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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Calumet "K", by Samuel Merwin and Henry
+Kitchell Webster
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Calumet "K"
+
+
+Author: Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 11, 2006  [eBook #18154]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALUMET "K"***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Robert Petty
+
+
+
+CALUMET "K"
+
+by
+
+MERWIN-WEBSTER
+
+1904
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The contract for the two million bushel grain elevator, Calumet K,
+had been let to MacBride & Company, of Minneapolis, in January, but
+the superstructure was not begun until late in May, and at the end of
+October it was still far from completion. Ill luck had attended
+Peterson, the constructor, especially since August. MacBride, the
+head of the firm, disliked unlucky men, and at the end of three
+months his patience gave out, and he telegraphed Charlie Bannon to
+leave the job he was completing at Duluth and report at once at the
+home office.
+
+Rumors of the way things were going at Calumet under the hands of his
+younger co-laborer had reached Bannon, and he was not greatly
+surprised when MacBride told him to go to Chicago Sunday night and
+supersede Peterson.
+
+At ten o'clock Monday morning, Bannon, looking out through the dusty
+window of the trolley car, caught sight of the elevator, the naked
+cribbing of its huge bins looming high above the huddled shanties and
+lumber piles about it. A few minutes later he was walking along a
+rickety plank sidewalk which seemed to lead in a general direction
+toward the elevator. The sidewalks at Calumet are at the theoretical
+grade of the district, that is, about five feet above the actual
+level of the ground. In winter and spring they are necessary
+causeways above seas of mud, but in dry weather every one abandons
+them, to walk straight to his destination over the uninterrupted
+flats. Bannon set down his hand bag to button his ulster, for the
+wind was driving clouds of smoke and stinging dust and an occasional
+grimy snowflake out of the northwest. Then he sprang down from the
+sidewalk and made his way through the intervening bogs and, heedless
+of the shouts of the brakemen, over a freight train which was
+creaking its endless length across his path, to the elevator site.
+
+The elevator lay back from the river about sixty yards and parallel
+to it. Between was the main line of the C. & S. C, four clear tracks
+unbroken by switch or siding. On the wharf, along with a big pile of
+timber, was the beginning of a small spouting house, to be connected
+with the main elevator by a belt gallery above the C. & S. C. tracks.
+A hundred yards to the westward, up the river, the Belt Line tracks
+crossed the river and the C. & S. C. right of way at an oblique
+angle, and sent two side tracks lengthwise through the middle of the
+elevator and a third along the south side, that is, the side away
+from the river.
+
+Bannon glanced over the lay of the land, looked more particularly at
+the long ranges of timber to be used for framing the cupola, and then
+asked a passing workman the way to the office. He frowned at the
+wretched shanty, evidently an abandoned Belt Line section house,
+which Peterson used for headquarters. Then, setting down his bag just
+outside the door, he went in.
+
+"Where's the boss?" he asked.
+
+The occupant of the office, a clerk, looked up impatiently, and spoke
+in a tone reserved to discourage seekers for work.
+
+"He ain't here. Out on the job somewhere."
+
+"Palatial office you've got," Bannon commented. "It would help those
+windows to have 'em ploughed." He brought his bag into the office and
+kicked it under a desk, then began turning over a stack of blue prints
+that lay, weighted down with a coupling pin, on the table.
+
+"I guess I can find Peterson for you if you want to see him," said
+the clerk.
+
+"Don't worry about my finding him," came from Bannon, deep in his
+study of the plans. A moment later he went out.
+
+A gang of laborers was engaged in moving the timbers back from the
+railroad siding. Superintending the work was a squat little man--
+Bannon could not see until near by that he was not a boy--big-headed,
+big-handed, big-footed. He stood there in his shirt-sleeves, his back
+to Bannon, swearing good-humoredly at the men. When he turned toward
+him Bannon saw that he had that morning played an unconscious joke
+upon his bright red hair by putting on a crimson necktie.
+
+Bannon asked for Peterson. "He's up on the framing of the spouting
+house, over on the wharf there."
+
+"What are you carrying that stuff around for?" asked Bannon.
+
+"Moving it back to make room by the siding. We're expecting a big
+bill of cribbing. You're Mr. Bannon, ain't you?" Bannon nodded.
+"Peterson had a telegram from the office saying to expect you."
+
+"You're still expecting that cribbing, eh?"
+
+"Harder than ever. That's most all we've been doing for ten days.
+There's Peterson, now; up there with the sledge."
+
+Bannon looked in time to see the boss spring out on a timber that was
+still balancing and swaying upon the hoisting rope. It was a good
+forty feet above the dock. Clinging to the rope with one hand, with
+the other Peterson drove his sledge against the side of the timber
+which swung almost to its exact position in the framing.
+
+"Slack away!" he called to the engineers, and he cast off the rope
+sling. Then cautiously he stepped out to the end of the timber. It
+tottered, but the lithe figure moved on to within striking distance.
+He swung the twenty-four pound sledge in a circle against the butt of
+the timber. Every muscle in his body from the ankles up had helped to
+deal the blow, and the big stick bucked. The boss sprang erect,
+flinging his arms wide and using the sledge to recover his balance. He
+struck hard once more and again lightly. Then he hammered the timber
+down on the iron dowel pins. "All right," he shouted to the engineer;
+"send up the next one."
+
+A few minutes later Bannon climbed out on the framing beside him.
+
+"Hello, Charlie!" said the boss, "I've been looking for you. They
+wired me you was coming."
+
+"Well, I'm here," said Bannon, "though I 'most met my death climbing
+up just now. Where do you keep your ladders?"
+
+"What do I want of a ladder? I've no use for a man who can't get up on
+the timbers. If a man needs a ladder, he'd better stay abed."
+
+"That's where I get fired first thing," said Bannon.
+
+"Why, you come up all right, with your overcoat on, too."
+
+"I had to wear it or scratch up the timbers with my bones. I lost
+thirty-two pounds up at Duluth."
+
+Another big timber came swinging up to them at the end of the
+hoisting rope. Peterson sprang out upon it. "I'm going down before I
+get brushed off," said Bannon.
+
+"I'll be back at the office as soon as I get this corbel laid."
+
+"No hurry. I want to look over the drawings. Go easy there," he called
+to the engineer at the hoist; "I'm coming down on the elevator."
+Peterson had already cast off the rope, but Bannon jumped for it and
+thrust his foot into the hook, and the engineer, not knowing who he
+was, let him down none too gently.
+
+On his way to the office he spoke to two carpenters at work on a stick
+of timber. "You'd better leave that, I guess, and get some four-inch
+cribbing and some inch stuff and make some ladders; I guess there's
+enough lying 'round for that. About four'll do."
+
+It was no wonder that the Calumet K job had proved too much for
+Peterson. It was difficult from the beginning. There was not enough
+ground space to work in comfortably, and the proper bestowal of the
+millions of feet of lumber until time for it to be used in the
+construction was no mean problem. The elevator was to be a typical
+"Chicago" house, built to receive grain from cars and to deliver it
+either to cars or to ships. As has been said, it stood back from the
+river, and grain for ships was to be carried on belt conveyors
+running in an inclosed bridge above the railroad tracks to the small
+spouting house on the wharf. It had originally been designed to have
+a capacity for twelve hundred thousand bushels, but the grain men who
+were building it, Page & Company, had decided after it was fairly
+started that it must be larger; so, in the midst of his work,
+Peterson had received instructions and drawings for a million bushel
+annex. He had done excellent work--work satisfactory even to MacBride
+& Company--on a smaller scale, and so he had been given the
+opportunity, the responsibility, the hundreds of employees, the
+liberal authority, to make what he could of it all.
+
+There could be no doubt that he had made a tangle; that the big job
+as a whole was not under his hand, but was just running itself as
+best it could. Bannon, who, since the days when he was chief of the
+wrecking gang on a division of the Grand Trunk, had made a business of
+rising to emergencies, was obviously the man for the situation. He was
+worn thin as an old knife-blade, he was just at the end of a piece of
+work that would have entitled any other man to a vacation; but
+MacBride made no apologies when he assigned him the new task--"Go
+down and stop this fiddling around and get the house built. See that
+it's handling grain before you come away. If you can't do it, I'll
+come down and do it myself."
+
+Bannon shook his head dubiously. "Well, I'm not sure--" he began. But
+MacBride laughed, whereupon Bannon grinned in spite of himself. "All
+right," he said.
+
+It was no laughing matter, though, here on the job this Monday
+morning, and, once alone in the little section house, he shook his
+head again gravely. He liked Peterson too well, for one thing, to
+supersede him without a qualm. But there was nothing else for it, and
+he took off his overcoat, laid aside the coupling pin, and attacked
+the stack of blue prints.
+
+He worked rapidly, turning now and then from the plans for a
+reference to the building book or the specifications, whistling softly,
+except when he stopped to growl, from force of habit, at the office,
+or, with more reasonable disapproval, at the man who made the
+drawings for the annex. "Regular damn bird cage," he called it.
+
+It was half an hour before Peterson came in. He was wiping the
+sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, and drawing
+long breaths with the mere enjoyment of living. "I feel good," he
+said. "That's where I'd like to work all day. You ought to go up
+and sledge them timbers for a while. That'd warm you through, I
+bet."
+
+"You ought to make your timekeeper give you one of those brass
+checks there and pay you eighteen cents an hour for that work.
+That's what I'd do."
+
+Peterson laughed. It took more than a hint to reach him. "I have
+to do it. Those laborers are no good. Honest, I can lift as much
+as any three men on the job."
+
+"That's all right if those same three don't stop to swap lies
+while you're lifting."
+
+"Well, I guess they don't come any of that on me," said Peterson,
+laughing again. "How long are you going to stay with us?"
+
+The office, then, had not told him. Bannon was for a moment at a
+loss what to say. Luckily there was an interruption. The red-headed
+young man he had spoken to an hour before came in, tossed a tally
+board on the desk, and said that another carload of timber had come
+in.
+
+"Mr. Bannon," said Peterson, "shake hands with Mr. Max Vogel, our
+lumber checker." That formality attended to, he turned to Bannon
+and repeated his question. By that time the other had his answer
+ready.
+
+"Oh, it all depends on the office," he said. "They're bound to
+keep me busy at something. I'll just stay until they tell me to go
+somewhere else. They ain't happy except when they've just put me
+in a hole and told me to climb out. Generally before I'm out they
+pick me up and chuck me down another one. Old MacBride wouldn't
+think the Company was prosperous if I wasn't working nights and
+Sundays."
+
+"You won't be doing that down here."
+
+"I don't know about that. Why, when I first went to work for 'em, they
+hired me by the day. My time cards for the first years figured up four
+hundred and thirty-six days." Peterson laughed. "Oh, that's straight,"
+said Bannon. "Next time you're at the office, ask Brown about it. Since
+then they've paid me a salary. They seem to think they'd have to go out of
+business if I ever took a vacation. I've been with 'em twelve years and
+they've never given me one yet. They made a bluff at it once. I was down
+at Newport News, been doing a job for the C.&O., and Fred Brown was down
+that way on business. He--"
+
+"What does Brown look like?" interrupted Peterson. "I never saw him."
+
+"You didn't! Oh, he's a good-looking young chap. Dresses kind of sporty.
+He's a great jollier. You have to know him a while to find out that he
+means business. Well, he came 'round and saw I was feeling pretty tired,
+so he asked me to knock off for a week and go fishing with him. I did, and
+it was the hardest work I ever tackled."
+
+"Did you get any fish?"
+
+"Fish? Whales! You'd no sooner threw your line over than another one'd
+grab it--great, big, heavy fish, and they never gave us a minute's rest. I
+worked like a horse for about half a day and then I gave up. Told Brown
+I'd take a duplex car-puller along next time I tackled that kind of a job,
+and I went back to the elevator."
