“Sure, I wouldn’t put it past Crocker to let us die of thirst, while that dog of his laps water as clean and bountiful as a bishop’s arse,” Jimmy said to Finn. “It’s another reason we’ve got to unionize, Finn. Follow in the steps of those lads back east.”

“Shut your gob with that union talk!” Finn’s voice was barely a whisper, as two men from the spiking crew passed by. “You keep that up, and you’ll find yourself out of a job – or worse.”

They had all heard about the Kerryman who had goaded his crew in Iowa to strike in demand of better pay and more rest breaks. His body was found nailed to a pole with the sign “Union-izer” hung from his neck.

Finn began to cough, doubling over like a bent nail. It was happening more and more. At the end of his coughing spell, Finn spat onto the sun-caked earth. Jimmy looked away, afraid of seeing again the bright bits of red in his friend’s sputum.

Like everything else that was miserable on the railroad, Crocker was to blame for Finn’s illness. Finn had been meant to rest last Sunday, but Crocker had insisted everyone work. He was driving them all to exhaustion as May approached, and with it the grand celebration planned for the completion of the rail line connecting the Union Pacific to the Central Pacific.

“The eyes of the world are on us,” Crocker would regularly tell the men, “waiting for that moment we connect the lines, forging the First Transcontinental Railroad.” Crocker bragged of how, when that day came, he would take part in history, riding that train over the tracks they had laid, “sitting in the first-class car, alongside Mr. Gould and Mr. Stanford themselves.”

Jimmy wondered if, the minute Leland Stanford turned his back during the big planned ceremony, Monty wouldn’t piss on the rail spike made of gold the railroad magnate was rumored to have had commissioned for the occasion. Jimmy certainly wouldn’t put it past the awful black-coated devil.

As though his thoughts had summoned them like a dreaded bog spirit, Jimmy saw Crocker heading for them in his wagon, Monty sitting on his haunches on the bench beside him. Even from a distance, the foreman’s bulk was impossible to miss, the curve of his bowler hat snug on his bald head. He stopped the horse and leaned over in his seat to observe the furrows they had dug, the buttons on the black vest he always wore straining against his torso. Jimmy hated that he feared the man. As though he were a boy again, awaiting the pain of the priest’s palm slammed against his ear.

“That left trench needs to be widened,” Crocker said and spat. ” You boys know the drill: ten inches; no more, no less. You want I should get out my measuring stick and show you what I mean?”

“No, sir,” Finn said, his voice small. Jimmy knew Finn remembered well the beating Crocker had given him with that stick the one time Finn had questioned Crocker’s eye.

“‘No sir,'” Crocker mocked, and the odious dog next to him let out a high-pitched whine in accompaniment. “Be sure to fix it. Then you Mick bastards best get a move on. I need another three miles dug today. Get it done or you get half-rations for supper. I don’t feed men who don’t do an honest day’s work.”

Crocker slapped the reins on the horse’s withers and his wagon moved on, kicking up dust that made Jimmy cough along with Finn.

“Three more miles?” Jimmy croaked. “How in hell are we going to do that before sunset?”

“I don’t know, but we will,” Finn told him.

“I’d like to drive a spike through his feckin’ head!”

“Talk like that doesn’t get a man anywhere, Jimmy. And it surely doesn’t get a furrow dug,” Finn said, wiping his hands on his corduroy britches and bending back down to his shovel.

Finn’s coughing had grown worse, and a few mornings later he woke deathly pale with fever-glazed eyes. Jimmy held a damp cloth to his hot brow and helped him sip warm, murky water.

This was the third day Finn would not be able to work, and Jimmy knew it was the day Crocker would demand his friend be sent from the camp.

“This is a labor camp, not an infirmary,” Crocker had declared.

They were only six miles short of reaching Promontory Summit, and Jimmy had pleaded for Finn to be allowed to make the rest of the journey with the team. But Crocker had refused.

Finn was left in a coughing huddle on the side of the trail, his meager belongings tied in a bundle beside him. Jimmy had opted to stay with him, despite Finn’s objections. “No reason for you to starve, too.” But Jimmy couldn’t abandon the man he had grown up with in Drimmeen and with whom he had come to this faraway land, their eyes bright with adventure and dreams of riches. The man who was more brother to him than friend, and in whose eyes now Jimmy saw only their mutual defeat and degradation in this place where being Irish was still a curse.

It only took one look at Finn’s ashen face and withering body for the purveyors of the tent housing that had sprung up in the wake of the railway’s tracks to refuse them shelter. Jimmy kept them moving, balancing his friend’s weight against his shoulder, determined to find them a place to hole up.

