“If you did know him, you would feel better if you told me all about it now,” Marsh said. “Instead of waiting.”
“If I did, Professor,” Johnson said, “I would. But I do not know the man.”
“Yes,” Marsh said, studying Johnson’s face. “Hmmm.”
Later that day, Johnson met a painfully thin young man making notes in a small leather-bound book. He was from Scotland and said his name was Louis Stevenson.
“How far are you going?” Johnson asked.
“All the way to the end. California,” Stevenson said, lighting another cigarette. He smoked continually; his long, delicate fingers were stained dark brown. He coughed a great deal, and in general did not look like the sort of robust person who seeks a journey west, and Johnson asked him why he was doing so.
“I am in love,” Stevenson said simply. “She is in California.”
And then he made more notes, and seemed to forget Johnson for a time. Johnson went off in search of more congenial company, and came across Marsh.
“That young man there,” Marsh said, nodding across the carriage.
“What about him?”
“You were talking to him.”
“His name is Stevenson.”
“I don’t trust a man who makes notes,” Marsh said. “What did you talk about?”
“He’s from Scotland and he is going to California to find a woman he is in love with.”
“How romantic. And did he ask you where you were going?”
“No, he wasn’t the least interested.”
Marsh squinted at him. “So he says.”
“I have made inquiries about that Stevenson fellow,” Marsh announced to the group later. “He’s from Scotland, on his way to California to find a woman. His health is poor. Apparently he fancies himself a writer, that’s why he makes all those notes.”
Johnson said nothing.
“Just thought you would be interested to know,” Marsh said. “Personally, I think he smokes too much.”
Marsh looked out the window. “Ah, the lake,” he said. “We will soon be in Chicago.”
Chicago
Chicago was the fastest-growing city in the world, both in population and in commercial importance. From a prairie village of four thousand in 1840, it had exploded into a metropolis of half a million, and was now doubling in size every five years. Known as “Slabtown” and “The Mud Hole of the Prairie,” the city now extended across thirty-five square miles along Lake Michigan, and boasted paved streets and sidewalks, broad thoroughfares with streetcars, elegant mansions, fine shops, hotels, art galleries, and theaters. And this despite the fact that most of the city had been razed in a terrible fire just five years before.
Chicago’s success owed nothing to climate and locale; the shores of Lake Michigan were swampy; most of the early buildings had sunk into the mud until they were jacked up by the brilliant young Chicago engineer George Pullman. Water was so polluted that visitors often found small fish in their drinking water—there were even minnows in dairy milk. And the weather was abhorrent: hot in summer, brutally cold in winter, and windy in all seasons.
Chicago owed its success to its geographical position in the heartland of the country, to its importance as a rail and shipping center, and most particularly to its preeminence in the handling of prodigious tonnages of beef and pork.
“I like to turn bristles, blood, and the inside and outside of pigs and bullocks into revenue,” said Philip Armour, one of the founders of the gigantic Chicago stockyards. Along with fellow meatpacking magnate Gustavus Swift, Armour ruled an industry that dispatched a million head of cattle and four million pigs each year—and which employed one-sixth of the population of the city. With their centralized distribution, mechanized slaughter, and refrigerated railroad cars, the barons of Chicago were creating a whole new industry—food processing.
The Chicago stockyards were the largest in the world, and many visitors went to see them. One of the Yale students was the nephew of Swift, and they went off to tour the yards, which Johnson regarded as a dubious tourist attraction. But Marsh was not stopping in Chicago for tourism. He was there on business.
From the magnificent Lake Shore Railroad Depot, he took his charges to the nearby Grand Pacific Hotel. Here the students were awed by one of the largest and most elegant hotels in the world. As everywhere, Marsh had arranged special accommodations for his party, and there were newspapermen waiting to interview him.
Othniel Marsh was always good copy. The year before, in 1875, he had uncovered a scandal in the Indian Bureau, whereby bureau officers were not dispensing food and funds to the reservations, but were instead keeping the proceeds for themselves, while Indians literally starved. Marsh had been informed of this by Red Cloud himself, the legendary Sioux chief, and had revealed the evidence in Washington, severely embarrassing the Grant presidency in the eyes of the liberal Eastern establishment. Marsh was a good friend of Red Cloud, and thus reporters wanted to talk to him about the Sioux Wars now raging. “It is a terrible conflict,” Marsh said, “but there are no easy answers to the Indian question.”
Then, too, Chicago reporters never tired of repeating the story of Marsh’s earliest public exploit, the affair of the Cardiff giant.
In 1869, the fossilized skeleton of a ten-foot giant was unearthed in Cardiff, New York, and quickly became a national phenomenon. It was generally agreed that the giant was one of a race of men who had been drowned in Noah’s flood; Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald and a number of scholars had pronounced it genuine.
Marsh, in his capacity as the new paleontology professor from Yale, went to view the fossil and said, within earshot of a reporter, “Very remarkable.”
“May I quote you?” said the reporter.
“Yes,” said Marsh. “You may quote me as saying, ‘A very remarkable fake.’”
It was later determined that the so-called giant originated as a block of gypsum, carved secretly in Chicago. But the incident brought national attention to Marsh—and he had been talking to reporters ever since.
“And what brings you to Chicago now?” one reporter asked.
“I am on my way west, to find more bones,” Marsh said.
“And will you be seeing bones in Chicago?”
Marsh laughed. “No,” he said, “in Chicago we will see General Sheridan, to arrange our army liaison.”
Marsh took Johnson with him, because he wanted to be photographed with General Sheridan.