Hell on Wheels2011

[first lines]

Louise Ellison:
[in her newspaper article] To build the Transcontinental Railroad, Thomas 'Doc' Durant once said, "A man must face his demons and destroy them, or become undone by them." The Hell on Wheels of 1868 is no place for bashful men, the deluded, or unassured. No place for sloppy men, drunk and disorderly in their heavenly vestments, on their way to an early grave. The railroad has contained the West these last three years, with its iron horse and rails pinned to the ground. Each passing day brings with it civilization, if not civility. And men in suits, who do now with their pens what earlier rougher men did with their guns.

Louise Ellison:
Cullen Bohannan, late of the Union Pacific, is more gunman than suit. His return to Cheyenne, these days referred to as the Magic City of the Plains, after months lost to the prairie and presumed dead, with a Mormon wife and child in tow, might be just the grease we need to turn the wheels of our national obsession. Buried these long winter months in snow, and now up to his wheel wells in mud. Or, might he be the match-strike of self-emolation, for Mr. Bohannan has always worn his integrity like a millstone around his neck.