Jimmy came across a Paiute woman who had a cabin built into a hillside with an adjoining shack she was willing to rent. She introduced herself as “Mrs. Schumacher,” and when Jimmy looked confused, explained that she had married a German man who had gone to California eighteen years ago to chase gold and never returned. “All he left me was this land and his name. I made damn sure to keep both.” She asked Jimmy if Finn were ill, and Jimmy saw no point in lying.

“But he’ll be grand again with just a few days’ rest, missus.”

Mrs. Schumacher stuffed a black wad of chewing tobacco into her cheek and said, “Makes no difference to me, as long as you have money. Only thing this world wants to do is kill us.”

Even after bartering his help around her land, Jimmy ended up handing over most of their money to rent the shack, complaining afterwards to Finn about there being “bastard landlords here in America, too.” Finn, sitting on the shack’s floor, his head drooping, said, “Sure, she’s had a hard life. I don’t begrudge her.”

At night, in between the scurrying sounds of their new home’s profusion of rats, Jimmy listened to the rasping wheeze of Finn’s breathing where he lay on a makeshift bed Jimmy had rigged up from some abandoned wooden planks and musty blankets. By day, he did his best to keep his friend comfortable, remembering home, telling stories of the legendary giant Fionn Mac Cumhaill, Finn’s namesake, and talking about the grand life they’d have one day soon in America. How maybe they’d go up next to Montana, to work the silver mines.

One night, after a prolonged fit of coughing that left a scattering of blood like buckshot across the blankets, Finn said, “Táim réidh le bás.”

Jimmy felt an ache in his chest at Finn’s use of the old language of their home, what they reverted to only in moments of heartsick nostalgia or deepest despair. He couldn’t think of what to say, and Finn went on, “There’s only so many ditches a man can dig. So many rocks he can break. I’m well tired of this life.”

Jimmy swallowed hard and found his voice. “Don’t be talking like that. Sure, you’ll be grand in no time.”

Jimmy knew Finn wouldn’t get better without a doctor, but there wasn’t money for one. Though Jimmy was owed three days’ wages from the Central Pacific Railroad, he knew Crocker would never pay up. If you left the work camp, you were finished. He looked at his friend, his color gone grey as the stone walls back home in County Galway. Jimmy felt his jaw tighten. He had to go collect what was his.

In exchange for his help repairing a fence line, Mrs. Schumacher loaned Jimmy a black and white pony that he saddled up and rode to Promontory Summit. It was early evening when he arrived, and the railway campsite was settling down to supper. Wetness filled Jimmy’s mouth when he smelled roasting meat from the Chinese section of the camp, a scent far more appetizing than the boiled meat and potatoes he and the other Irish subsisted upon. Though, in truth, he was so hungry at present that he would gladly partake of a bowl of Hennessey’s sheep’s-head stew, if offered.

Jimmy knocked on the door of the office that had been hastily built for Crocker, his fear a burning knot behind his eyes. Inside, the foreman was supping on a steak, the napkin tucked into his shirt collar stained with bloody juice. Jimmy’s stomach kicked and growled.

Crocker sneered when he saw him. Said with an open maw full of half-chewed meat, “Don’t bother begging for your job back, Paddy. No shortage of Chinamen to fill your place – and they don’t give lip.”

Jimmy cleared his throat, which felt so tight, he thought he might choke on his own spit. “I’m owed three days’ wages.”

Crocker laughed, and the sound of it set off a pang in Jimmy’s empty stomach. “You walked off the line. You’re owed nothing.”

“I worked the three days. I’m owed the wages. Laborers’ rights.”

This time, Crocker didn’t laugh. He put down his knife and fork and drew his Spencer rifle from beside the table. “You see any union bastards around here? You wake up this morning and figure you’re in Baltimore?” Crocker punctuated the questions with a cocking of the Spencer’s handle. “Get gone, or you’ll collect your wages in black powder and metal, you piece of Irish scum.”

As Jimmy walked to where Mrs. Schumacher’s pony was tied, rage cherried his cheeks and ears. Worse, though, was the festering, crushing impotence that made every step labored, as though he had filled his pockets with track ballast.

He was about to mount the pony when he heard a dog’s short bark and saw the loathsome coat-fouler himself lying under a tent awning, chewing on a bone.

“Little arsehole,” Jimmy said. Monty snarled and dropped the bone – which Jimmy noted with disgust was flush with meat. The dog then pricked his ears forward and stared at Jimmy, cocking his head, amber eyes aglow in the dark. Mocking him, Jimmy thought.

