Jules Verne · a new plain-English translation from the original language
That same evening, the train pursued its route without obstacles, passed Fort Sanders, cleared the Cheyenne Pass, and reached the Evans Pass. At this spot, the railroad reached the highest point of the run, namely eight thousand ninety-one feet above the level of the ocean. The travelers had now only to go on down to the Atlantic across those limitless plains, leveled by nature.
There, on the "grand trunk," lay the branch line to Denver City, the chief town of Colorado. This territory is rich in gold and silver mines, and more than fifty thousand inhabitants have already made their home there.
By this point, thirteen hundred eighty-two miles had been covered since San Francisco, over three days and three nights. Four nights and four days, by every forecast, should be enough to reach New York. Phileas Fogg was thus keeping within the regulation limits.
During the night, Camp Walbah was left on the left. The Lodge Pole Creek ran parallel to the line, following the straight-line boundary common to the states of Wyoming and Colorado. At eleven o'clock, they entered Nebraska, passed near the Sedgwick, and touched Julesburg, set on the south branch of the Platte River.
It is at this point that the inauguration of the Union Pacific Road took place, on October 23, 1867, its chief engineer being General J. M. Dodge. There the two powerful locomotives halted, hauling the nine cars of guests, among whom figured the vice-president, Mr. Thomas C. Durant; there the cheers rang out; there the Sioux and the Pawnees put on the spectacle of a little Indian war; there the fireworks burst; there, at last, by means of a portable press, the first issue of the newspaper Railway Pioneer was published. In this fashion the inauguration of this great railway was celebrated, an instrument of progress and civilization, flung across the desert and meant to link together towns and cities that did not yet exist. The locomotive's whistle, mightier than Amphion's lyre, was soon to make them spring up from American soil.
At eight o'clock in the morning, Fort McPherson was left behind. Three hundred fifty-seven miles separate this point from Omaha. The railway followed, on its left bank, the capricious windings of the south branch of the Platte River. At nine o'clock, they reached the sizable town of North Platte, set between the two arms of the great watercourse, which rejoin around it to form only a single artery—a considerable tributary whose waters mingle with those of the Missouri, a little above Omaha.
The hundred-and-first meridian had been crossed.
Mr. Fogg and his partners had taken up their game again. None of them complained of the length of the journey—not even the dummy. Fix had begun by winning a few guineas, which he was in the course of losing back, but he showed himself no less impassioned than Mr. Fogg. During that morning, luck singularly favored this gentleman. Trumps and honors rained into his hands. At a certain moment, having worked out a bold play, he was getting ready to lead spades, when, behind the seat, a voice made itself heard, saying:
"Myself, I'd play diamonds..."
Mr. Fogg, Mrs. Aouda, and Fix looked up. Colonel Proctor was beside them.
Stamp W. Proctor and Phileas Fogg recognized each other at once.
"Ah! it's you, Mr. Englishman," cried the colonel, "it's you who want to play spades!
"And who am playing it," replied Phileas Fogg coldly, laying down a ten of that suit.
"Well, it suits me that it be diamonds," retorted Colonel Proctor in an irritated voice.
And he made a move to seize the card that had been played, adding:
"You understand nothing about this game.
"Perhaps I'll be more skillful at another," said Phileas Fogg, who rose.
"It's up to you to try, son of John Bull!" retorted the coarse fellow.
Mrs. Aouda had turned pale. All her blood flowed back to her heart. She had seized the arm of Phileas Fogg, who gently pushed her away. Passepartout was ready to throw himself on the American, who was eyeing his adversary with the most insulting air. But Fix had risen and, going up to Colonel Proctor, he said to him:
"You forget that it's I you have to deal with, sir—I, the man you not only insulted but actually struck!
"Monsieur Fix," said Mr. Fogg, "I beg your pardon, but this concerns me alone. By claiming that I was wrong to play spades, the colonel has done me a fresh injury, and he shall answer to me for it.
"Whenever you like, and wherever you like," retorted the American, "and with any weapon you please!"
Mrs. Aouda tried in vain to hold back Mr. Fogg. The inspector attempted, uselessly, to take up the quarrel on his own account. Passepartout wanted to throw the colonel out the door, but a sign from his master stopped him. Phileas Fogg walked out of the car, and the American came after him onto the gangway.
"Sir," Mr. Fogg said to his opponent, "I'm in a great hurry to return to Europe, and the slightest delay would do serious harm to my interests.
"Well! what's that to me?" replied Colonel Proctor.
"Sir," Mr. Fogg went on very politely, "after our encounter at San Francisco, I had formed the plan of coming to find you again in America, as soon as I had finished the business that calls me to the old continent.
"Really!
"Will you give me a meeting in six months?
"Why not in six years?
"I say six months," replied Mr. Fogg, "and I'll be punctual at the appointment.
"Excuses, all that!" cried Stamp W. Proctor. "Right now or not at all.
"So be it," replied Mr. Fogg. "You're going to New York?
"No.
"To Chicago?
"No.
"To Omaha?
"No matter to you! Do you know Plum Creek?
"No," replied Mr. Fogg.
"It's the next stop. The train reaches it in an hour. It will halt there ten minutes. In ten minutes, one can exchange a few revolver shots.
"So be it," replied Mr. Fogg. "I'll stop at Plum Creek.
"And I even think you'll stay there!" added the American with unequaled insolence.
"Who knows, sir?" replied Mr. Fogg, and he went back into his car, as cold as ever.
There the gentleman began by reassuring Mrs. Aouda, telling her that braggarts were never to be feared. Then he asked Fix to serve as his second in the encounter that was about to take place. Fix could not refuse, and Phileas Fogg calmly took up his interrupted game, playing spades with perfect composure.
