The Iron Dragon Never Sleeps

OTHER YEARLING BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:

MIEKO AND THE FIFTH TREASURE
,
Eleanor Coerr
WHEN HITLER STOLE PINK RABBIT
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Judith Kerr
YOUNG FU OF THE UPPER YANGTZE
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Elizabeth Foreman Lewis
NUMBER THE STARS
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Lois Lowry
YANG THE YOUNGEST AND HIS TERRIBLE EAR
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Lensey Namioka
YANG THE THIRD AND HER IMPOSSIBLE FAMILY
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Lensey Namioka
ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS
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Scott O’Dell
ZIA
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Scott O’Dell
THE SKIRT
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Gary Soto
THE WORLD OF DAUGHTER MCGUIRE
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Sharon Dennis Wyeth

YEARLING BOOKS are designed especially to entertain and enlighten young people. Patricia Reilly Giff, consultant to this series, received her bachelor’s degree from Marymount College and a master’s degree in history from St. John’s University. She holds a Professional Diploma in Reading and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Hofstra University. She was a teacher and reading consultant for many years, and is the author of numerous books for young readers.

“
W
HOOOOOOOO
!
”

Winnie Tucker jumped. The shrill blast of the train whistle had surprised her. Then she blushed. Only babies and cats were scared of train whistles.

She looked around quickly. Had anyone noticed? Her mother was reading a newspaper. The rest of the train car was mostly empty. Four men sat dozing, their heads slumped on their chests. A young woman rocked a baby in her arms.

Across the aisle, though, a man was grinning at her. He had a scraggly gray beard and a scuffed hat. Winnie’s grandfathers both had looked like that. They had been miners. Maybe this man was a miner, too.

“A bit loud, eh?” he said.

“A little,” Winnie admitted. Actually she was in awe of the train. The great locomotive up front, eating fire and breathing steam, was like an iron dragon chained to the track.

“First train ride?” the man asked.

“Uh-huh.”

Her mother put down the newspaper. “The first for both of us,” she said.

The man tipped his cap. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. I’m Jack Perkins. But call me Flap Jack. Everybody does.”

“Why is that?” Winnie asked.

“On account of my favorite food. After panning for gold all day, I can eat a stack a mile high.”

I was right
, thought Winnie.
He is a miner.

Winnie’s mother smiled. “Well, Flap Jack, I’m Marjorie Tucker. This is my daughter, Winnie. We’re on our way to Cisco.”

“Going to Cisco myself,” said Flap Jack. “To visit my brother. He’s the Stationmaster there.”

The train wheels squealed as the train rounded a curve. This time Winnie didn’t jump.

Flap Jack looked out the window. “Making good time, I see.”

Winnie pressed her nose against the glass. Flap Jack was right. The train was going fast. The trees and orchards of the California countryside were flying by. The conductor had boasted that the train
sometimes went as fast as twenty-five miles an hour. It was hard to believe.

Winnie and her mother had left Sacramento early that morning. Winnie’s best friends, Rose and Julia, had come down to the station to say good-bye.

“Three months,” Rose had moaned. “That’s longer than forever.”

Julia had nodded sleepily. “She will get to live in a hotel, though.”

“Not a hotel,” Winnie had reminded them. “A rooming house.”

“Well, it won’t be the same summer without you,” Rose insisted.

Winnie had sighed at the time, and she sighed again now. What Rose had said was true. And she was going to miss them, she knew that.

Still, she was excited. In a few hours she’d be with her father again. She hadn’t seen him in months. He was a mining engineer for the Central Pacific Railroad. It was a job that kept him on the move.

This summer, though, he was living in Cisco. At first, when her mother had suggested they come stay with him, he had been against the idea. “Cisco’s no place for a girl like Winnie,” he had written. Her mother had then written back: “Considering how little you’ve seen of her lately, how can you judge what Winnie is like these days?”

In the end he changed his mind.

Her mother patted Winnie’s shoulder. “We’ll be meeting Papa before you know it.”

“Do you think he grew his beard again?” Winnie asked.

Her mother laughed. Eli Tucker hated to shave. His stubble was stiffer than a boar’s hide, he complained. Whenever he traveled, he always managed to lose his straight-edge razor.

“Tickets! Tickets, please!”

The conductor was lurching his way up the car. He looked very grand, with his frock coat, stiff collar, and bow tie.

“Tickets?”

Winnie held hers up to the conductor.

“I’ve done yours already, miss,” he reminded her. “One punch to a customer.”

He punched a hole in Flap Jack’s ticket.

“All bound for Cisco, eh?” said the conductor.

“We’re going to see my father,” said Winnie. “He’s working on the Summit Tunnel. Maybe you know him—Eli Tucker?”

The conductor shook his head. “Those fellows don’t get back here much. Digging out No. 6 keeps them pretty busy.”

No. 6 was the official railroad name for the Summit Tunnel. It was part of the railroad line from Sacramento eastward through the Sierra Nevadas.
Someday the line would be part of a transcontinental railroad across the whole United States.

All the railroad tunnels were numbered in order. Winnie frowned. Numbers were so ordinary. She would have named the tunnels after book characters—like Hans Brinker or Rip Van Winkle.

The train rumbled softly.

“Are we slowing down?” Mrs. Tucker asked.

Winnie looked out again. There was no room here for a depot. They were high on the edge of a cliff.

“This is Cape Horn,” said Flap Jack. “All the trains stop here for ten minutes. Gives us time to enjoy the view.”

The train jolted to a halt.

“Passengers may disembark to inspect the view,” the conductor announced.

Winnie was not afraid of heights. At least she didn’t think she was. And if the Central Pacific Railroad thought this place was worth stopping for, she would take a look.

Cape Horn was a sheer granite bluff rising fifteen hundred feet above the American River. The train tracks ran along a ledge carved out of the mountainside. It was not very wide.

Winnie took out her sketchpad. She loved to draw, but it had been too bumpy while the train was moving.

She sketched quickly. Beyond the ledge was a steep canyon. Trees grew straight up its sides, like teeth on a comb. At the bottom was the American River. It was there, but farther downstream, where gold had been discovered in 1848.

Nineteen years had passed since then. The California gold rush was part of Winnie’s family history. Her grandparents had been among the settlers flocking to California to make their fortunes. Her parents had met on a slag heap. Neither family had ever struck it rich, “but we found gold in each other,” her mother liked to say.

Winnie looked up at the cliff above them. “Is this a natural ledge?” she asked.

“Not at all,” said Flap Jack. “And believe me, building it was tricky work. Actually the Chinese crews did most of this. They were lowered down the side of the cliff with baskets of tools and blasting powder. They chipped out this ledge a piece at a time.”

“It sounds dangerous,” said Winnie.

The old miner nodded. “You could say that. Sometimes the ropes slipped. Other times the poor devils were caught too close to the exploding blasting powder. Hundreds of them lost their lives.”