Daring him.

Jimmy looked around. Seeing no one, he acted swiftly.

Finn awoke when Jimmy pushed open the door of the shack, the bundle swung across Jimmy’s shoulder twisting.

“What’s that you have there?”

Jimmy shut the door and dropped the sack on the floor. Finn gasped when Monty yelped and burst from the bag, shaking his head and body, panting.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“It is.”

“Are you mad?”

Jimmy watched while Monty, his tail tucked, paced the small room, sniffing at everything. “Crocker refused me pay, Finn.”

“And so you stole his feckin’ dog?” Finn punctuated the question with a round of coughing that made Monty flatten his ears and back away.

“It was an impulsive decision.”

“Impulsive?” Finn said, between coughs. “It was right stupid! What do you think he’ll do when he finds out?”

“Well, here’s the thing,” Jimmy said, repeating the words he had rehearsed in his head on the ride back. “We know that, apart from grinding a man under his boot heel, there’s nothing in this world that bastard Crocker loves more than this dog. So, it’s like as not he’ll pay to have him back.”

Finn just stared at him. Jimmy took that as, if not an altogether positive sign, at least as invitation to continue.

“So, we send a note to Crocker, telling him that if he wants his dog back alive, he’s got to hand over me pay.”

“What do you mean ‘alive’? Sure, I’m not going to kill a dog!”

“We’ve got to frighten him. Besides, I’ve no qualm killing a dog the likes of this one.”

For emphasis, Jimmy glared at Monty. The dog, in response, lifted his lip and then lunged at Jimmy, catching the leg of his pants in its teeth and shaking its head wildly. Jimmy tried kicking at Monty, but the dog let go, retreating into the shack’s one empty corner, whimpering with its tail tucked.

“Leave him be, Jimmy. He’s got to be near frightened out of his hide,” Finn said, his voice a rasp.

“Leave him be? I did nothing to him, and look what he’s done to me feckin’ pants!” Jimmy lifted his leg to show Finn the torn hem of his britches.

“Sure, you did nothing but toss him in a sack and steal him away from his master.” Finn shook his head. “If Crocker knows it’s you that took the dog, he’ll be raging mad. He’s more like to kill you than hand over money. And me right after, should I still be alive.”

“We won’t sign the note, then. So, he won’t know it’s us that has him. And I’ll tie a cloth over me face, like a train robber, when he hands over the ransom.”

Finn laid back in his bed and covered his eyes with his forearm. “It’s too much for a man think on now. I need sleep. But for certain the dog’s got to go. You’ve got to get rid of him one way or another tomorrow.”

Jimmy nodded. “Get some rest, and we’ll sort it in the morning.” He looked at where Monty cowered in the corner. “I’ll keep a watch on the little devil. He won’t try that again, believe you me.”

The high pitch of the train’s whistle woke Jimmy with a start. His eyes barely open, he felt frantically around the floor where he lay for his boots, his heart thudding like a pounded stake for fear of missing the labor camp’s departure for its next destination, wondering angrily why Finn hadn’t woken him.

Slowly, the outline of the shack’s walls came into focus, and he remembered where he – and Finn – were. Miles from the camp. Alone and nearing destitution.

When the piping noise came again, Jimmy groaned, realizing it was coming from the dog.

“He’s hungry.” Finn’s voice cut through Jimmy’s muddled awareness.

Jimmy looked over to where Finn was sitting up on the makeshift bed, and a shock ran through his limbs when he saw that the dog was curled next to him, and that Finn was stroking its head.

“What are you doing, petting him like that?”

“Sure, he’s only a dog. What else am I supposed to do?”

“He’s not just ‘a dog.’ He’s Crocker’s dog.”

“And how’s that his fault?”

Jimmy stood up, his legs stiff beneath him, the joints complaining. “Hold him there and I’ll stuff him back in the sack. Maybe take him out to the woods and tie him up while we have a think on things.”

“The woods! Sure, a bear or a cougar’s like to get him out there,” Finn said, wrapping an arm around the dog that, to Jimmy, looked to be a disturbingly protective gesture.

He stared hard at Finn. “You were the one that wanted him gone last night.”

“Well, you always see things more clearly in the morning. Besides, he’s such a nice, gentle boy.” Then, to Jimmy’s horror, Finn’s voice took on a cooing tone as he smiled at Monty and said, “Is that not so? You’re a nice, gentle boy?”