At eleven o'clock, the whistle of the locomotive announced the approach of the Plum Creek station. Mr. Fogg got up and, with Fix behind him, made his way to the gangway. Passepartout went with him, carrying a pair of revolvers. Mrs. Aouda had stayed in the car, pale as a dead woman.
At that moment, the door of the other car opened, and Colonel Proctor likewise appeared on the gangway, followed by his second, a Yankee of his own stamp. But just as the two adversaries were about to step down onto the track, the conductor came running and shouted to them:
"You don't get down, gentlemen.
"And why not?" asked the colonel.
"We're twenty minutes behind, and the train isn't stopping.
"But I'm supposed to fight with this gentleman.
"I'm sorry about it," replied the employee, "but we're leaving again at once. There's the bell ringing!"
The bell was indeed ringing, and the train started off again.
"I'm truly sorry, gentlemen," the conductor then said. "In any other circumstance, I could have obliged you. But after all, since you haven't had the time to fight here, who's to stop you from fighting on the way?
"That may not suit this gentleman!" said Colonel Proctor with a mocking air.
"It suits me perfectly," replied Phileas Fogg.
"Well, there's no doubt about it, we really are in America!" thought Passepartout, "and the train conductor is a gentleman of the finest sort!"
And so saying, he followed his master.
The two adversaries and their seconds, led by the conductor, made their way, passing from one car to the next, to the back of the train. This final car held only about ten travelers. The conductor asked them whether they would be so good as to leave the space free for a few moments to two gentlemen who had an affair of honor to settle.
Why, of course! The travelers were only too happy to be able to oblige the two gentlemen, and they withdrew onto the gangways.
This car, some fifty feet long, lent itself very suitably to the occasion. The two adversaries could walk toward each other between the benches and blaze away at their leisure. Never was a duel easier to arrange. Mr. Fogg and Colonel Proctor, each armed with two six-shot revolvers, entered the car. Their seconds, staying outside, locked them in. At the first whistle of the locomotive, they were to open fire... Then, after a lapse of two minutes, whatever was left of the two gentlemen would be removed from the car.
Nothing simpler, in truth. So simple, indeed, that Fix and Passepartout could feel their hearts pounding fit to burst.
So they were waiting for the agreed whistle, when suddenly savage cries rang out. Detonations accompanied them, but these did not come from the car set aside for the duelists. These detonations went on, on the contrary, all the way to the front, running the entire length of the train. Shouts of terror were heard inside the convoy.
Colonel Proctor and Mr. Fogg, revolver in hand, at once came out of the car and rushed toward the front, where the detonations and cries were sounding more loudly.
They had understood that the train was being attacked by a band of Sioux.
These bold Indians were not making their first attempt, and more than once already they had stopped the trains. Following their habit, without waiting for the train to stop, springing onto the running boards to the number of a hundred, they had scaled the cars the way a clown does a galloping horse.
These Sioux were armed with rifles. Hence the detonations, to which the travelers, nearly all armed, answered back with revolver shots. First of all, the Indians had rushed the engine. The engineer and the fireman had been half stunned by blows of a war club. A Sioux chief, meaning to halt the train but with no idea how to work the regulator lever, had opened the steam intake wide instead of closing it, and the locomotive, running away, was racing along at a fearful speed.
At the same time, the Sioux had overrun the cars, they ran like enraged monkeys over the car roofs, they smashed in the doors and fought hand to hand with the travelers. Out of the baggage car, broken into and plundered, the packages were thrown onto the track. Cries and gunfire did not let up.
Meanwhile the travelers defended themselves with courage. Certain cars, barricaded, withstood a siege, like real rolling forts, swept along at a hundred miles an hour.
From the very start of the attack, Mrs. Aouda had behaved courageously. Revolver in hand, she defended herself heroically, firing through the shattered windows whenever some savage presented himself to her. A score of Sioux, struck dead, had fallen onto the track, and the wheels of the cars crushed like worms those among them who slipped onto the rails from the top of the gangways.
Several travelers, gravely hit by bullets or war clubs, lay stretched on the benches.
Meanwhile it had to be brought to an end. This struggle had already been going on for ten minutes, and could only end to the advantage of the Sioux if the train did not stop. In fact, the Fort Kearney station was not two miles off. There stood an American post; but once that post was passed, between Fort Kearney and the next station the Sioux would be masters of the convoy.
The conductor was fighting at Mr. Fogg's side when a bullet knocked him down. As he fell, this man cried out:
"We're lost, if the train doesn't stop within five minutes!
"It will stop!" said Phileas Fogg, who made to spring out of the car.
"Stay, sir," Passepartout shouted to him. "This is my business!"
Phileas Fogg had no time to stop the courageous fellow, who, opening a door without being seen by the Indians, managed to slip under the car. And then, while the struggle went on, while the bullets crossed above his head, recovering his agility, his clown's suppleness, threading his way under the cars, clinging to the chains, helping himself with the brake lever and the frame rails, crawling from one carriage to the next with marvelous skill, he thus reached the front of the train. He had not been seen, he could not have been.
There, hanging by one hand between the luggage van and the tender, he used the other to unhook the safety chains; yet with the traction being applied, he would never have managed to unscrew the coupling bar, had a jolt that the engine underwent not made this bar spring loose, so that the train, detached, gradually fell behind, while the locomotive fled off at renewed speed.
Carried along by acquired momentum, the train rolled on for a few minutes more, but the brakes were worked from inside the cars, and the train stopped at last, less than a hundred paces from the Kearney station.
There, the fort's soldiers, drawn by the gunfire, came running in haste. The Sioux had not waited for them, and, before the train had fully stopped, the whole band had made off.
But when the travelers took a count of themselves on the station platform, they realized that several were missing from the roll call, and among others the courageous Frenchman to whose devotion they had just owed their rescue.