+
+"I'd like to see Brown. I get letters from him right along, of course.
+He's been jollying me about that cribbing for the last two weeks. I can't
+make it grow, and I've written him right along that we was expecting it,
+but that don't seem to satisfy him."
+
+"I suppose not," said Bannon. "They're mostly out for results up at the
+office. Let's see the bill for it." Vogel handed him a thin typewritten
+sheet and Bannon looked it over thoughtfully. "Big lot of stuff, ain't it?
+Have you tried to get any of it here in Chicago?"
+
+"Course not. It's all ordered and cut out up to Ledyard."
+
+"Cut out? Then why don't they send it?"
+
+"They can't get the cars."
+
+"That'll do to tell. 'Can't get the cars!' What sort of a railroad have
+they got up there?"
+
+"Max, here, can tell you about that, I guess," said Peterson.
+
+"It's the G.&M.," said the lumber checker. "That's enough for any one
+who's lived in Michigan. It ain't much good."
+
+"How long have they kept 'em waiting for the cars?"
+
+"How long is it, Max?" asked Peterson.
+
+"Let's see. It was two weeks ago come Tuesday."
+
+"Sure?"
+
+"Yes. We got the letter the same day the red-headed man came here. His
+hair was good and red." Max laughed broadly at the recollection. "He came
+into the office just as we was reading it."
+
+"Oh, yes. My friend, the walking delegate."
+
+"What's that?" Bannon snapped the words out so sharply that Peterson
+looked at him in slow surprise.
+
+"Oh, nothing," he said. "A darn little rat of a red-headed walking
+delegate came out here--had a printed card with Business Agent on it--and
+poked his long nose into other people's business for a while, and asked
+the men questions, and at last he came to me. I told him that we treated
+our men all right and didn't need no help from him, and if I ever caught
+him out here again I'd carry him up to the top of the jim pole and leave
+him there. He went fast enough."
+
+"I wish he'd knocked you down first, to even things up," said Bannon.
+
+"Him! Oh, I could have handled him with three fingers."
+
+"I'm going out for a look around," said Bannon, abruptly.
+
+He left Peterson still smiling good-humoredly over the incident.
+
+It was not so much to look over the job as to get where he could work out
+his wrath that Bannon left the office. There was no use in trying to
+explain to Peterson what he had done, for even if he could be made to
+understand, he could undo nothing. Bannon had known a good many walking
+delegates, and he had found them, so far, square. But it would be a
+large-minded man who could overlook what Peterson had done. However,
+there was no help for it. All that remained was to wait till the business
+agent should make the next move.
+
+So Bannon put the whole incident out of his mind, and until noon inspected
+the job in earnest. By the time the whistle blew, every one of the
+hundreds of men on the job, save Peterson himself, knew that there was a
+new boss. There was no formal assumption of authority; Bannon's supremacy
+was established simply by the obvious fact that he was the man who knew
+how. Systematizing the confusion in one corner, showing another gang how
+to save handling a big stick twice, finally putting a runway across the
+drillage of the annex, and doing a hundred little things between times, he
+made himself master.
+
+The afternoon he spent in the little office, and by four o'clock had seen
+everything there was in it, plans, specifications, building book, bill
+file, and even the pay roll, the cash account, and the correspondence. The
+clerk, who was also timekeeper, exhibited the latter rather grudgingly.
+
+"What's all this stuff?" Bannon asked, holding up a stack of unfiled
+letters.
+
+"Letters we ain't answered yet."
+
+"Well, we'll answer them now," and Bannon commenced dictating his reply to
+the one on top of the stack.
+
+"Hold on," said the clerk, "I ain't a stenographer."
+
+"So?" said Bannon. He scribbled a brief memorandum on each sheet. "There's
+enough to go by," he said. "Answer 'em according to instructions."
+
+"I won't have time to do it till tomorrow some time."
+
+"I'd do it tonight, if I were you," said Bannon, significantly. Then he
+began writing letters himself.
+
+Peterson and Vogel came into the office a few minutes later.
+
+"Writing a letter to your girl?" said Peterson, jocularly.
+
+"We ought to have a stenographer out here, Pete."
+
+"Stenographer! I didn't know you was such a dude. You'll be wanting a
+solid silver electric bell connecting with the sody fountain next."
+
+"That's straight," said Bannon. "We ought to have a stenographer for a
+fact."
+
+He said nothing until he had finished and sealed the two letters he was
+writing. They were as follows:--
+
+DEAR MR. BROWN: It's a mess and no mistake. I'm glad Mr. MacBride didn't
+come to see it. He'd have fits. The whole job is tied up in a hard knot.
+Peterson is wearing out chair bottoms waiting for the cribbing from
+Ledyard. I expect we will have a strike before long. I mean it.
+
+The main house is most up to the distributing floor. The spouting house is
+framed. The annex is up as far as the bottom, waiting for cribbing.
+
+Yours,
+BANNON.
+
+P.S. I hope this letter makes you sweat to pay you for last Saturday
+night. I am about dead. Can't get any sleep. And I lost thirty-two pounds
+up to Duluth. I expect to die down here.  C. B.
+
+P.S. I guess we'd better set fire to the whole damn thing and collect the
+insurance and skip.  C.
+
+The other was shorter.
+
+MACBRIDE & COMPANY, Minneapolis:
+
+Gentlemen: I came on the Calumet job today. Found it held up by failure of
+cribbing from Ledyard. Will have at least enough to work with by end of
+the week. We will get the house done according to specifications.
+
+Yours truly,
+MACBRIDE & COMPANY. CHARLES BANNON.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The five o'clock whistle had sounded, and Peterson sat on the bench inside
+the office door, while Bannon washed his hands in the tin basin. The
+twilight was already settling; within the shanty, whose dirty, small-paned
+windows served only to indicate the lesser darkness without, a wall lamp,
+set in a dull reflector, threw shadows into the corners.
+
+"You're, coming up with me, ain't you?" said Peterson. "I don't believe
+you'll get much to eat. Supper's just the pickings from dinner."
+
+"Well, the dinner was all right. But I wish you had a bigger bed. I ain't
+slept for two nights."
+
+"What was the matter?"
+
+"I was on the sleeper last night; and I didn't get in from the Duluth job
+till seven o'clock Saturday night, and Brown was after me before I'd got
+my supper. Those fellows at the office wouldn't let a man sleep at all if
+they could help it. Here I'd been working like a nigger 'most five months
+on the Duluth house--and the last three weeks running night shifts and
+Sundays; didn't stop to eat, half the time--and what does Brown do but--
+'Well,' he says, 'how're you feeling, Charlie?' 'Middling,' said I. 'Are
+you up to a little job tomorrow?' 'What's that?' I said. 'Seems to me if
+I've got to go down to the Calumet job Sunday night I might have an hour
+or so at home.' 'Well, Charlie,' he says, 'I'm mighty sorry, but you see
+we've been putting in a big rope drive on a water-power plant over at
+Stillwater. We got the job on the high bid,' he says, 'and we agreed to
+have it running on Monday morning. It'll play the devil with us if we
+can't make good.' 'What's the matter?' said I. 'Well,' he says, 'Murphy's
+had the job and has balled himself up.'"
+
+By this time the two men had their coats on, and were outside the
+building.
+
+"Let's see," said Bannon, "we go this way, don't we?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was still the light, flying flakes of snow, and the biting wind that
+came sweeping down from the northwest. The two men crossed the siding,
+and, picking their way between the freight cars on the Belt Line tracks,
+followed the path that wound across the stretch of dusty meadow.
+
+"Go ahead," said Peterson; "you was telling about Murphy."
+
+"Well, that was the situation. I could see that Brown was up on his hind
+legs about it, but it made me tired, all the same. Of course the job had
+to be done, but I wasn't letting him have any satisfaction. I told him he
+ought to give it to somebody else, and he handed me a lot of stuff about
+my experience. Finally I said: 'You come around in the morning, Mr. Brown.
+I ain't had any sleep to speak of for three weeks. I lost thirty-two
+pounds,' I said, 'and I ain't going to be bothered tonight.' Well, sir, he
+kind of shook his head, but he went away, and I got to thinking about it.
+Long about half-past seven I went down and got a time-table. There was a
+train to Stillwater at eight-forty-two."
+
+"That night?"
+
+"Sure. I went over to the shops with an express wagon and got a thousand
+feet of rope--had it in two coils so I could handle it--and just made the
+train. It was a mean night. There was some rain when I started, but you
+ought to have seen it when I got to Stillwater--it was coming down in
+layers, and mud that sucked your feet down halfway to your knees. There
+wasn't a wagon anywhere around the station, and the agent wouldn't lift a
+finger. It was blind dark. I walked off the end of the platform, and went
+plump into a mudhole. I waded up as far as the street crossing, where
+there was an electric light, and ran across a big lumber yard, and hung
+around until I found the night watchman. He was pretty near as mean as the
+station agent, but he finally let me have a wheelbarrow for half a dollar,
+and told me how to get to the job.
+
+"He called it fifty rods, but it was a clean mile if it was a step, and
+most of the way down the track, I wheeled her back to the station, got the
+rope, and started out. Did you ever try to shove two five hundred foot
+coils over a mile of crossties? Well, that's what I did. I scraped off as
+much mud as I could, so I could lift my feet, and bumped over those ties
+till I thought the teeth were going to be jarred clean out of me. After I
+got off the track there was a stretch of mud that left the road by the
+station up on dry land.
+
+"There was a fool of a night watchman at the power plant--I reckon he
+thought I was going to steal the turbines, but he finally let me in, and I
+set him to starting up the power while I cleaned up Murphy's job and put
+in the new rope."
+
+"All by yourself?" asked Peterson.
+
+"Sure thing. Then I got her going and she worked smooth as grease. When we
+shut down and I came up to wash my hands, it was five minutes of three. I
+said, 'Is there a train back to Minneapolis before very long?' 'Yes,' says
+the watchman, 'the fast freight goes through a little after three.' 'How
+much after?' I said. 'Oh,' he says, 'I couldn't say exactly. Five or eight
+minutes, I guess.' I asked when the next train went, and he said there
+wasn't a regular passenger till six-fifty-five. Well, sir, maybe you think
+I was going to wait four hours in that hole! I went out of that building
+to beat the limited--never thought of the wheelbarrow till I was halfway
+to the station. And there was some of the liveliest stepping you ever saw.
+Couldn't see a thing except the light on the rails from the arc lamp up by
+the station. I got about halfway there--running along between the rails--
+and banged into a switch--knocked me seven ways for Sunday. Lost my hat
+picking myself up, and couldn't stop to find it."
+
+Peterson turned in toward one of a long row of square frame houses.
+
+"Here we are," he said. As they went up the stairs he asked: "Did you make
+the train?"
+
+"Caught the caboose just as she was swinging out. They dumped me out in
+the freight yards, and I didn't get home till 'most five o'clock. I went
+right to bed, and along about eight o'clock Brown came in and woke me up.
+He was feeling pretty nervous. 'Say, Charlie,' he said, 'ain't it time for
+you to be starting?' 'Where to?' said I. 'Over to Stillwater,' he said.