At the small tent colony that had sprung up along the rail tracks just west of Promontory Summit, Jimmy spent a miserable afternoon haggling over the price of coffee beans and cheap salted pork that was likely more snout than hock. In a fit of remorse for the harsh words he had exchanged with Finn before leaving, he handed a Chinaman two pennies for some dried fruit Jimmy hoped would spark Finn’s failing appetite.

Jimmy felt angry again, remembering how he had caught Finn giving Monty his last square of hardtack. Jimmy had chased after the dog, trying to salvage the biscuit from its slavering jaws, but Monty was too fast, and downed the biscuit as he darted away. All the while, Finn called out, “Sure, but the poor creature is crying for food! How can you stand to hear it? Besides, do you think Crocker’s going to pay to have returned to him a dog that’s been starved to death?”

While Monty ran to his corner, Jimmy had told Finn it would be both of their deaths when they ran out of food for the sake of feeding a bloody dog. Finn had said Jimmy shouldn’t worry, that he would likely be dead soon enough, leaving him all the food. Instead of feeling chastened, Jimmy had grown even angrier, reminding Finn that it was because of him that he was out of work and in this hellish situation.

As Jimmy left, slamming the door behind him, he heard Finn shout, “And who asked you to do that? May the devil take ye, Seamus Patrick O’Shea!”

The dried fruit stuffed in his linen sack with the coffee and pork, Jimmy went to turn from the Chinaman’s tent when he saw the poster, pasted on the tent’s outside wall:

REWARD $25

for return of Monty the Dog

by order of Arthur Montague Crocker, Foreman

Union Pacific Railroad, Camp Promontory Summit

Underneath “Monty the Dog” was the sketch of a black dog with a long snout, pointed ears, and a white patch on his chest. Jimmy had to admit it was a fair likeness of the hateful beast. Looking around and seeing no one nearby, he snatched the poster and stuffed it in his sack.

Jimmy could hear Finn’s coughing as he walked up the path to the shack, and he felt his own chest tighten with worry. But he knew he had the key to their salvation.

When he opened the door, the first thing he saw was Monty lying on the floor, intently eating something held between his paws. Jimmy felt his temper rise.

“What have you given him to eat this time?”

“Not a blessed thing,” Finn said, straightening up from his coughing.

“I’ve eyes in me head! He’s eating something, sure as I’m standing here.”

Jimmy watched with disbelief as Finn turned toward Monty and smiled.

“That, Jimmy, is a rat. Or it was, before Monty caught it.”

Jimmy took a step toward Monty. The dog growled and turned its head and body away, protective of its meal. Jimmy saw the long, bald tail hanging out the side of the dog’s mouth, and his stomach turned. “That’s repulsive.”

“It’s a Godsend,” Finn corrected. “And that’s the second one he’s caught and eaten today. I’m tired of feeling those little devils crawling over me in the night. A dog that can catch a rat is a good dog, indeed. And mayhaps a dog that can catch a rat can catch something else – something big enough for a man to eat.” Finn’s fingers plucked at a filthy blanket. “Jimmy, I’m sorry for me words from before. You’re a grand mate, and I’ve no wish to be rowing with ye.”

“It’s already forgotten.” Jimmy pulled the paper from the sack and handed it to him. “Look at this, Finn. Our problems are solved!”

Jimmy watched his friend read slowly and saw his face come to life with reaction: curiosity, confusion, understanding. Then something Jimmy couldn’t name.

“Twenty-five dollars, he’s paying for the dog’s return!” Jimmy said. “I’ll just say I found it wandering by the river. He’ll never know I took the blasted thing.”

Finn squinted at the paper. “‘Arthur Montague Crocker.’ Sure, is that his full name?” He lowered the paper to his lap and looked over at Monty and muttered, “Montague.” Then he looked up at Jimmy and said, “Good God, do you suppose he named the poor thing after himself?”

“I couldn’t give a good damn if he named the beast after our Lord Jesus Christ. Finn, are you not understanding what I’m telling ye? That money’s ours. Twenty-five dollars!”

“Tuigim,” Finn said. “I understand.” He looked over at Monty again, who was licking his paws clean of rat blood.

Jimmy made an exasperated sound and felt close to losing his temper again. Then he wondered if Finn’s lack of excitement wasn’t due to illness, and he felt ashamed of his impatience. He turned back to Finn and gentled his voice.

“It’s going to be okay now. We’ll have enough money to get you a doctor, and you’re going to be grand.”

Finn sighed and expelled a short cough. “I know. It’s only…”

“It’s only what?”

“It’s only I’m thinking there’s no great hurry, like. It can wait a day or so until you return him. After all, if he’s rid us of two rats in one day, think on the grand job he can do if we just give him another day or so.”

