AtD translation: the ladies who work on the line

[Mike Jing]

P86.3-14   In the broken and soon-enough-interrupted dreams close to dawn
in particular, Webb would find himself standing at some divide, facing west
into a great flow of promise, something like wind, something
like light, free of the damaged hopes and pestilent smoke east of
here—sacrificial smoke, maybe, but not ascending to Heaven, only high
enough to be breathed in, to sicken and cut short countless lives, to
change the color of the daylight and deny to walkers of the night the stars
they remembered from younger times. He would wake to the day and its dread.
The trail back to that high place and the luminous promise did not run by
way of Cripple, though Cripple would have to serve, hopes corroded to
fragments—overnight whiskey, daughters of slaves, rigged faro games, the
ladies who work on the line.

What does "work on the line" mean here?
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