+'There ain't any getting out of it. That drive's got to be running
+tomorrow.' 'That's all right,' said I, 'but I'd like to know if I can't
+have one day's rest between jobs--Sunday, too. And I lost thirty-two
+pounds.' Well, sir, he didn't know whether to get hot or not. I guess he
+thought himself they were kind of rubbing it in. 'Look here,' he said,
+'are you going to Stillwater, or ain't you?' 'No,' said I, 'I ain't. Not
+for a hundred rope drives.' Well, he just got up and took his hat and
+started out. 'Mr. Brown,' I said, when he was opening the door, 'I lost my
+hat down at Stillwater last night. I reckon the office ought to stand for
+it.' He turned around and looked queer, and then he grinned. 'So you went
+over?' he said. 'I reckon I did,' said I. 'What kind of a hat did you
+lose?' he asked, and he grinned again. 'I guess it was a silk one, wasn't
+it?' 'Yes,' said I, 'a silk hat--something about eight dollars.'"
+
+"Did he mean he'd give you a silk hat?" asked Peterson.
+
+"Couldn't say."
+
+They were sitting in the ten-by-twelve room that Peterson rented for a
+dollar a week. Bannon had the one chair, and was sitting tipped back
+against the washstand. Peterson sat on the bed. Bannon had thrown his
+overcoat over the foot of the bed, and had dropped his bag on the floor by
+the window.
+
+"Ain't it time to eat, Pete?" he said.
+
+"Yes, there's the bell."
+
+The significance of Bannon's arrival, and the fact that he was planning to
+stay, was slow in coming to Peterson. After supper, when they had returned
+to the room, his manner showed constraint. Finally he said:--
+
+"Is there any fuss up at the office?"
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Why--do they want to rush the job or something?"
+
+"Well, we haven't got such a lot of time. You see, it's November already."
+
+"What's the hurry all of a sudden? They didn't say nothing to me."
+
+"I guess you haven't been crowding it very hard, have you?"
+
+Peterson flushed.
+
+"I've been working harder than I ever did before," he said. "If it wasn't
+for the cribbing being held up like this, I'd 'a' had the cupola half done
+before now. I've been playing in hard luck."
+
+Bannon was silent for a moment, then he said:--
+
+"How long do you suppose it would take to get the cribbing down from
+Ledyard?"
+
+"Not very long if it was rushed, I should think--a couple of days, or
+maybe three. And they'll rush it all right when they can get the cars. You
+see, it's only ten or eleven hours up there, passenger schedule; and they
+could run it right in on the job over the Belt Line."
+
+"It's the Belt Line that crosses the bridge, is it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Bannon spread his legs apart and drummed on the front of his chair.
+
+"What's the other line?" he asked--"the four track line?"
+
+"That's the C. & S. C. We don't have nothing to do with them."
+
+They were both silent for a time. The flush had not left Peterson's face.
+His eyes were roving over the carpet, lifting now and then to Bannon's
+face with a quick glance.
+
+"Guess I'll shave," said Bannon. "Do you get hot water here?"
+
+"Why, I don't know," replied Peterson. "I generally use cold water. The
+folks here ain't very obliging. Kind o' poor, you know."
+
+Bannon was rummaging in his grip for his shaving kit.
+
+"You never saw a razor like that, Pete," he said. "Just heft it once."
+
+"Light, ain't it," said Peterson, taking it in his hand.
+
+"You bet it's light. And look here"--he reached for it and drew it back
+and forth over the palm of his hand--"that's the only stropping I ever
+give it."
+
+"Don't you have to hone it?"
+
+"No, sir; it's never been touched to a stone or leather. You just get up
+and try it once. Those whiskers of yours won't look any the worse for a
+chopping."
+
+Peterson laughed, and lathered his face, while Bannon put an edge on the
+razor, testing it with a hair.
+
+"Say, that's about the best yet," said Peterson, after the first stroke.
+
+"You're right it is."
+
+Bannon looked on for a few minutes, then he took a railroad "Pathfinder"
+from his grip and rapidly turned the pages. Peterson saw it in the mirror,
+and asked, between strokes:--
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"Looking up trains."
+
+While Peterson was splashing in the washbowl, Bannon took his turn at the
+mirror.
+
+"How's the Duluth job getting on?" asked Peterson, when Bannon had
+finished, and was wiping his razor.
+
+"All right--'most done. Just a little millwright work left, and some
+cleaning up."
+
+"There ain't any marine leg on the house, is there?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How big a house is it?"
+
+"Eight hundred thousand bushels."
+
+"That so? Ain't half as big as this one, is it?"
+
+"Guess not. Built for the same people, though, Page & Company."
+
+"They must be going in pretty heavy."
+
+"They are. There's a good deal of talk about it. Some of the boys up at
+the office say there's going to be fun with December wheat before they get
+through with it. It's been going up pretty steadily since the end of
+September--it was seventy-four and three-eighths Saturday in Minneapolis.
+It ain't got up quite so high down here yet, but the boys say there's
+going to be a lot of money in it for somebody."
+
+"Be a kind of a good thing to get in on, eh?" said Peterson, cautiously.
+
+"Maybe, for those that like to put money in wheat. I've got no money for
+that sort of thing myself."
+
+"Yes, of course," was Peterson's quick reply. "A fellow doesn't want to
+run them kind o' chances. I don't believe in it myself."
+
+"The fact's this,--and this is just between you and me, mind you; I don't
+know anything about it, it's only what I think,--somebody's buying a lot
+of December wheat, or the price wouldn't keep going up. And I've got a
+notion that, whoever he is, it's Page & Company that's selling it to him.
+That's just putting two and two together, you see. It's the real grain
+that the Pages handle, and if they sell to a man it means that they're
+going to make a mighty good try at unloading it on him and making him pay
+for it. That's all I know about it. I see the Pages selling--or what looks
+mighty like it--and I see them beginning to look around and talk on the
+quiet about crowding things a little on their new houses, and it just
+strikes me that there's likely to be a devil of a lot of wheat coming into
+Chicago before the year runs out; and if that's so, why, there's got to be
+a place to put it when it gets here."
+
+"Do they have to have an elevator to put it in?" asked Peterson. "Can't
+they deliver it in the cars? I don't know much about that side of the
+business."
+
+"I should say not. The Board of Trade won't recognize grain as delivered
+until it has been inspected and stored in a registered house."
+
+"When would the house have to be ready?"
+
+"Well, if I'm right, if they're going to put December wheat in this house,
+they'll have to have it in before the last day of December."
+
+"We couldn't do that," said Peterson, "if the cribbing was here."
+
+Bannon, who had stretched out on the bed, swung his feet around and sat
+up. The situation was not easy, but he had been sent to Calumet to get the
+work done in time, and he meant to do it.
+
+"Now, about this cribbing, Pete," he said; "we've got to have it before we
+can touch the annex?"
+
+"I guess that's about it," Peterson replied.
+
+"I've been figuring a little on this bill. I take it there's something
+over two million feet altogether. Is that right?"
+
+"It's something like that. Couldn't say exactly. Max takes care of the
+lumber."
+
+Bannon's brows came together.
+
+"You ought to know a little more about this yourself, Pete. You're the man
+that's building the house."
+
+"I guess I've been pushing it along as well as any one could," said
+Peterson, sullenly.
+
+"That's all right. I ain't hitting at you. I'm talking business, that's
+all. Now, if Vogel's right, this cribbing ought to have been here fourteen
+days ago--fourteen days tomorrow."
+
+Peterson nodded.
+
+"That's just two weeks of lost time. How've you been planning to make that
+up?"
+
+"Why--why--I reckon I can put things together soon's I get the cribbing."
+
+"Look here, Pete. The office has contracted to get this house done by a
+certain date. They've got to pay $750 for every day that we run over that
+date. There's no getting out of that, cribbing or no cribbing. When
+they're seeing ten or twenty thousand dollars slipping out of their hands,
+do you think they're going to thank you for telling 'em that the G.&M.
+railroad couldn't get cars? They don't care what's the matter--all they
+want of you is to do the work on time."
+
+"Now, look here, Charlie--"
+
+"Hold on, Pete. Don't get mad. It's facts, that's all. Here's these two
+weeks gone. You see that, all right enough. Now, the way this work's laid
+out, a man's got to make every day count right from the start if he wants
+to land on his feet when the house is done. Maybe you think somebody up in
+the sky is going to hand you down a present of two extra weeks so the lost
+time won't count. That would be all right, only it ain't very likely to
+happen."
+
+"Well," said Peterson, "what are you getting at? What do you want me to
+do? Perhaps you think it's easy."
+
+"No, I don't. But I'll tell you what to do. In the first place you want to
+quit this getting out on the job and doing a laborer's work. The office is
+paying out good money to the men that should do that. You know how to lay
+a corbel, but just now you couldn't tell me how much cribbing was coming.
+You're paid to direct this whole job and to know all about it, not to lay
+corbels. If you put in half a day swinging a sledge out there on the
+spouting house, how're you going to know that the lumber bills tally, and
+the carpenters ain't making mistakes, and that the timber's piled right.
+Here today you had a dozen men throwing away their time moving a lot of
+timber that ought to have been put in the right place when it first came
+in."
+
+Peterson was silent.
+
+"Now tomorrow, Pete, as soon as you've got the work moving along, you'd
+better go over to the electric light company and see about having the
+whole ground wired for arc lamps,--so we can be ready to put on a night
+shift the minute the cribbing comes in. You want to crowd 'em, too. They
+ought to have it ready in two days."
+
+Bannon sat for a moment, then he arose and looked at his watch.
+
+"I'm going to leave you, Pete," he said, as he put on his collar.
+
+"Where're you going?"
+
+"I've got to get up to the city to make the ten o'clock train. I'm going
+up to Ledyard to get the cribbing. Be back in a couple of days."
+
+He threw his shaving kit into his grip, put on his overcoat, said
+good-night, and went out.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Next morning at eight o'clock Charlie Bannon walked into the office of C.
+H. Dennis, the manager of the Ledyard Salt and Lumber Company.
+
+"I'm Bannon," he said, "of MacBride & Company. Come up to see why you
+don't get out our bill of cribbing."
+
+"Told you by letter," retorted Dennis. "We can't get the cars."
+
+"I know you did. That's a good thing to say in a letter. I wanted to find
+out how much of it really was cut."
+
+"It's all cut and stacked by the siding, taking up half the yard. Want to
+see it?"
+
+Bannon smiled and nodded. "Here's a good cigar for you," he said, "and
+you're a good fellow, but I think I'd like to see the cribbing."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," laughed Dennis. "I'd have said the same thing if
+it wasn't cut. Come out this way."
+
+Bannon followed him out into the yard. "There it is," said the manager.
+
+There was no need of pointing it out. It made a pile more than three
+hundred feet long. It was nothing but rough hemlock, two inches thick, and
+from two to ten inches wide, intended to be spiked together flatwise for
+the walls of the bins, but its bulk was impressive. Bannon measured it
+with his eye and whistled. "I wish that had been down on our job ten days
+ago," he said, presently. "I'd be taking a vacation now if it had."
+
+"Well, it was ready then. You can tell by the color."
+
+"What's the matter with the G.&M. anyway? They don't seem to be hauling
+very much. I noticed that last night when I came up. I'm no good at
+sleeping on the train."
+
+"Search me," said Dennis. "They've tied us up for these two weeks. I've
+kicked for cars, and the old man--that's Sloan--he's kicked, but here we
+are yet--can't move hand or foot."
+
+"Who's Sloan?"
+
+"Oh, he's the whole thing. Owns the First National Bank and the trolley
+line and the Ledyard Salt and Lumber Company and most of the downtown real
+estate."
+
+"Where can I find him? Is he in town?"
+
+"I guess so. He's got an office across the river. Just ask anybody where
+the Sloan Building is."
+
+"Likely to be there as early as this?" asked Bannon, looking at his watch.
+
+"Sure, if he's in town."
+
+Bannon slipped his watch into his pocket. "Much obliged," he said. "Glad
+to have met you. Good morning;" and, turning, he walked rapidly away down
+the plank wagon road.