Jimmy opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. He watched Monty pivot his ears in Finn’s direction, then get up from the floor, walk over to Finn, and jump up onto the makeshift bed, settling down between his friend’s legs.

Watching Finn reach down to stroke the yawning dog’s head, Jimmy found his voice: “One day. Youse get one more day.”

Three days later, and there Monty was, staring at Jimmy from where he lay, curled up next to Finn while Finn napped.

Finn had endless reasons for delaying the dog’s departure: There were still more rats to kill. On one of Monty’s trips outside to relieve himself, when the dog had slipped the lead they’d fashioned from Finn’s belt and run off, hadn’t Monty returned shortly thereafter, bringing back to them a nice rabbit for dinner? And, finally, the longer the dog was kept away, the more desperate Crocker was likely to become, and then mightn’t the amount of reward being offered grow?

Jimmy had to admit that last one held a certain compelling logic, and so he had reluctantly relented. Even so, this morning he had thought of luring the dog outside while Finn slept, bundling him up, and riding him back to Crocker. But something stayed him.

As he stood in the shack’s doorway sipping bitter, lukewarm coffee and squinting in morning light the yellow of furze back home, he realized his hesitation with dispatching the dog was because, somehow, Finn’s health seemed improved. And, somehow, defying all of his reasoning powers, Jimmy couldn’t help believing Finn’s fondness for the dog was the cause of it. Finn’s breathing had grown less labored, his coughing not as severe, his color more pink. He had even managed to move out of the bed and sit outside in the sunlight for a time yesterday. To Jimmy’s constant and utter vexation, Finn doted upon the dog, talked to him incessantly, even sang to him verses of “The Rocks of Bawn.” Gone was any maudlin talk of death. And the dog, for its part, appeared to reciprocate the affection, keeping eyes on Finn always, following Finn when Jimmy helped him outside to the outhouse, curling up alongside Finn on the bed.

The worst part of it – no, the damnable part of it – was that Jimmy could feel his own self warming toward Monty. He and the dog had settled into an unacknowledged truce. Monty didn’t bark or growl at him anymore, and Jimmy didn’t try to kick him or stop Finn from feeding him. He had never hated a beast more than he had that dog, and would never forgive him for pissing on his coat, but Monty seemed a different dog away from Crocker. Gone was the arrogant trot, replaced by a playful amble and wagging tail. The only aggression the dog displayed now was a mock one, when Finn would play tug-o-war with him over an old, disintegrating grain sack. It almost made Jimmy wonder whether Monty wasn’t happier with them, if a dog could be said to feel such a thing as happiness. That first time Monty had run off, before returning with the rabbit, Jimmy had been beyond distraught, certain the dog was headed straight back to Crocker. In truth, each time Finn insisted Monty be given his freedom to ramble, Jimmy was sure that was the last they’d see of the dog, and that they could kiss the reward money goodbye. But Monty never ventured far and always returned to the shack, scratching to be let in if the door was closed, often bearing a gift of squirrel or marmot.

Jimmy put on his boots and walked down to the tent village to see if he could find someone willing to sell him more hardtack and beans for the remaining coins he had in his pocket. Once he got there, he ran into an Ulsterman who had left the stake-driving crew at Promontory Summit and was heading back to Nevada.

“Crocker’s mad over the loss of his dog,” the man told him. “His wee eyes all red from drink and tears. No one’s seen the little shite, but the entire camp’s been searching, as Crocker’s raised the reward for its return to one-hundred dollars. Can you imagine that? One-hundred dollars for a feckin’ dog!”

Jimmy’s breath froze in his throat. “Are you certain? One-hundred dollars?” he said, his voice catching on the words.

“Aye,” the Ulsterman said, scratching at his russet beard. “Crocker’s grown right desperate, as he’s due to leave the territory in two days on the Transcontinental’s maiden journey to Sacramento. A couple of the lads from County Down are fixing to paint a white patch on the chest of a black hound they bought from some Paitue to try to pass him off to Crocker as Monty. I say, fair play to them. No bastard ever deserved a swindle more.”

One-hundred dollars.

More than enough to get Finn a doctor and them some real food, not to mention passage on the rail back east, where they could find work under the shelter of a union. Maybe even where Jimmy could become a union leader himself, protecting others from the abuses he and Finn had suffered both at home and here in this new country. He thought of nothing else on his walk back to the shack.

When he opened the door, Monty came bounding toward him, tail wagging fiercely. Jimmy put out his hands to ward the dog off, then squinted at the paper crown that sat on its head, held in place by a string tied under its jaw.

“What’s that on his head?” he asked Finn.

