It was just after noon. The two railroad engines had been uncoupled from the trains they had brought with them, and eased closer to each other, sighing and hissing as they came. A Union flag fluttered loudly from a nearby telegraph pole, and an extra wire had been brought down from one of the pole’s insulators to connect up with a telegraph key, which was set up on a wooden table not ten feet away from the last rail. At the table, a young telegraph operator with shiny hair was tapping out the news to both sides of the continent that the last spike would be driven in less than twenty minutes.

‘The idea is that the last spike is going to be wired up to the telegraph,’ said Leland. ‘When I hit it with my silver-plated sledgehammer, one single telegraph transmission will announce to all the globe that America has been bridged by a railroad at long last.’

Jane McCormick, who had been talking to Mary Tucker, came across and offered her arm to Leland like a San Francisco salami on to which someone, for a joke, had tugged a lady’s white glove. Leland took it, and patted it, and gave Collis a patronising smirk.

Thomas Durant was waiting for them. He shook them all by the hand and then said, ‘You must forgive me. I have a rather severe headache.’

‘Too much champagne,’ remarked Jane McCormick, and continued to look pleased with herself even after Collis had scowled at her.

Grenville Dodge remained in the background, watching the directors of the Sierra Pacific with animosity. He had always thought that Leland McCormick was a windbag, and frequently said so.

The band music died away. The crowd pushed closer, laughing and clapping and singing. Collis found that he was being pressed so hard on all sides that he could hardly keep his balance.

A tall thin preacher with a single tuft of grey hair that was blown upright by the wind like the feather in a red Indian’s headband came forward through the crowd. This was the Reverend John Todd, who had come to Promontory on behalf of two religious magazines. He raised both his hands and said a prayer of thanks in such a soft voice that nobody could hear him except Leland, who was standing right next to him, and who kept nodding as if the prayers were personally addressed to him.

Collis pushed his way over and stood next to the telegraph operator. As the Reverend John Todd sang out an almost inaudible ‘Amen’, he watched the operator tap out the words, ‘We have got done praying. The spike is about to be presented.’