+
+In Sloan's office he stated his errand as briefly as on the former
+occasion, adding only that he had already seen Dennis.
+
+"I guess he told you all there is to tell," said the magnate. "We can't
+make the G.&M. give us cars. I've told Dennis to stir 'em up as hard as he
+could. I guess we'll have to wait."
+
+"I can't wait."
+
+"What else can you do? It's every bit as bad for us as it is for you, and
+you can rest assured that we'll do all we can." As if the cadence of his
+last sentence were not sufficiently recognizable as a formula of
+dismissal, he picked up a letter that lay on his desk and began reading
+it.
+
+"This isn't an ordinary kick," said Bannon sharply. "It isn't just a case
+of us having to pay a big delay forfeit. There's a reason why our job's
+got to be done on time. I want to know the reason why the G.&M. won't give
+you cars. It ain't because they haven't got them."
+
+"What makes you say that?"
+
+"Because there's three big strings of empties within twenty miles of here
+this minute. I saw them when I came up this morning."
+
+For a minute Sloan said nothing, only traced designs on the blotter with
+his pencil. Bannon saw that there was no longer any question of arousing
+his interest. At last he spoke:--
+
+"I've suspected that there was something in the wind, but I've been too
+busy with other things to tend to it, so I turned it over to Dennis.
+Perhaps he's done as well as I could I don't know much about G.&M. these
+days. For a long time they were at me to take a big block of treasury
+stock, but the road seemed to me in bad shape, so I wouldn't go in. Lately
+they've reorganized--have got a lot of new money in there--I don't know
+whose, but they've let me alone. There's been no row, you understand. That
+ain't the reason they've tied us up, but I haven't known much about what
+was going on inside."
+
+"Would they be likely to tell you if you asked? I mean if you took it to
+headquarters?"
+
+"I couldn't get any more out of them than you could--that is, not by
+asking."
+
+"I guess I'll go look 'em up myself. Where can I find anybody that knows
+anything?"
+
+"The division offices are at Blake City. That's only about twenty miles.
+You could save time by talking over the 'phone."
+
+"Not me," said Bannon. "In a case like this I couldn't express myself
+properly unless I saw the fellow I was talking to."
+
+Sloan laughed. "I guess you're right. But I'll call up the division
+superintendent and tell him you're coming. Then you'll be sure of finding
+him."
+
+Bannon shook his head. "I'd find him with his little speech all learned.
+No, I'll take my chances on his being there. When's the train?"
+
+"Nine-forty-six."
+
+"That gives me fifteen minutes. Can I make it?"
+
+"Not afoot, and you ain't likely to catch a car. I'll drive you down. I've
+got the fastest mare in Pottawatomie County."
+
+The fact that the G.&M. had been rescued from its poverty and was about to
+be "developed" was made manifest in Blake City by the modern building
+which the railroad was erecting on the main street. Eventually the
+division officials were to be installed in office suites of mahogany
+veneer, with ground glass doors lettered in gold leaf. For the present, as
+from the beginning, they occupied an upper floor of a freight warehouse.
+Bannon came in about eleven o'clock, looked briefly about, and seeing that
+one corner was partitioned off into a private office, he ducked under the
+hand rail intended to pen up ordinary visitors, and made for it. A
+telegraph operator just outside the door asked what his business was, but
+he answered merely that it was with the superintendent, and went in.
+
+He expected rather rough work. The superintendent of a railroad, or of a
+division, has to do with the employees, never with the customers, and his
+professional manner is not likely to be distinguished by suavity. So he
+unconsciously squared his shoulders when he said, "I'm Bannon, of MacBride
+& Company."
+
+The superintendent dismissed his stenographer, swept with his arm a clear
+space on the desk, and then drummed on it with his fingers, but he did not
+look up immediately. When he did, it was with an expression of grave
+concern.
+
+"Mr. Bannon," he said, "I'm mighty sorry. I'll do anything I can for you.
+You can smoke ten cent cigars on me from now till Christmas, and light
+them with passes. Anything--"
+
+"If you feel like that," said Bannon, "we can fix things all comfortable
+in three minutes. All I want is cars."
+
+The superintendent shook his head. "There's where you stump me," he said.
+"I haven't got 'em."
+
+"Mr. Superintendent, that's what they told me in Chicago, and that's what
+they told me at Ledyard. I didn't come up here to Blake City to be told
+the same thing and then go back home."
+
+"Well, I don't know what else I can tell you. That's just the size of it.
+I hope we'll be able to fix you in a few days, but we can't promise
+anything."
+
+Bannon frowned, and after an expectant pause, the superintendent went on
+talking vaguely about the immense rush of traffic. Finally he asked, "Why
+do you think we'd hold you up if we had the cars?"
+
+"That's what I came here to find out. I think you're mistaken about not
+having them."
+
+The superintendent laughed. "You can't expect to know more about that than
+I do. You doubtless understand your business, but this is my business. If
+you can tell me where the cars are, you can have them."
+
+"Well, as you say, that's your business. But I can tell you. There's a big
+string of empties--I counted fourteen--on the siding at Victory."
+
+The superintendent looked out of the window and again drummed on the desk.
+When he spoke again, his manner was more what one would expect from a
+division superintendent. "You don't know anything about it. When we want
+advice how to run our road we'll ask you for it. Victory isn't in my
+division anyway."
+
+"Then wire the general manager. He ought to know something about it."
+
+"Wire him yourself, if you like. I can't bother about it. I'm sorry I
+can't do anything, but I haven't got time."
+
+"I haven't begun sending telegrams yet. And I haven't very much more time
+to fool away. I'd like to have you find out if the Ledyard Salt and Lumber
+Company can have those cars that are on the siding at Victory."
+
+"All right," said the superintendent, rising. At the door he turned back
+to ask, "When was it you saw them?"
+
+Bannon decided to chance it. "Yesterday morning," he said.
+
+The superintendent returned presently, and, turning to his desk, resumed
+his work. A few minutes later the telegraph operator came in and told him
+that the cars at Victory had been loaded with iron truss work the night
+before, and had gone off down the State.
+
+"Just too late, wasn't I?" said Bannon. "That's hard luck." He went to the
+window and, staring out into the yards, began tapping idly with his pencil
+on the glass. The office door was open, and when he paused he heard the
+telegraph instrument just without, clicking out a message.
+
+"Anything else I can do for you?" asked the superintendent. His good humor
+was returning at the sight of his visitor's perplexity.
+
+"I wish you'd just wire the general manager once more and ask him if he
+can't possibly let us have those cars."
+
+"All right," said the other, cheerfully. He nodded to the operator. "For
+the Ledyard Salt and Lumber Company," he said.
+
+Bannon dropped into a chair, stretched himself, and yawned. "I'm sleepy,"
+he said; "haven't had any sleep in three weeks. Lost thirty-two pounds. If
+you fellows had only got that cribbing down on time, I'd be having a
+vacation--"
+
+Another yawn interrupted him. The telegraph receiver had begun giving out
+the general manager's answer.
+
+Tell-Ledyard-we-hope-to-have-cars-in-a-few-days-
+
+The superintendent looked at Bannon, expecting him to finish his sentence,
+but he only yawned again.
+
+obey-previous-instructions.--Do-not-give-Ledyard-cars-in-any-case-
+
+Bannon's eyes were half closed, but the superintendent thought he was
+turning a little toward the open doorway.
+
+"Do you feel cold?" he asked. "I'll shut the door."
+
+He rose quickly and started toward it, but Bannon was there before him. He
+hesitated, his hand on the knob.
+
+"Why don't you shut it?" snapped the superintendent.
+
+"I think I'll--I think I'll send a telegram."
+
+"Here's a blank, in here. Come in." But Bannon had slipped out and was
+standing beside the operator's table. From the doorway the superintendent
+saw him biting his pencil and frowning over a bit of paper. The general
+manager's message was still coming in.
+
+We-don't-help-put-up-any-grain-elevator-in-Chicago-these-days.
+
+As the last click sounded, Bannon handed his message to the operator.
+"Send it collect," he said. With that he strode away, over the hand rail,
+this time, and down the stairs. The operator carried the message to the
+superintendent.
+
+"It seems to be for you," he said.
+
+The superintendent read--
+
+Div. Supt. G.&M., Blake City. Tell manager it takes better man than him to
+tie us up.
+MACBRIDE & COMPANY.
+
+Bannon had nearly an hour to wait for the next train back to Ledyard, but
+it was not time wasted, for as he paced the smoky waiting room, he arrived
+at a fairly accurate estimate of the meaning of the general manager's
+message.
+
+It was simply a confirmaton of the cautious prediction he had made to
+Peterson the night before. Why should any one want to hinder the
+construction of an elevator in Chicago "these days" except to prevent its
+use for the formal delivery of grain which the buyer did not wish
+delivered? And why had Page & Company suddenly ordered a million bushel
+annex? Why had they suddenly become anxious that the elevator should be
+ready to receive grain before January first, unless they wished to deliver
+a vast amount of December wheat? Before Bannon's train came in he
+understood it all. A clique of speculators had decided to corner wheat, an
+enterprise nearly enough impossible in any case, but stark madness unless
+they had many millions at command. It was a long chance, of course, but
+after all not wonderful that some one in their number was a power in the
+reorganized G.&M.
+
+Already the immense amount of wheat in Chicago was testing the capacity of
+the registered warehouses, and plainly, if the Calumet K should be delayed
+long enough, it might prevent Page & Company from carrying out their
+contract to deliver two million bushels of the grain, even though it were
+actually in the cars in Chicago.
+
+Bannon knew much of Page & Company; that dotted all over the vast wheat
+tracts of Minnesota and Montana were their little receiving elevators
+where they bought grain of the farmers; that miles of wheat-laden freight
+cars were already lumbering eastward along the railroad lines of the
+North. He had a touch of imagination, and something of the enormous
+momentum of that Northern wheat took possession of him. It would come to
+Chicago, and he must be ready for it. It would be absurd to be balked by
+the refusal of a little single-track road up in Michigan to carry a pile
+of planks.
+
+He paused before the grated window of the ticket and telegraph office and
+asked for a map. He studied it attentively for a while; then he sent a
+telegram:--
+
+MACBRIDE & COMPANY, Minneapolis: G.&M. R.R. wants to tie us up. Will not
+furnish cars to carry our cribbing. Can't get it elsewhere inside of three
+weeks. Find out if Page will O.K. any bill of extras I send in for
+bringing it down. If so, can they have one or more steam barges at
+Manistogee within forty-eight hours? Wire Ledyard Hotel.  C. H. BANNON.
+
+It was an hour's ride back to Ledyard. He went to the hotel and persuaded
+the head waiter to give him something to eat, although it was long after
+the dinner hour. As he left the dining room, the clerk handed him two
+telegrams. One read:--
+
+Get cribbing down. Page pays the freight.
+BROWN.
+
+The other:--
+
+Steam barge Demosthenes leaves Milwaukee tonight for Manistogee.
+PAGE & Co.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+As Bannon was paying for his dinner, he asked the clerk what sort of a
+place Manistogee was. The clerk replied that he had never been there, but
+that he understood it was quite a lively town.
+
+"Good road over there?"
+
+"Pretty fair."
+
+"That means you can get through if you're lucky."
+
+The clerk smiled. "It won't be so bad today. You see we've been getting a
+good deal of rain. That packs down the sand. You ought to get there all
+right. Were you thinking of driving over?"
+
+"That's the only way to go, is it? Well, I'll see. Maybe a little later.
+How far is it?"
+
+"The farmers call it eighteen miles."
+
+Bannon nodded his thanks and went back to Sloan's office.
+
+"Well, it didn't take you long," said the magnate. "Find out what was the
+matter with'em?"