“It’s a crown. I’ve bestowed it upon him in honor of his new name: Brian Boru, the last high king of Ireland. Sure, he can’t go around with a shite name like ‘Monty.’ That’s no name for a dog as grand as this.”

“Do you not think ‘Brian Boru’ to be a bit high-sounding a name for a dog? The man rid Ireland of the Vikings.”

“And this dog’s rid our shack of the rats.”

Jimmy felt the air leave his lungs. “Finn, we have to talk about the dog.”

“You mean Brian Boru.”

“I mean Crocker’s dog. Or have you forgotten?”

A shadow fell over Finn’s face and his smile vanished. Jimmy’s tongue felt thick in his mouth. “Crocker’s raised the reward to one-hundred dollars. But the dog has to go back now, before Crocker leaves the territory.”

Finn said nothing, just slumped where he sat.

“It’s one-hundred dollars. Look, Finn, I’ll buy you a new dog with the money. A dozen new dogs.”

“I don’t want a new dog! I want this dog!” Finn said, pointing at Monty.

Jimmy looked down. Monty – Brian Boru – was turning his head, glancing back and forth between them. He let out a soft whine, as though he knew he was the topic of conversation – which, Jimmy reasoned, he had been ever since his arrival.

There were tears in Finn’s eyes when he said, “Don’t take him back there, Jimmy. Please.”

“I’m sorry, Finn. But you’re not thinking right. I’ll go now and see about the pony, and we’ll finally put this whole bloody thing to rest.”

In exchange for another use of the pony, Mrs. Schumacher asked Jimmy to help her unload a wagon full of hay. The job took longer than Jimmy would have liked. But the pony was finally saddled, and Jimmy went back inside the shack to fetch the dog for his journey back to Crocker.

Except the dog wasn’t inside the shack. Neither was Finn.

Jimmy cursed and ran into woods. He had been calling Finn’s name for nearly half an hour when he heard the dog’s bark. Jimmy followed the sound to where Finn, soaked in sweat, his face corpse-pale, sat on a rock by the stream.

Jimmy shook his head. “Finn, what in God’s name were you thinking?”

Finn said nothing. The only sound he made was the rasping in his chest as he sucked in air.

Jimmy half-carried Finn back to the shack, his friend weak and stumbling, his skin hot to the touch. The dog followed dutifully by Finn’s side, the paper crown still fastened on its head. Jimmy laid Finn back in his bed and brought him water, which he gulped down eagerly. But then Finn sat up and coughed and coughed. He spit the water up, along with an alarming splotch of bright blood.

Jimmy spent a sleepless night watching over Finn, who had fallen into a fitful sleep. The dog tried to lie down next to Finn in the bed, but Jimmy shooed him off, so he lay down instead alongside Jimmy, his ears pricking and head lifting in response to Finn’s gasps for breath and fevered mutterings.

The night sky had shed its skin like a rattler, dawn purpling the hills, when Finn expelled his last jagged breath. While the dog whined and howled, Jimmy crossed his friend’s still-warm hands over his chest. Then he put his head in his own hands and wept openly as he hadn’t done since he’d been a child back in Drimmeen.

Jimmy dug Finn’s grave, wrapped his body in the musty blankets, and buried him while the heat of the day turned Jimmy’s face and neck red. All the while, the dog lay nearby, panting and whining.

After he nailed two pieces of wood together for a cross, Jimmy’s voice trembled as he sang his friend farewell:

Come all you loyal heroes wherever you may be,

Don’t hire with any master till you know what your work may be.

Don’t hire with any master from the clear daylight till the dawn,

For he’ll want you rising early to plough the Rocks of Bawn.

Then Jimmy washed the dirt from his hands and whistled for the dog to follow. He couldn’t stop to think or to feel. To do either would leave him paralyzed with despair, to allow the weight of loss to crush the life out of him.

The dog padded alongside Jimmy and waited while he saddled the pony. Then Jimmy unfolded the sack and went to put it over the dog’s head. The paper crown was in the way. Jimmy hadn’t even noticed the dog was still wearing it.

He knelt beside the creature and reached to undo the crown’s string that was knotted underneath its jaw. He half feared the dog might bite him, but it just blinked and panted. The knot undone and the string loose, Jimmy expected the crown to fall away, but it didn’t, its regal points rising above the dog’s ears.

He looked into the animal’s watery, amber eyes. “Sure, you’re a better dog than I thought, and there’s no hard feelings. But he’s gone now, and money’s money.”

