This is a bill to quiet title, brought by the United States against the plaintiff in error. It comes here by appeal from a decree of the United States circuit court of appeals (48 C. C. A. 712, 109 Fed. 913), affirming a decree of the circuit court (94 Fed. 427), in favor of the United States. The United States claims under forfeiture of a grant made to the Texas Pacific Railroad Company in its charter, and the Southern Pacific Railroad Company under words in the same charter which are construed to make an incidental grant to it. The principal land in controversy is land within the place limits of the Southern Pacific under the said grant, and within the 20-mile limit of the Texas Pacific, being land situated where the road of the former company and the contemplated track of the Texas Pacific met at Yuma on the Colorado river in the southeastern corner of California. The United States contends that this land was excepted from the Southern Pacific grant.
The charter is the act of March 3, 1871, chap. 122 (16 Stat. at L. 573). By § 9 it grants to the Texas Pacific by words in the present tense 'ten alternate sections of land per mile on each side of said railroad in California, where the same shall not have been sold, reserved, or otherwise disposed of by the United States,' etc. By § 12, 'said company, within two years after the passage of this act, shall designate the general route of its said road, as near as may be, and shall file a map of the same in the Department of the Interior; and when the map is so filed, the Secretary of the Interior, immediately thereafter, shall cause the lands within 40 miles on each side of said designated route within the territories, and 20 miles within the state of California, to be withdrawn from pre-emption, private entry, and sale.' The Texas Pacific filed its map of general route in August, 1871, and in October, 1871, the Secretary of the Interior withdrew the odd sections according to the statute, including the land in question.
By § 23 of this same charter, for the purpose of connecting the Texas Pacific Railroad with San Francisco, the Southern Pacific was authorized to construct a line to the Texas Pacific road at or near the Colorado river, 'with the same rights, grants, and privileges, and subject to the same limitations,' etc., as in the act of July 27, 1866, 'Provided, however, that this section shall in no way affect or impair the rights, present or prospective, of the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company, or any other railroad company.' It was decided in United States v. Colton Marble & Lime Co. 146 U.S. 615, 36 L. ed. 1104, 13 Sup. Ct. Rep. 163, that this proviso excluded the indemnity lands of the Atlantic & Pacific road, and that the Southern Pacific took nothing in them, even after a forfeiture of the Atlantic & Pacific grant. But it is said that the Atlantic & Pacific had filed a definite location, and it is contended on several grounds that there is not a similar exception in this case.
In the first place, it is denied that the Texas Pacific is included under the words last quoted: 'or any other railroad company.' But we think it too plain for extended argument that it is included by those words. It was called into being, and was an 'other railroad' at the moment when the proviso took effect. In fact, it was the only other railroad, so far as has been suggested to us, to which the words could apply. It received a grant for its main line, while that to the Southern Pacific was for a branch. By the contemplated junction of the latter with the former there would arise a conflict for which it was proper to provide, and natural to provide as the statute did.