+
+
+Illustration [HE CURSED THE WHOLE G.&M. SYSTEM, FROM THE TIES UP]
+
+
+He enjoyed his well-earned reputation for choler, and as Bannon told him
+what he had discovered that morning, the old man paced the room in a
+regular beat, pausing every time he came to a certain tempting bit of
+blank wall to deal it a thump with his big fist. When the whole situation
+was made clear to him, he stopped walking and cursed the whole G.&M.
+system, from the ties up. "I'll make 'em smart for that," he said. "They
+haul those planks whether they want to or not. You hear me say it. There's
+a law that covers a case like that. I'll prosecute 'em. They'll see
+whether J. B. Sloan is a safe kind of man to monkey with. Why, man," he
+added, turning sharply to Bannon, "why don't you get mad? You don't seem
+to care--no more than the angel Gabriel."
+
+"I don't care a damn for the G.&M. I want the cribbing."
+
+"Don't you worry. I'll have the law on those fellows--"
+
+"And I'd get the stuff about five years from now, when I was likely enough
+dead."
+
+"What's the best way to get it, according to your idea?"
+
+"Take it over to Manistogee in wagons and then down by barges."
+
+Sloan snorted. "You'd stand a chance to get some of it by Fourth of July
+that way."
+
+"Do you want to bet on that proposition?"
+
+Sloan made no reply. He had allowed his wrath to boil for a few minutes
+merely as a luxury. Now he was thinking seriously of the scheme. "It
+sounds like moonshine," he said at last, "but I don't know as it is. How
+are you going to get your barges?"
+
+"I've got one already. It leaves Milwaukee tonight."
+
+Sloan looked him over. "I wish you were out of a job," he said. Then
+abruptly he went on: "Where are your wagons coming from? You haven't got
+them all lined up in the yard now, have you? It'll take a lot of them."
+
+"I know it. Well, we'll get all there are in Ledyard. There's a beginning.
+And the farmers round here ain't so very fond of the G.&M., are they?
+Don't they think the railroad discriminates against them--and ain't they
+right about it? I never saw a farmer yet that wouldn't grab a chance to
+get even with a railroad."
+
+"That's about right, in this part of the country, anyway."
+
+"You get up a regular circus poster saying what you think of the G.&M.,
+and call on the farmers to hitch up and drive to your lumber yard. We'll
+stick that up at every crossroads between here and Manistogee."
+
+Sloan was scribbling on a memorandum pad before Bannon had finished
+speaking. He made a false start or two, but presently got something that
+seemed to please him. He rang for his office boy, and told him to take it
+to the Eagle office.
+
+"It's got to be done in an hour," said Bannon. "That's when the procession
+moves," he added, as Sloan looked at him questioningly.
+
+The other nodded. "In an hour," he said to the office boy. "What are you
+going to do in an hour?" he asked, as the boy went out.
+
+"Why, it'll be four o'clock then, and we ought to start for Manistogee as
+early as we can."
+
+"We! Well, I should think not!" said Sloan.
+
+"You're going to drive me over with that fast mare of yours, aren't you?"
+
+Sloan laughed. "Look at it rain out there."
+
+"Best thing in the world for a sand road," said Bannon. "And we'll wash, I
+guess. Both been wet before."
+
+"But it's twenty-five miles over there--twenty-five to thirty."
+
+Bannon looked at his watch. "We ought to get there by ten o'clock, I
+should think."
+
+"Ten o'clock! What do you think she is--a sawhorse! She never took more
+than two hours to Manistogee in her life."
+
+The corners of Bannon's mouth twitched expressively. Sloan laughed again.
+"I guess it's up to me this time," he said.
+
+Before they started Sloan telephoned to the Eagle office to tell them to
+print a full-sized reproduction of his poster on the front page of the
+Ledyard Evening Eagle.
+
+"Crowd their news a little, won't it?" Bannon asked.
+
+Sloan shook his head. "That helps 'em out in great shape."
+
+The Eagle did not keep them waiting. The moment Sloan pulled up his
+impatient mare before the office door, the editor ran out, bareheaded, in
+the rain, with the posters.
+
+"They're pretty wet yet," he said.
+
+"That's all right. I only want a handful. Send the others to my office.
+They know what to do with 'em."
+
+"I was glad to print them," the editor went on deferentially. "You have
+expressed our opinion of the G.&M. exactly."
+
+"Guess I did," said Sloan as they drove away. "The reorganized G.&M.
+decided they didn't want to carry him around the country on a pass."
+
+Bannon pulled out one of the sheets and opened it on his knee. He whistled
+as he read the first sentence, and swore appreciatively over the next.
+When he had finished, he buttoned the waterproof apron and rubbed his wet
+hands over his knees. "It's grand," he said. "I never saw anything like
+it."
+
+Sloan spoke to the mare. He had held her back as they jolted over the worn
+pavement of cedar blocks, but now they had reached the city limits and
+were starting out upon the rain-beaten sand. She was a tall, clean-limbed
+sorrel, a Kentucky-bred Morgan, and as she settled into her stride, Bannon
+watched her admiringly. Her wet flanks had the dull sheen of bronze.
+
+"Don't tell me," said Sloan, "that Michigan roads are no good for driving.
+You never had anything finer than this in your life." They sped along as
+on velvet, noiselessly save when their wheels sliced through standing
+pools of water. "She can keep this up till further notice, I suppose,"
+said Bannon. Sloan nodded.
+
+Soon they reached the first crossroad. There was a general store at one
+corner, and, opposite, a blacksmith's shop. Sloan pulled up and Bannon
+sprang out with a hammer, a mouthful of tacks, and three or four of the
+posters. He put them up on the sheltered side of conspicuous trees, left
+one with the storekeeper, and another with the smith. Then they drove on.
+
+They made no pretence at conversation. Bannon seemed asleep save that he
+was always ready with his hammer and his posters whenever Sloan halted the
+mare. The west wind freshened as the evening came on and dashed fine,
+sleety rain into their faces. Bannon huddled his wet coat closer about
+him. Sloan put the reins between his knees and pulled on a pair of heavy
+gloves.
+
+It had been dark for half an hour--Bannon could hardly distinguish the
+moving figure of the mare--when Sloan spoke to her and drew her to a walk.
+Bannon reached for his hammer. "No crossroad here," said Sloan. "Bridge
+out of repair. We've got to fetch a circle here up to where she can wade
+it."
+
+"Hold on," said Bannon sharply. "Let me get out."
+
+"Don't be scared. We'll make it all right."
+
+"We! Yes, but will fifteen hundred feet of lumber make it? I want to take
+a look."
+
+He splashed forward in the dark, but soon returned. "It's nothing that
+can't be fixed in two hours. Where's the nearest farmhouse?"
+
+"Fifty rods up the road to your right."
+
+Again Bannon disappeared. Presently Sloan heard the deep challenge of a
+big dog. He backed the buggy around up against the wind so that he could
+have shelter while he waited. Then he pulled a spare blanket from under
+the seat and threw it over the mare. At the end of twenty minutes, he saw
+a lantern bobbing toward him.
+
+The big farmer who accompanied Bannon held the lantern high and looked
+over the mare. "It's her all right," he said. Then he turned so that the
+light shone full in Sloan's face. "Good evening, Mr. Sloan," he said.
+"You'll excuse me, but is what this gentleman tells me all straight?"
+
+"Guess it is," Sloan smiled. "I'd bank on him myself."
+
+The farmer nodded with satisfaction. "All right then, Mr.
+What's-your-name. I'll have it done for you."
+
+Sloan asked no questions until they had forded the stream and were back on
+the road. Then he inquired, "What's he going to do?"
+
+"Mend the bridge. I told him it had to be done tonight. Said he couldn't.
+Hadn't any lumber. Couldn't think of it. I told him to pull down the lee
+side of his house if necessary; said you'd give him the lumber to build an
+annex on it."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Oh, it's all right. Send the bill to MacBride. I knew your name would go
+down and mine wouldn't."
+
+The delay had proved costly, and it was half-past seven before they
+reached the Manistogee hotel.
+
+"Now," said Bannon, "we'll have time to rub down the mare and feed her
+before I'm ready to go back."
+
+Sloan stared at him for a moment in unfeigned amazement. Then slowly he
+shook his head. "All right, I'm no quitter. But I will say that I'm glad
+you ain't coming to Ledyard to live."
+
+Bannon left the supper table before Sloan had finished, and was gone
+nearly an hour. "It's all fixed up," he said when he returned. "I've
+cinched the wharf."
+
+They started back as they had come, in silence, Bannon crowding as low as
+possible in his ulster, dozing. But he roused when the mare, of her own
+accord, left the road at the detour for the ford.
+
+"You don't need to do that," he said. "The bridge is fixed." So they drove
+straight across, the mare feeling her way cautiously over the new-laid
+planks.
+
+The clouds were thinning, so that there was a little light, and Bannon
+leaned forward and looked about.
+
+"How did you get hold of the message from the general manager?" asked
+Sloan abruptly.
+
+"Heard it. I can read Morse signals like print. Used to work for the Grand
+Trunk."
+
+"What doing?"
+
+"Boss of a wrecking gang." Bannon paused. Presently he went on.
+
+"Yes, there was two years when I slept with my boots on. Didn't know a
+quiet minute. Never could tell what I was going to get up against. I never
+saw two wrecks that were anything alike. There was a junction about fifty
+miles down the road where they used to have collisions regular; but they
+were all different. I couldn't figure out what I was going to do till I
+was on the ground, and then I didn't have time to. My only order was,
+'Clear the road--and be damn quick about it.' What I said went. I've set
+fire to fifty thousand dollars' worth of mixed freight just to get it out
+of the way--and they never kicked. That ain't the kind of life for me,
+though. No, nor this ain't, either. I want to be quiet. I've never had a
+chance yet, and I've been looking for it ever since I was twelve years
+old. I'd like to get a little farm and live on it all by myself. I'd raise
+garden truck, cabbages, and such, and I'd take piano lessons."
+
+"Is that why you quit the Grand Trunk? So that you could take piano
+lessons?" Sloan laughed as he asked the question, but Bannon replied
+seriously:--
+
+"Why, not exactly. There was a little friction between me and the master
+mechanic, so I resigned. I didn't exactly resign, either," he added a
+moment later. "I wired the superintendent to go to hell. It came to the
+same thing."
+
+"I worked for a railroad once myself," said Sloan. "Was a hostler in the
+roundhouse at Syracuse, New York. I never worked up any higher than that.
+I had ambitions to be promoted to the presidency, but it didn't seem very
+likely, so I gave it up and came West."
+
+"You made a good thing of it. You seem to own most all Potfawatomie
+County."
+
+"Pretty much."
+
+"I wish you would tell me how to do it. I have worked like an
+all-the-year-round blast furnace ever since I could creep, and never
+slighted a job yet, but here I am--can't call my soul my own. I have
+saved fifteen thousand dollars, but that ain't enough to stop with. I
+don't see why I don't own a county too."
+
+"There's some luck about it. And then I don't believe you look very sharp
+for opportunities. I suppose you are too busy. You've got a chance this
+minute to turn your fifteen thousand to fifty; maybe lot more."
+
+"I'm afraid I'm too thick-headed to see it."
+
+"Why, what you found out this morning was the straightest kind of a
+straight tip on the wheat market for the next two months. A big elevator
+like yours will be almost decisive. The thing's right in your own hands.
+If Page & Company can't make that delivery, why, fellows who buy wheat now
+are going to make money."
