The Absolutely True and Ghastly Story of the Brief Disappearance of the Gold Spike

This story needs only a brief foreword. It is a verbatim reproduction of a manuscript I recently found among the belongings of my third great-grandfather, James Finch. Finch was a journalist, and worked for several papers across the American West during his long career, including the Rocky Mountain News and Sacramento Bee. As far as I can tell, he was well respected in his time, and his good reputation in the profession continues to this day.

**

The view out the window was monotonous—a flat brown landscape dotted with sagebrush. In the crisp desert air, it went on forever. The view was unchanging, as we’d been sitting on the tracks for three days. We were in Stanford’s special, pulled by Jupiter, whose fire was dead. Jupiter faced east, toward her adversary, engine No. 119, which had arrived the previous night and now sat quiet on the same track, facing west. The cowcatchers of the two engines were just yards apart. I couldn’t see the two locomotives from my window, but from the rumblings that made their way into our car, I knew that a crowd was gathering around the engines, anxious for something to happen.

I turned from the window to my breakfast companion across the table and remarked that the day looked to be a fair one—a welcome change from the foul weather of the previous days. In fact, the unusual rains had washed out a bridge and delayed for two days the arrival of No. 119 and her train full of Union Pacific bigwigs. As I shared my observation, my friend’s eyes grew wide, which I thought was an odd response to my forecast of mild weather. It took me some moments to realize that he was looking over my shoulder. Just as I did, there was a tremendous crash behind me. I spun around to see that the table directly behind me was occupied by a lone diner. Rather than sitting upright in the traditional fashion, his face was on the table. Shards of a coffee cup were scattered on the table around him, and a brown stain of coffee slowly spread across the white tablecloth.

Fortunately, my companion, Darman, was a medical man, and after a brief interval of surprise, during which he stared at the scene just as I did, he swung into action. He leapt up from our table and moved to the side of the fallen man, putting his fingers to the side of the man’s neck and leaning down low.

The disturbance had attracted the attention of most diners in the car. I looked toward the table occupied by the President of the Central Pacific Railroad. Stanford remained seated with his associates. A napkin was tucked under his chin, but it served no purpose, as his long graying beard appeared to have captured all the available crumbs. Looking at me, Stanford asked, “Is he alright?”

I turned to Darman, who continued to look for signs of breath or a heartbeat. Finally, he lifted his hand from the man’s neck. “He’s dead,” he whispered to me. I took it upon myself to share the news with the rest of the car. “Dead,” I said. “The man’s dead.”

Rumbling voices filled the dining car. “Who is it?” someone called.

I looked down at the dead man. I couldn’t see his face, as it was turned away toward the window, but from his long dark hair I was fairly sure who he was.

“Let’s lift him,” I said to Darman. As he reached for the man’s far shoulder, I put my hand under his forehead. I started to lift him but something caught my eye. I pulled aside the man’s hair at the back of his head. Just above his collar, at the nape of his neck, was what looked like a large brass button, glinting in the morning sun that poured through the window. Uncomprehending, I pulled aside more of his hair, revealing his skin. At the base of the button, a thin rivulet of red ran down his neck. I dropped his head and staggered back, slamming into a man named Peevey, who had been looking over my shoulder. He figured it out just as I did, but was quicker to form words. “It’s the gold spike,” he shouted. “It’s been driven full into his head!”

Darman, meanwhile, hadn’t dropped the dead man like I had. He lifted the man’s head gently and turned it toward me. The face showed no sign of injury. The long waxed mustaches were distinctive. As I had thought, it was Puckett, Stanford’s right-hand man. Peevey said it out loud, and Puckett’s name floated through the dining car.

I looked back at Stanford. He stood up, the napkin still tucked under his chin. His face was white and he let his jaw hang. The gold spike had been missing since the previous night, but Stanford didn’t look thrilled that it had been found.

The situation demanded that someone take charge, but we were in the middle of nowhere, in the bleak desert of Utah Territory, at Promontory Summit, where the United States Congress had dictated that the Union Pacific and Central Pacific tracks meet on May 8, 1869, to link the continent by rail. The closest thing we had to the law was the man lying on top of his breakfast with a six-inch spike of gold lodged in his head.

Puckett was a former lawman, hired by Stanford to protect him and his interests. I felt no sadness in his death. He was unlikable, and a brutal enforcer—his main job was to keep the Central Pacific’s workers compliant. Yet the brutality of his death was extremely unsettling.

I waited for Stanford to do something—to give commands or just pound his fist on the table, but he was transfixed, standing in front of his breakfast. Finally, the young lady next to him, who served as Stanford’s accountant, lawyer, and niece, pressed him gently by the shoulder back into his seat. She walked over to the dead man and without hesitation lifted his hair and put her face close to look at the spike. She looked at me and Darman in turn. “Mr. Finch, Dr. Darman, find out who did this.”