Jimmy went to reach for the crown, and the dog licked his hand. That was when he noticed the sprinkling of white hair along its dark muzzle and realized he had no idea of the animal’s age. Hadn’t ever given a thought to how long it had been on this earth, but it was surely no young pup.

Then Jimmy thought again about how different the dog had been these days with him and Finn. A joyful creature, taking on Finn’s kind nature like one of those color-changing lizards. And how different Finn had been after its arrival: smiling and singing, his mood lifted, his body given a respite from illness. Jimmy tried, but it was no longer possible for him to reconcile the dog before him with the one who had been such a terror.

He didn’t have the heart to bundle the animal into the sack. It felt an undignified mode of travel for a dog his best friend had named for a high king. So, he hoisted himself into the saddle, urged the pony into a fast walk, and called for the dog to follow, which it did.

They arrived at Promontory Summit just as the sun was setting. After watering and tying up the pony, Jimmy gave the dog water, tied Finn’s belt around its neck, and took it to Crocker, who was standing outside his tent, drinking with some of the crewmen and engineers.

When Crocker laid eyes on the dog, he gave an anguished shout. He fell to his knees and called, “Monty! Come here, boy!”

Jimmy dropped the belt to give the dog its freedom, but it made no advance toward its master.

Crocker’s brow furrowed and his voice broke with indignation. “MONTY!”

But the dog stayed by Jimmy’s side. It looked up at him, and Jimmy thought he could see a pleading expression in its eyes.

“He’s gone,” Jimmy told the dog. “So, off with you now.”

The dog then trotted slowly over to Crocker, who folded his arms about the animal and wiped at his tearing eyes.

“I’ll have that one-hundred dollars now, Crocker,” Jimmy said.

Crocker stood up, holding the end of the belt. He narrowed his eyes, no longer tearful but back to their usual hardness. “How did you come by him?”

“I found him. I found him and brought him back to you. And now I’m here to claim the reward. One-hundred dollars.”

Crocker spat. “He’s been gone near a week. Have you had him all this time?”

Jimmy’s pulse quickened and his body buzzed with hatred for this man who had tossed Finn away like a sack of rubbish – a man worth ten of either Crocker or himself. “You owe me one-hundred dollars, Crocker. And I’ll be having that money now.”

A smile brimming with disdain twisted Crocker’s lips. Jimmy hadn’t noticed the crowd that had formed around them, but he was aware of it now. He had a sense of being surrounded, but he was too angry to feel afraid. He was done with fear. Done with the entire lot – priests, landlords, and now bossmen in this new land where things were meant to be different – who had fed him a beggar’s diet of shame his entire life. Told him he was worthless.

“Shiftless, no-good Irish,” Crocker said and spat again. “Where’s your lazy friend – the one pretending to be sick to get out of work.”

Jimmy rushed at Crocker, his fists swinging. He knocked Crocker on the jaw and the big man fell back. Then Jimmy felt Crocker’s fist connect with his stomach, and the air spilled out of him in a rush. But nothing would stop Jimmy, within whom a canker of bitterness had long been blackening. He thought of all Finn’s goodness now rotting in the ground – his ability to look past the failings of a man or a beast and find something in them worthy of kindness – and Jimmy punched and kicked and raged until the hands of other men pulled him away, their voices loud around him.

A group of men from the Irish camp led by Hennessey swarmed Crocker, demanding he make good on the reward money. Some of Crocker’s own crewmen pushed back at the Irishmen, but a few of them shook their heads and muttered.

Crocker spat again. Blood clung to his chin. He fingered a tooth and grimaced as he pulled it loose and glared at it. Jimmy tasted blood inside his own mouth.

A well-dressed man, one of the railroad magnates’ entourage, asked what was going on. At least four different men gave the man simultaneous explanations, pointing at the dog. Then the man addressed Crocker, saying, “He brought back your dog, Mr. Crocker, so you owe him the money. Fair is fair. Tomorrow’s an important day. Let’s all conduct ourselves honorably.”

Crocker huffed and wiped at his bloodied mouth with his handkerchief. He reached into his pocket, counted out the bills, and tossed them at Jimmy’s feet. “Don’t spend it all on drink.” Then he took Monty’s lead from a crewman who had grabbed it when the scuffle began.

Jimmy bent down and picked up the bills. His vision swam as he watched Crocker’s back as he walked away, pulling the dog along behind him. The animal kept turning its head to look at Jimmy.

A misting rain cooled the morning. Some of the other laborers from County Galway shared a drop of poitín with Jimmy, and together they waked Finn as best they could, telling stories of him and wishing him a fond farewell.