+
+"I see," said Bannon, quickly. "All I'd have to do would be to buy all the
+wheat I could get trusted for and then hold back the job a little. And
+while I was at it, I might just as well make a clean job and walk off with
+the pay roll." He laughed. "I'd look pretty, wouldn't I, going to old
+MacBride with my tail between my legs, telling him that the job was too
+much for me and I couldn't get it done on time. He'd look me over and say:
+'Bannon, you're a liar. You've never had to lay down yet, and you don't
+now. Go back and get that job done before New Year's or I'll shoot you.'"
+
+"You don't want to get rich, that's the trouble with you," said Sloan, and
+he said it almost enviously.
+
+Bannon rode to Manistogee on the first wagon. The barge was there, so the
+work of loading the cribbing into her began at once. There were numerous
+interruptions at first, but later in the day the stream of wagons became
+almost continuous. Farmers living on other than the Manistogee roads came
+into Ledyard and hurried back to tell their neighbors of the chance to get
+ahead of the railroad for once. Dennis, who was in charge at the yard, had
+hard work to keep up with the supply of empty wagons.
+
+Sloan disappeared early in the morning, but at five o'clock Bannon had a
+telephone message from him. "I'm here at Blake City," he said, "raising
+hell. The general manager gets here at nine o'clock tonight to talk with
+me. They're feeling nervous about your getting that message. I think you'd
+better come up here and talk to him."
+
+So a little after nine that night the three men, Sloan, Bannon, and the
+manager, sat down to talk it over. And the fact that in the first place an
+attempt to boycott could be proved, and in the second that Page & Company
+were getting what they wanted anyway--while they talked a long procession
+of cribbing was creaking along by lantern light to Manistogee--finally
+convinced the manager that the time had come to yield as gracefully as
+possible.
+
+"He means it this time," said Sloan, when he and Bannon were left alone at
+the Blake City hotel to talk things over.
+
+"Yes, I think he does. If he don't, I'll come up here again and have a
+short session with him."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+Illustration [Map of the Elevator site]
+
+
+It was nearly five o'clock when Bannon appeared at the elevator on
+Thursday. He at once sought Peterson.
+
+"Well, what luck did you have?" he asked. "Did you get my message?"
+
+"Your message? Oh, sure. You said the cribbing was coming down by boat. I
+don't see how, though. Ledyard ain't on the lake."
+
+"Well, it's coming just the same, two hundred thousand feet of it. What
+have you done about it?"
+
+"Oh, we'll be ready for it, soon's it gets here."
+
+They were standing at the north side of the elevator near the paling fence
+which bounded the C. & S. C. right of way. Bannon looked across the tracks
+to the wharf; the pile of timber was still there.
+
+"Did you have any trouble with the railroad when you took your stuff
+across for the spouting house?" he asked.
+
+"Not much of any. The section boss came around and talked a little, but we
+only opened the fence in one place, and that seemed to suit him."
+
+Bannon was looking about, calculating with his eye the space that was
+available for the incoming lumber.
+
+"How'd you manage that business, anyway?" asked Peterson.
+
+"What business?"
+
+"The cribbing. How'd you get it to the lake?"
+
+"Oh, that was easy. I just carried it off."
+
+"Yes, you did!"
+
+"Look here, Pete, that timber hasn't got any business out there on the
+wharf. We've got to have that room for the cribbing."
+
+"That's all right. The steamer won't get in much before tomorrow night,
+will it?"
+
+"We aren't doing any banking on that. I've got a notion that the Pages
+aren't sending out any six-mile-an-hour scow to do their quick work. That
+timber's got to come over here tonight. May as well put it where the
+carpenters can get right at it. We'll be on the cupola before long,
+anyhow."
+
+"But it's five o'clock already. There's the whistle."
+
+Bannon waited while the long blast sounded through the crisp air. Then he
+said:--
+
+"Offer the men double pay, and tell them that any man can go home that
+wants to, right now, but if they say they'll stay, they've got to see it
+through."
+
+Already the laborers were hurrying toward the tool house in a long,
+irregular line. Peterson started toward the office, to give the word to
+the men before they could hand in their time checks.
+
+"Mr. Bannon."
+
+The foreman turned; Vogel was approaching.
+
+"I wanted to see about that cribbing bill. How much of it's coming down by
+boat?"
+
+"Two hundred thousand. You'd better help Peterson get that timber out of
+the way. We're holding the men."
+
+"Yes, I've been waiting for directions about that. We can put a big gang
+on it, and snake it across in no time."
+
+"You'll have to open up the fence in half a dozen places, and put on every
+man you've got. There's no use in making an all-night job of it."
+
+"I'm afraid we'll have trouble with the railroad."
+
+"No, we won't. If they kick, you send them to me. Are your arc lights in?"
+
+"Yes, all but one or two. They were going to finish it today, but they
+ain't very spry about it."
+
+"Tell you what you do, Max; you call them up and tell them we want a man
+to come out here and stay for a while. I may want to move the lights
+around a little. And, anyhow, they may as well clean up their job and have
+it done with."
+
+He was starting back after the returning laborers when Max said:--.
+
+"Mr. Bannon."
+
+"Hello?"
+
+"I heard you speaking about a stenographer the other day."
+
+"Yes--what about it? Haven't you got one yet?"
+
+"No, but I know of one that could do the work first-rate."
+
+"I want a good one--he's got to keep time besides doing the office work."
+
+"Yes, I thought of that. I don't suppose she--"
+
+"She? We can't have any shes on this job."
+
+"Well, it's like this, Mr. Bannon; she's an A 1 stenographer and
+bookkeeper; and as for keeping the time, why, I'm out on the job all day
+anyhow, and I reckon I could take care of it without cutting into my
+work."
+
+Bannon looked quizzically down at him.
+
+"You don't know what you're talking about," he said slowly. "Just look
+around at this gang of men--you know the likes of them as well as I do--
+and then talk to me about bringing a girl on the job." He shook his head.
+"I reckon it's some one you're interested in."
+
+"Yes," said Max, "it's my sister."
+
+Max evidently did not intend to be turned off. As he stood awaiting a
+reply--his broad, flat features, his long arms and bow legs with their
+huge hands and feet, his fringe of brick-red hair cropping out behind his
+cap, each contributing to the general appearance of utter homeliness--a
+faint smile came over Bannon's face. The half-formed thought was in his
+mind, "If she looks anything like that, I guess she's safe." He was silent
+for a moment, then he said abruptly:--
+
+"When can she start?"
+
+"Right away."
+
+"All right. We'll try it for a day or so and see how it goes. Tell that
+boy in the office that he can charge his time up to Saturday night, but he
+needn't stay around any longer."
+
+Max hurried away. Group after group of laborers, peavies or cant-hooks on
+shoulders, were moving slowly past him toward the wharf. It was already
+nearly dark, and the arc lights on the elevator structure, and on the
+spouting house, beyond the tracks, were flaring. He started toward the
+wharf, walking behind a score of the laborers.
+
+From the east, over the flats and marshes through which the narrow,
+sluggish river wanders to Lake Michigan, came the hoarse whistle of a
+steamer. Bannon turned and looked. His view was blocked by some freight
+cars that were standing on the C. & S. C. tracks at some distance to the
+east. He ran across the tracks and out on the wharf, climbing on the
+timber pile, where Peterson and his gang were, rolling down the big sticks
+with cant-hooks. Not a quarter of a mile away was a big steamer, ploughing
+slowly up the river; the cough of her engines and the swash of the
+churning water at her bow and stern could be plainly heard. Peterson
+stopped work for a moment, and joined him.
+
+"Well," Bannon said, "we're in for it now. I never thought they'd make
+such time as this."
+
+"She can lay up here all night till morning, I guess."
+
+Bannon was thinking hard.
+
+"No," he finally said, "she can't. There ain't any use of wasting all day
+tomorrow unloading that cribbing and getting it across."
+
+Peterson, too, was thinking; and his eyebrows were coming together in a
+puzzled scowl.
+
+"Oh," he said, "you mean to do it tonight?"
+
+"Yes, sir. We don't get any sleep till every piece of that cribbing is
+over at the annex, ready for business in the morning. Your sills are
+laid--there's nothing in the way of starting those bins right up. This
+ain't an all-night job if we hustle it."
+
+The steamer was a big lake barge, with high bow and stern, and a long,
+low, cargo deck amidships that was piled squarely and high with yellow
+two-inch plank. Her crew had clearly been impressed with the need of
+hurry, for long before she could be worked into the wharf they had rigged
+the two hoists and got the donkey engines into running order. The captain
+stood by the rail on the bridge, smoking a cigar, his hand on the
+bell-pull.
+
+"Where do you want it?" he called to Bannon.
+
+"Right here, where I'm standing. You can swing your bow in just below the
+bridge there."
+
+The captain pulled the bell, and the snub-nosed craft, stirring up a whirl
+of mud from the bottom of the river, was brought alongside the wharf.
+
+"Where are you going to put it?" the captain called.
+
+"Here. We'll clean this up as fast as we can. I want that cribbing all
+unloaded tonight, sure."
+
+"That suits me," said the captain. "I don't want to be held up here--ought
+to pull out the first thing in the morning."
+
+"All right, you can do it." Bannon turned to Peterson and Vogel (who had
+just reached the wharf). "You want to rush this, boys. I'll go over and
+see to the piling."
+
+He hurried away, pausing at the office long enough to find the man sent by
+the electric light company, and to set him at work. The arc lamps had been
+placed, for the most part, where they would best illuminate the annex and
+the cupola of the elevator, and there was none too much light on the
+tracks, where the men were stumbling along, hindered rather than helped by
+the bright light before them. On the wharf it was less dark, for the
+lights of the steamer were aided by two on the spouting house. Before
+seven o'clock Bannon had succeeded in getting two more lights up on poles,
+one on each side of the track.
+
+It was just at seven that the timbers suddenly stopped coming in. Bannon
+looked around impatiently. The six men that had brought in the last stick
+were disappearing around the corner of the great, shadowy structure that
+shut off Bannon's view of the wharf. He waited for a moment, but no more
+gangs appeared, and then he ran around the elevator over the path the men
+had already trampled. Within the circle of light between him and the C. &
+S. C. tracks stood scattered groups of the laborers, and others wandered
+about with their hooks over their shoulders. There was a larger, less
+distinct crowd out on the tracks. Bannon ran through an opening in the
+fence, and pushed into the largest group. Here Peterson and Vogel were
+talking to a stupid-looking man with a sandy mustache.
+
+"What does this mean, Pete?" he said shortly. "We can't be held up this
+way. Get your men back on the work."
+
+"No, he won't," said the third man. "You can't go on with this work."
+
+Bannon sharply looked the man over. There was in his manner a dogged
+authority.
+
+"Who are you?" Bannon asked. "Who do you represent?"
+
+"I represent the C. & S. C. railroad, and I tell you this work stops right
+here."
+
+"Why?"
+
+The man waved his arm toward the fence.
+
+"You can't do that sort of business."
+
+"What sort?"
+
+"You look at that fence and then talk to me about what sort."
+
+"What's the matter with the fence?"
+
+"What's the matter with it! There ain't more'n a rod of it left, that's
+what."
+
+Bannon's scowl relaxed.
+
+"Oh," he said, "I see. You're the section boss, ain't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That's all right then. Come over here and I'll show you how we've got
+things fixed."
+
+He walked across the track, followed by the section boss and Pete, and
+pointed out the displaced sections of the fence, each of which had been
+carefully placed at one side.
+
+"We'll have it all up all right before morning," he said.
+
+The man was running his fingers up under his cap.
+
+"I don't know anything about that," he replied sullenly. "I've got my
+orders. We didn't make any kick when you opened up in one place, but we
+can't stand for all this."