I was initially taken aback by her demand, but I warmed up to it quickly. After all, as a newspaperman, I was probably the closest thing in the vicinity to a detective. With my investigative talents and Darman’s medical skills, I figured we had a fair chance of getting to the bottom of the thing.

“Yes ma’am,” I said.

“And we’ll need the spike,” she said, tapping its head with her finger. “The ceremony starts in an hour.” With that, she walked back to sit next to her uncle.

I addressed the dining car at large. “Nobody leaves this car,” I called out, surprising myself with the authority of my voice. I also was surprised that nobody resisted—at least initially. Most of the dozen or so people in the car sat back down, some to finish their breakfasts.

I figured there was a strong likelihood that the killer—or his boss, at least—was in the car. The rivalry between the two railway companies was intense, and I wasn’t surprised that it could lead to murder. I looked toward the end of the car opposite from Stanford’s table. Thomas Durant, Vice President of the Union Pacific Railway, was slouched in his seat alongside his entourage. He said nothing, but looked as belligerent as ever.

Stanford had outwitted Durant. Stanford had foreseen the importance of the meeting of the two rail lines and had maneuvered to take charge of the day’s ceremony. He made a big fuss in the papers about having commissioned the making of a special gold spike for the occasion. So it would be him, not Durant, who would drive the spike into the final tie.

Durant, I knew, was furious with how the ceremony was shaping up. Stealing the gold spike from Stanford and driving it into the skull of his top henchman would be an effective way for Durant to express his disappointment with the day’s arrangements. Proving that Durant was the culprit was another thing, of course, but my compulsion to do so was strong. Part of it was my simple need to expose the truth—it was my job. I’d been following the big railway companies’ machinations for years and doing my best to get them into print, despite my editors’ often reluctance to do so. And then there was my personal distaste for Durant. Stanford and Durant were both crooks of indescribable magnitude, first enjoying exorbitant government contracts for building the railways and then piling up dirty profits by selling the land along the lines that the government had given them. But having spent some time with Stanford over the previous few days, I found him somehow sympathetic. Durant, on the other hand, was simply a brute.

I turned back to Darman, who was half-heartedly tugging at the head of the spike with his fingers. I figured we should start with the most immediate mystery. “How the hell did he get in here and set himself down to breakfast with a spike clean through his head?” I asked.

Darman shook his head slowly. “It’s remarkable, indeed, but I think not as fantastic as it might seem.”

“But surely a man can’t walk with his brain torn apart, or stir sugar into his coffee, for chrissake?”

“Well,” said Darman, “the pointed end of that spike, being ceremonial, is not altogether sharp. Moreover, the spike’s surface is exceptionally smooth, and gold is chemically inert. I suspect that instead of severing the various parts of the brain that it passed through, the spike merely pushed them apart, leaving them to function more or less as usual.” Darman paused, still looking down at the head of the spike. “At least for a time,” he concluded.

“But the man sat down to breakfast as if he didn’t know he had a spike in his head,” I said.

Darman looked up at me. “That’s right, Finch. It’s possible he never knew.”

While Darman examined his patient, I decided that I should proceed to Puckett’s compartment to look for clues. I was reluctant, however, to leave the dining car, as I was certain that the malefactor sat in it, enjoying his breakfast. In fact, it didn’t take long for Durant to resist his detainment. He stood, tossed his napkin on the table in front of him, and announced that he had finished his breakfast and that he and his colleagues would be departing to prepare for the ceremony.

I knew it would be foolish to try to keep Durant confined to the car. For one thing, Darman and I were probably the only two people in the room without pistols, one of the traits that perhaps drew us together. In my case, choosing not to carry a gun was a simple matter of survival. I’d long since determined that I was inept when it came to firearms, and that I’d probably live longer without one. Darman’s case, in contrast, was principled. As a doctor, he was very familiar with the destruction wrought by guns, and he tried to set an example against them. I daresay that if his example had been followed, the population of the western part of the continent would be considerably greater than it is. Darman wasn’t against self-defense, however, and he carried a wooden truncheon for the purpose. In fact, it was a much-admired implement among the construction crew—its handle was black, delicately painted with colorful flowers, which contrasted strongly with the business end of the stick, with its thick head and medieval-like pattern of pockmarks.

In any event, it wasn’t just Durant whose patience with our investigation waned after just twenty minutes. Stanford was engaged in intense whispered consultations with his associates, and I had a pretty good idea what they were saying. Seeing justice for their fallen colleague might have been their initial reaction to the tragedy, but it didn’t take long for reality to catch up with them.