In the mid-afternoon, Jimmy stood with the other Irish to watch Leland Stanford use a hammer made of silver to tap his Golden Spike into the ground, commemorating the joining of the two rail lines. That dazzling, shimmering wonder was then quickly pulled up and bundled back into Mr. Stanford’s safekeeping.

The men around Jimmy cheered during the historic moment, when America’s east and west were said to shake hands – the engineer of the Union Pacific’s “No. 119” and the engineer for the Central Pacific’s “Jupiter” breaking bottles of champagne on the other’s locomotive. But Jimmy only had eyes for Crocker. The man stood behind the railroad magnates and their fancy entourage, his face turned so the photographer wouldn’t memorialize his blackened eye in the photographs. There was a new collar about Monty’s neck that attached to a leather lead Crocker had wrapped around his fist. He kept the dog pulled in close to his side. The dog, for its part, sat obediently, its head mostly bowed but picking up when the cheering broke out all around.

Later that day, his tongue still relishing the memory of his one quick swallow of champagne, Jimmy mounted the pony and headed back to the shack. He dreaded returning to what would now be a lonely and haunted place, but he had to deliver the pony to Mrs. Schumacher before packing up what was left to him and finding passage on the next train east. Urging the mount into a fast walk alongside the train tracks, he tugged at the wad of Crocker’s bills folded within his pocket, the sight of them comforting. Nestled beneath them was a crumpled piece of paper. Jimmy pulled it out and saw it was the crown Finn had made for the dog. Seeing it again, he felt a pang in his chest. He tucked it, with the money, back into his pocket.

Behind him, Jimmy heard the engine of the newly minted Transcontinental Railroad belch and roar, then its steel wheels shuffle and chuff. He felt the great metal beast in all its heat and glory stealing up behind him, and stopped the pony to watch it go by. As car after car of the train snaked past, the engine slowly building up speed, Jimmy searched his heart for some sense of pride in what he – and Finn – had helped create. Instead, he found himself pondering what this life on the rail had cost them both. Finn had paid with his life. And Jimmy worried that he had paid with something he would happily give over the one-hundred dollars in his pocket to get back.

When the caboose came into view, Jimmy’s breath caught, seeing Crocker standing at its railing, the dog next to him. Crocker, relegated to the back of the train, the area reserved for the laboring men. It served him right. Both man and dog looked at him as they passed. Crocker’s face hard with anger. The dog’s ears pricked, his snout lifted, sniffing at the air.

Without thinking, Jimmy urged the pony into a trot, his eyes no longer on Crocker but on the dog. As the train took the animal away from him, Jimmy felt something inside himself tear. Though the dog had been less than a week in their company, Finn had loved it with his heart that was as big as County Galway.

The train picked up speed and Jimmy heeled the pony into a canter.

What was right and what was wrong? A man like Crocker didn’t deserve the companionship of any animal capable of inspiring such love, and especially not that of a dog able to give a man back his will to live. And didn’t any creature – man or beast – deserve to live out whatever time they had left in a way that brought them the pittance of even a scraped-together happiness?

The pony was losing ground. The train moving farther away.

“Monty!” Jimmy called out. He thought he saw the dog’s head turn.

Then Jimmy shouted with all the breath inside of him, “BRIAN BORU!”

The dog stood up and Jimmy saw it pacing the narrow outside platform of the caboose. Crocker reached down to it, but the dog backed away and barked. Crocker approached the dog and Jimmy saw it lunge at him. From this distance, Jimmy couldn’t tell if the dog had bit Crocker, but there was no mistaking Crocker’s intention to strike the dog when he raised his arm to it. Just then, the dog leaped from the train, and Crocker screamed.

Jimmy held his breath, his legs tight around the pony as he watched the dog hit the ground and roll down the embankment. He spurred the pony to a gallop and then pulled back abruptly on the reins as they approached where the dog lay prone.

Jimmy slid out of the saddle and ran to the dog. When it saw Jimmy, it scrambled to its feet and shook itself vigorously. At the wagging of its tail, Jimmy felt his heart resume beating.

“I imagine that knocked the wind out of ye but good.”

The dog barked and spun in place in response. Jimmy put out his hand, and the dog licked it eagerly.

Jimmy raised his eyes to where the train was growing smaller in the distance. Black smoke rose from its engine, and he could feel hot rage spill from the man standing at its caboose railing, staring back at them.

The dog cocked its head at Jimmy, and he remembered Finn’s crown stuffed in his pocket.

“Sure, I’ve saved your crown. But know that, as a union man, I’ve no love for kings – though I’m after making an exception for ye, Brian Boru.”