+
+He was not speaking firmly, and Bannon, watching him closely, jumped at
+the conclusion that his orders were not very definite. Probably his
+superintendent had instructed him to keep a close eye on the work, and
+perhaps to grant no privileges. Bannon wished he knew more about the
+understanding between the railroad and MacBride & Company. He felt sure,
+however, that an understanding did exist or he would not have been told to
+go ahead.
+
+"That's all right," he said, with an air of easy authority. "We've got to
+be working over your tracks for the next two months. It's as much to our
+interest as it is to yours to be careful, and I guess we can pull
+together. We've got an agreement with your general manager, and that's
+what goes." He turned away, but paused and added, "I'll see that you don't
+have any reason to complain."
+
+The section boss looked about with an uncertain air at the crowd of
+waiting men.
+
+"Don't go too fast there--" he began.
+
+"Look here," said Bannon, abruptly. "We'll sit right down here and send a
+message to the general manager. That's the quickest way to settle it--tell
+him that we're carrying out timber across the tracks and you've stopped
+us."
+
+It was a bluff, but Bannon knew his man.
+
+"Now, how about this?" was the reply. "How long will it take you?"
+
+"Till some time before daylight." Bannon was feeling for his pencil.
+
+"You see that the fence goes back, will you? We ain't taking any chances,
+you understand."
+
+Bannon nodded.
+
+"All right, Max," he shouted. "Get to work there. And look here, Max," in
+a stern voice, "I expect you to see that the road is not blocked or
+delayed in any way. That's your business now, mind." He turned to the boss
+as the men hurried past to the wharf. "I used to be a railroad man
+myself--chief wrecker on the Grand Trunk--and I guess we won't have any
+trouble understanding each other."
+
+Again the six long lines of men were creeping from the brightly lighted
+wharf across the shadowy tracks and around the end of the elevator. Bannon
+had held the electric light man within call, and now set him at work
+moving two other arc lamps to a position where they made the ground about
+the growing piles of timber nearly as light as day. Through the night air
+he could hear the thumping of the planks on the wharf. Faintly over this
+sound came the shouting of men and the tramp and shuffle of feet. And at
+intervals a train would rumble in the distance, slowly coming nearer,
+until with a roar that swallowed all the other noises it was past. The arc
+lamps glowed and buzzed over the heads of the sweating, grunting men, as
+they came along the path, gang after gang, lifting an end of a heavy stick
+to the level of the steadily rising pile, and sliding it home.
+
+Bannon knew from long experience how to pile the different sizes so that
+each would be ready at the hands of the carpenters when the morning
+whistle should blow. He was all about the work, giving a hand here, an
+order there, always good-humored, though brusque, and always inspiring the
+men with the sight of his own activity.
+
+Toward the middle of the evening Vogel came up from the wharf with a
+question. As he was about to return, Bannon, who had been turning over in
+his mind the incident of the section boss, said:--
+
+"Wait a minute, Max. What about this railroad business--have they bothered
+you much before now?"
+
+"Not very much, only in little ways. I guess it's just this section boss
+that does it on his own hook. He's a sort of a fool, you know, and he's
+got it into his head that we're trying to do him some way."
+
+Bannon put his hands into his pockets, and studied the checkered pattern
+in the ground shadow of the nearest arc lamp. Then he slowly shook his
+head.
+
+"No," he said, "that ain't it. He's too big a fool to do much on his own
+hook. He's acting on orders of some sort, and that's just what I don't
+understand. As a general thing a railroad's mighty white to an elevator.
+Come to think of it, they said something about it up at the office,"--he
+was apparently speaking to himself, and Max quietly waited,--"Brown said
+something about the C. & S. C. having got in the way a little down here,
+but I didn't think much about it at the time."
+
+"What could they do?" Max asked.
+
+"A lot, if they wanted to. But that ain't what's bothering me. They
+haven't any connection with the G.&M., have they?"
+
+"No"--Max shook his head--"no, not that I know of."
+
+"Well, it's funny, that's all. The man behind those orders that the
+section boss talks about is the general manager; and it's my notion that
+we're likely to hear from him again. I'll tell you what it is. Somebody--I
+don't know who, but somebody--is mighty eager to keep this house from
+being finished by the first of January. After this I wish you'd keep your
+eyes open for this section boss. Have you had any trouble with the men?"
+
+"No, only that clerk that we laid off today, he 'lowed he was going to
+make trouble. I didn't say anything about it, because they always talk
+like that."
+
+"Yes, I know. What's his name?"
+
+"Briggs."
+
+"I guess he can't hurt us any."
+
+Bannon turned back to his work; and Vogel disappeared in the shadows along
+the path.
+
+Nine o'clock came, and the timber was still coming in. The men were
+growing tired and surly from the merciless strain of carrying the long,
+heavy sticks. The night was raw and chill. Bannon felt it as he stood
+directing the work, and he kept his hands in his pockets, and wished he
+had worn his overcoat; but the laborers, barearmed and bareheaded, clad
+only in overalls or in thin trousers and cotton shirts, were shaking sweat
+from their eyes, and stealing moments between trips to stand where the
+keen lake breeze could cool them. Another half-hour or so should see the
+last stick on the piles, and Bannon had about decided to go over to the
+office when he saw Vogel moving among the men, marking their time in his
+book.
+
+"Here, Max," he called, adding, when Vogel had reached his side: "Just
+keep an eye on this, will you? I'll be at the office. Keep things going
+just as they are."
+
+There was a light in the office. Bannon stepped into the doorway, and,
+with a suppressed word of impatience, stood looking at the scene within.
+The desk that Peterson had supplied for the use of his clerk was
+breast-high from the floor, built against the wall, with a high stool
+before it. The wall lamp had been taken down; now it stood with its
+reflector on the top of the desk, which was covered with books and papers.
+A girl was sitting on the stool, bending over a ledger and rapidly footing
+up columns. Bannon could not see her face, for a young fellow stood
+leaning over the railing by the desk, his back to the door. He had just
+said something, and now he was laughing in a conscious manner.
+
+Bannon quietly stepped to one side. The girl looked up for a moment and
+brushed her hair back from her face. The fellow spoke again in a low tone,
+but beyond a slight compressing of her lips she did not seem to hear him.
+Without a word, Bannon came forward, took him by the arm, and led him out
+of the door. Still holding his arm, he took a step back, and (they stood
+in the outer circle of the electric light) looked him over.
+
+"Let's see," he said, "you're the man that was clerking here."
+
+There was no reply. "And your name's--what?"
+
+"Briggs."
+
+"Well, Mr. Briggs, did you get a message from me?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean," said the young man, his eyes on the ground.
+"Max, he come around, but I wanted to wait and see you. He's a mean
+cuss--"
+
+"You see me now, don't you?"
+
+"Yes." The reply was indistinct.
+
+"You keep out of the office after this. If I catch you in there again, I
+won't stop to talk. Now, clear out."
+
+Briggs walked a little way, then turned. "Maybe you think you can lay me
+off without notice--but you'll wish--"
+
+Bannon turned back to the office, giving no heed to Briggs' last words:
+"I've got you fixed already." He was thinking of the girl there on the
+stool. She did not look like the girl he had expected to see. To be sure
+her hair was red, but it was not of the red that outcropped from Max's big
+head; it was of a dark, rich color, and it had caught the light from the
+lamp with such a shine as there is in new red gold. When he entered, she
+was again footing columns. She was slender, and her hand, where it
+supported her forehead was white. Again Bannon stood motionless, slowly
+shaking his head. Then he came forward. She heard his step and looked up,
+as if to answer a question, letting her eyes rest on his face. He
+hesitated, and she quietly asked:--
+
+"What is it, please?"
+
+"Miss Vogel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'm Mr. Bannon. There wasn't any need of your working tonight. I'm just
+keeping the men on so we can get in this cribbing. When did you come?"
+
+"My brother telephoned to me. I wanted to look things over before starting
+in tomorrow."
+
+"How do you find it?"
+
+She hesitated, glancing over the jumble of papers on the desk.
+
+"It hasn't been kept up very well," she presently said. "But it won't be
+hard, I think, to straighten it out."
+
+Bannon leaned on the rail and glanced at the paper on which she had been
+setting down totals.
+
+"I guess you'd better go home, Miss Vogel. It's after nine o'clock."
+
+"I can finish in an hour."
+
+"You'd better go. There'll be chances enough for night work without your
+making them."
+
+She smiled, cleared up the desk, and reached for her jacket, which hung
+from the nail behind her. Then she paused.
+
+"I thought I would wait for my brother, Mr. Bannon."
+
+"That's all right. I guess we can spare him. I'll speak to him. Do you
+live far?"
+
+"No; Max and I are boarding at the same place."
+
+He had got to the door when she asked:--
+
+"Shall I put out the light?"
+
+He turned and nodded. She was drawing on her gloves. She perhaps was not a
+very pretty girl, but there was something in her manner, as she stood
+there in the dim light, her hair straying out from beneath her white
+"sombrero" hat, that for the moment took Bannon far away from this
+environment of railroad tracks and lumber piles. He waited till she came
+out, then he locked the door.
+
+"I'll walk along with you myself, if you don't mind," he said. And after
+they had crossed the Belt Line tracks, and he had helped her, with a
+little laugh from each of them, to pick her way over the switches and
+between the freight cars, he said: "You don't look much like your
+brother."
+
+It was not a long walk to the boarding house but before they had reached
+it Bannon was nervous. It was not a custom with him to leave his work on
+such an errand. He bade her a brusque good-night, and hurried back,
+pausing only after he had crossed the tracks, to cast his eye over the
+timber. There was no sign of activity, though the two arc lamps were still
+in place. "All in, eh," he said.
+
+He followed the path beside the elevator and on around the end, and then,
+with an exclamation, he hurried forward; for there was the same idle crowd
+about the tracks that had been there during the trouble with the section
+boss--the same buzz of talk, and the idle laughter and shouting. As he
+ran, his foot struck a timber-end, and he sprawled forward for nearly a
+rod before recovering his balance; then he stopped and looked along the
+ground.
+
+A long line of timbers lay end to end, the timber hooks across them or
+near by on the ground, where they had been dropped by the laborers. On
+along the path, through the fence openings, and out on the tracks, lay the
+lines of timber. Here and there Bannon passed gangs of men lounging on the
+ground, waiting for the order to move on. As he passed through the fence,
+walking on the timbers, and hurried through the crowd, which had been
+pushed back close to the fence, he heard a low laugh that came along like
+a wave from man to man. In a moment he was in front of them all.
+
+The middle tracks were clear, excepting a group of three or four men, who
+stood a little to one side. Bannon could not make them out. Another crowd
+of laborers was pressed back against the opposite fence. These had moved
+apart at one of the fence openings, and as Bannon looked, two men came
+through, stumbling and staggering under a long ten-by-twelve timber, which
+they were carrying on their shoulders. Bannon looked sharply; the first, a
+big, deep-chested man, bare-headed and in his shirt sleeves, was Peterson.
+
+Bannon started forward, when Max, who had been hurrying over to him,
+touched his arm.
+
+"What's all this, Max?"
+
+"I'm glad you've come. It's Grady, the walking delegate--that's him over
+there where those men are standing, the little fellow with his hat on one
+side--he's been here for ten minutes."
+
+"Speak quick. What's the trouble?"
+
+"First he wanted to know how much we were paying the men for night work,
+and I told him. Thought I might as well be civil to him. Then he said we'd
+got to take Briggs back, and I told him Briggs wasn't a union man, and he
+hadn't anything to say about it. He and Briggs seemed to know each other.