Sure enough, Miss Stanford stood and approached us. “Gentlemen, your efforts to find the perpetrator of this murder are much appreciated by Mr. Stanford, but the priority of the day—our obligation to the public—is to continue with the ceremony.” She looked at her watch. “If you could please pull the spike from the poor man’s head, we need to make final preparations.”

Stanford’s commitment to the public was a load of crap. What he’d come to realize was that it wasn’t in his interest to prove that Durant had killed his man.

After hearing Miss Stanford’s little speech, Durant and his party walked out of the car. Miss Stanford looked back at me and Darman. “Gentlemen?”

Darman said, “Of course, ma’am.”

I said nothing. I absently ran my finger over the head of the spike as I thought about how Darman and I might continue our investigation. The spike’s head had a textured pattern embossed into its surface. It was surprisingly rough against my finger. I remembered Darman’s comment about the spike’s gold surface being exceptionally smooth. I peered closely at the shiny head of the spike. At first I’d thought that the embossed pattern was decorative, but now it hit me. It was the same pattern as the one on the head of Darman’s truncheon.

My head swam, trying to think through such an improbable scenario. Darman was in Stanford’s employ as a medical doctor. What business could he possibly have with the gold spike and with Puckett? I thought back through the few days that I’d known Darman. He was a gentleman in all respects. He had a passion for cards, but that was true of all of us—we had nothing better to do during the days of waiting for Durant’s train to arrive. But it occurred to me that Darman had piled up a number of debts in those few days. He appeared to have the unhappy combination of a love for the game and little skill. Had Darman stolen the gold spike in desperation? Had Puckett found him out? I tried to imagine the gruesome scene that would have then played out, somehow leaving Puckett with a gold spike implanted in his head.

I shook the images out of my head and looked Darman in the eye. He looked back at me blankly. I thought back to our pleasant breakfast only thirty minutes before. I remembered Darman’s eyes suddenly growing wide and his mouth opening. It wasn’t a look of mere surprise—it was a look of terror. And I remembered that it came not after Puckett crashed into his coffee cup, but before. Darman had watched a dead man walk into the car and set himself down for breakfast.

**

An hour later, Stanford stood over the wooden tie that was the final link in a continuous railway across the continent. The gold spike stood poised in the wood, ready for the blow. The crowd leaned in, breathless.

Stanford lifted the sledge above his head, and after a few moments steadying himself above his wobbly legs, he let it fall. It returned a wooden thud. He’d missed the spike. Perhaps the image of Puckett’s head had intruded itself at the crucial moment. Stanford stared down at his feet. The crowd was silent. Finally, Stanford’s niece came out of the crowd and pulled the sledge out of Stanford’s hands. Holding the sledge with one hand and Stanford’s elbow with the other, she tapped the spike, which sounded an appropriate metallic ring. The crowd roared its approval. Miss Stanford led her uncle away, and a string of small-time dignitaries took his place—but not Durant, who refused to follow Stanford. They took turns tapping the gold spike, each helping to obliterate the pattern embossed in the soft metal.

**

Three professional photographers were at the scene, recording the event for posterity, but you won’t find a photo of that culminating moment—of Stanford being held up by his niece as she tapped the gold spike into the final tie. I have no doubt that Stanford had those plates destroyed. None of the photos we’ve become familiar with over the years since the event—such as the one with the two engineers saluting each other with bottles of champagne from their respective locomotives—include the principals. It’s as if Stanford and Durant weren’t even there. That’s because as soon as the two railways were joined, they retired to Stanford’s car to do business—that is, to bury the story of the man impaled by the gold spike that would become a symbol of the nation’s progress.

Stanford and Durant were rivals—enemies, even, but in the years they’d spent fleecing the American people, they’d gathered too many secrets about each other. Neither had an interest in exposing the other. So they made peace, and continued their diligent work at scripting how the story of the building of the cross-continent railway would be presented to the world.

I’m writing this fifty years after the fact, after learning of the death of Darman’s widow and knowing they didn’t have children. My friendship with Darman didn’t endure after Promontory Summit—my secret was too big for that. Darman himself died about five years after we met, his truncheon apparently no match for a pistol-loving fellow card player.

Even as I write these words, heading toward Promontory Summit to observe the fiftieth anniversary of the big event, gazing at the familiar desert landscape from a dining car not unlike the one pulled by Jupiter, I’m undecided on whether to publish them. In my younger days, revealing the truth was a passion as well as my livelihood, but the years have mellowed me, and I’ve gained an appreciation of the power of burying the truth.

James Finch

May 10, 1919, en route to Promontory Summit, Utah