You know something?’ he said hoarsely. ‘They said it couldn’t be done. When I first swore that I’d take a railroad over the Sierras, they said it couldn’t be done. Well now, dammit, we’re right on the edge of showing them just how backward and blind they were. We’re almost there, Charles. Can you understand what that means? These mountains I used to look at from my back veranda in Sacramento, we’ve licked them and we’ve licked them good.’

Charles took his arm. ‘Come on, Collis. Let’s go find ourselves a drink. You look like this heat and this dust aren’t doing you any good at all.’

Collis wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His face was glistening with sweat, and he looked appallingly haggard.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you’re right. But you just make sure I’m the first to see this hole blasted right through. You hear me? I don’t want any blasting without my knowledge.’

‘Okay, Mr Edmonds,’ promised the foreman.

Together, Collis and Charles walked back down the tunnel until they were out in the daylight again. They crossed the tracks to Charles’s hut, and Charles unlocked the door and ushered Collis inside. There was a rough-and-ready living-room, with a carpet, and a chaise longue, and an ugly mahogany cabinet, and even a lithograph of San Francisco Bay; through a curtained doorway, Collis could see a brass bed and a set of framed daguerreotypes of nude French models.