+Finally he came out here on the job and said we were working the men too
+hard--said we'd have to put ten men on the heavy sticks and eight on the
+others. I was going to do it, but Peterson came up and said he wouldn't do
+it, and Grady called the men off, just where they were. He wouldn't let
+'em lift a finger. You see there's timber all over the tracks. Then Pete
+got mad, and said him and Donnelly could bring a twenty-foot stick over
+alone, and it was all rot about putting on more men. Here they come--just
+look at Pete's arms! He could lift a house."
+
+Some of the men were laughing, others growling, but all had their eyes
+fixed on Peterson and Donnelly as they came across the tracks, slowly
+picking their way, and shifting the weight a little, at every few seconds,
+on their shoulders. Bannon was glancing swiftly about, taking in the
+situation. He would not imperil his discipline by reproving Peterson
+before the men, so he stood for a moment, thinking, until the task should
+be accomplished.
+
+"It's Briggs that did the whole business," Max was saying. "He brought the
+delegate around--he was blowing about it among the men when I found him."
+
+"Is he on the job now?" Bannon asked.
+
+"No, and I don't think he'll be around again very soon. There were some
+loafers with him, and they took him away."
+
+Peterson and Donnelly had disappeared through the fence, and a few of the
+crowd were following, to see them get the timber clear around the building
+to the pile.
+
+"Have you sent out flagmen, Max?" Bannon asked.
+
+"No, I didn't."
+
+"Get at it quick--send a man each way with a lantern--put something red
+over them, their shirts if necessary."
+
+"None of the men will dare do it while the delegate's here."
+
+"Find some one--take one side yourself, if you have to."
+
+Max hurried away for the lanterns, Bannon walked out to the group of men
+on the middle tracks.
+
+"Where's Mr. Grady?" he said.
+
+One of the men pointed, but the delegate gave no attention.
+
+"You're Mr. Grady, are you?" said Bannon. "I'm Mr. Bannon, of MacBride &
+Company. What's the trouble here?"
+
+The delegate was revelling in his authority: his manner was not what it
+was to be when he should know Bannon better. He waved his hand toward the
+wharf.
+
+"You ought to know better than that," he said curtly.
+
+"Than what?"
+
+"Than what?--than running a job the way this is run."
+
+"I think I can run this job," said Bannon, quietly. "You haven't told me
+what's the trouble yet."
+
+"It's right here--you're trying to make money by putting on one man to do
+the work of two."
+
+"How?"
+
+Bannon's quiet manner exasperated the delegate.
+
+"Use your eyes, man--you can't make eight men carry a twelve-by-fourteen
+stick."
+
+"How many shall I put on?"
+
+"Ten."
+
+"All right."
+
+"And you'd better put eight men on the other sticks."
+
+The delegate looked up, nettled that Bannon should yield so easily.
+
+"That's all right," said Bannon. "We aren't fighting the union. After
+this, if you've got anything to say, I wish you'd come to me with it
+before you call off the men. Is there anything else before I start up?"
+
+Grady was chewing the stub of a cigar. He stood looking about with an ugly
+air, then he said:--
+
+"You ain't starting up just yet."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+The delegate's reply was lost in the shout that suddenly went up from the
+western end of the line of laborers. Then came the sound of a locomotive
+bell and exhaust. Bannon started down the track, jumping the timbers as he
+ran, toward Vogel's lantern, that was bobbing along toward him. The train
+had stopped, but now it was puffing slowly forward, throwing a bright
+light along the rails.
+
+"It's a C. & S. C. local," Max shouted. "Can't we clear up the right
+track?"
+
+Bannon stopped and looked around. About half of the men had followed him,
+and were strung out in irregular groups between him and the timbers.
+Walking up between the groups came the delegate, with two men, chewing his
+cigar in silence as he walked. The train was creeping along, the fireman
+leaning far out of the cab window, closely scanning the track for signs of
+an obstruction. On the steps between the cars a few passengers were trying
+to get a view up the track; and others were running along beside the
+train.
+
+"This has gone too far," Bannon muttered. He turned and shouted to the
+men: "Clear up that track. Quick, now!"
+
+Some of the men started, but stopped, and all looked at the delegate. He
+stepped to one side and coolly looked over the train; then he raised his
+hand.
+
+"Don't touch the timbers," he said. "It ain't a mail train."
+
+His voice was not loud, but those near at hand passed the word along, and
+the long line of men stood motionless. By that time the train had stopped,
+and three of the crew had come forward. They saw the timbers on the track
+and hurried toward them, but the delegate called out:--
+
+"Watch those sticks, boys! Don't let a man touch them!"
+
+There was no hesitation when the delegate spoke in that tone. A score of
+men blocked the way of the train crew.
+
+Bannon was angry. He stood looking at Grady with snapping eyes, and his
+hands closed into knotted fists. But Bannon knew the power of the unions,
+and he knew that a rash step now might destroy all hope of completing the
+elevator in time. He crossed over to the delegate.
+
+"What do you want?" he said gruffly.
+
+"Nothing from you."
+
+"What do you want?" Bannon repeated, and there was something in his voice
+that caused the delegate to check a second retort.
+
+"You'll kill these men if you work them like this. They've been on the job
+all day."
+
+Bannon was beginning to see that Grady was more eager to make trouble than
+to uphold the cause of the men he was supposed to represent. In his
+experience with walking delegates he had not met this type before. He was
+proud of the fact that he had never had any serious trouble in dealing
+with his workmen or their representatives. Mr. MacBride was fond of saying
+that Bannon's tact in handling men was unequalled; but Bannon himself did
+not think of it in this way--to him, trouble with the laborers or the
+carpenters or the millwrights meant loss of time and loss of money, the
+two things he was putting in his time to avoid; and until now he had found
+the maligned walking delegate a fair man when he was fairly dealt with. So
+he said:--
+
+"Well, what are you asking?"
+
+"These gangs ought to be relieved every two hours."
+
+"I'll do it. Now clear up those timbers."
+
+The delegate turned with a scowl, and waved the men back to their work. In
+a moment the track was clear, and the train was moving slowly onward
+between the long lines of men.
+
+Bannon started the gangs at work. When the timbers were again coming
+across from the wharf in six slowly moving streams that converged at the
+end of the elevator, he stood looking after the triangle of red lights on
+the last car of the train until they had grown small and close together in
+the distance. Then he went over to the wharf to see how much timber
+remained, and to tell Peterson to hurry the work; for he did not look for
+any further accommodation on the part of the C. & S. C. railroad, now that
+a train had been stopped. The steamer lay quietly at the dock, the long
+pile of cribbing on her deck shadowed by the high bow deckhouse from the
+lights on the spouting house. Her crew were bustling about, rigging the
+two hoisting engines, and making all ready for unloading when the order
+should be given.
+
+Peterson had been working through the timber pile from the shore side, so
+that now only a thin wall remained at the outer edge of the wharf. Bannon
+found him standing on the pile, rolling down the sticks with a peavey to
+where the carrying gangs could pick them up. "Better bring all your men up
+here, Pete, and clean it all away by the steamer. She may as well begin
+unloading now."
+
+Bannon walked back to the tracks, in time to see a handcar and trailer,
+packed with men, come up the track and stop near at hand. The men at once
+scattered, and brushing aside Bannon's laborers, they began replacing the
+sections of fence. Bannon crossed to the section boss, who recognized him
+and without comment handed him a telegraphed order.
+
+"There's no getting around that," he said, when Bannon had read it.
+"That's straight from the old man."
+
+Bannon returned it, called Peterson, and hurried with him around the
+elevator to find Max, who was overseeing the piling.
+
+"What'll we do?" Peterson asked, as they ran; but Bannon made no reply
+until the three were together. Then he said, speaking shortly:--
+
+"Get the wire cable off one of your hoisting engines, Pete, and make one
+end fast as high as you can on the spouting house. We'll run it across the
+tracks, on a slope, down to this side. Max, you get a light rope and a
+running block, and hang a hook on it."
+
+"I see," said Max, eagerly. "You're going to run it over on a trolley."
+
+"Yes. The engineers have gone, haven't they?"
+
+"Went at five," said Peterson.
+
+"That's all right. We'll only need the hoist at the spouting house. The
+rest of it's just plain sliding down hill."
+
+"But who'll run it?"
+
+"I will. Pete, you get up on the spouting house and see that they're
+started down. Max will stay over here and watch the piling. Now rush it."
+
+Half an hour had gone before the cable could be stretched from the
+spouting house, high over the tracks, down to the elevator structure, and
+before the hoisting engine could be got under steam. Meanwhile, for the
+third time since five o'clock, the laborers stood about, grumbling and
+growing more impatient. But at last it was all under way. The timbers were
+hoisted lightly up the side of the spouting house, hooked to the
+travelling block, and sent whirling down to Max's waiting hands, to be
+snatched away and piled by the men. But compared with the other method, it
+was slow work, and Bannon found that, for lack of employment, it was
+necessary to let half of the men go for the night.
+
+Soon, to the rattle of blocks and the tramping of feet and the calling and
+shouting of men, was added the creak of the steamer's hoists, and the
+groan of her donkey engines as her crew began the work of dumping out the
+cribbing by hand and steam, on the cleared space on the wharf. And then,
+when the last big stick had gone over, Peterson began sending bundles of
+two-inch cribbing. Before the work was finished, and the last plank from
+the steamer's cargo had been tossed on the pile by the annex, the first
+faint color was spreading over the eastern sky, and the damp of a
+low-country morning was in the air.
+
+Bannon stopped the engine and drew the fire; Peterson and his crew
+clambered to the ground, and Max put on his coat and waited for the two
+foremen to come across the tracks. When they joined him, Bannon looked
+sharply at him in the growing light.
+
+"Hello, Max," he said; "where did you get that black eye?"
+
+"That ain't much," Max replied. "You ought to see Briggs."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+When Bannon came on the job on Friday morning at seven o'clock, a group of
+heavy-eyed men were falling into line at the timekeeper's window. Max was
+in the office, passing out the checks. His sister was continuing her work
+of the night before, going over what books and papers were to be found in
+the desk. Bannon hung up his overcoat and looked through the doorway at
+the square mass of the elevator that stood out against the sky like some
+gigantic, unroofed barn. The walls rose nearly eighty feet from the
+ground--though the length and breadth of the structure made them appear
+lower--so close to the tops of the posts that were to support the cupola
+frame that Bannon's eyes spoke of satisfaction. He meant to hide those
+posts behind the rising walls of cribbing before the day should be gone.
+
+He glanced about at the piles of two-inch plank that hid the annex
+foundation work. There it lay, two hundred thousand feet of it--not very
+much, to be sure, but enough to keep the men busy for the present, and
+enough, too, to give a start to the annex bins and walls.
+
+Peterson was approaching from the tool house, and Bannon called.
+
+"How many laborers have you got, Pete?"
+
+"Hardly any. Max, there, can tell." Max, who had just passed out his last
+check, now joined them at the doorstep.
+
+"There's just sixty two that came for checks," he said, "not counting the
+carpenters."
+
+"About what I expected," Bannon replied. "This night business lays them
+out." He put his head in at the door. "You'd better give checks to any new
+men that we send to the window, Miss Vogel; but keep the names of the old
+men, and if they show up in the morning, take them back on the job. Now,
+boys"--to Peterson and Max--"pick up the men you see hanging around and
+send them over. I'll be at the office for a while. We'll push the cribbing
+on the main house and start right in on the annex bins. There ain't much
+time to throw around if we're going to eat our Christmas dinner."
+
+The two went at once. The hoisting engines were impatiently blowing off
+steam. New men were appearing every moment, delaying only to answer a few
+brisk questions and to give their names to Miss Vogel, and then hurrying
+away to the tool house, each with his brass check fastened to his coat.
+When Bannon was at last ready to enter the office, he paused again to look
+over the ground. The engines were now puffing steadily, and the rapping of
+many hammers came through the crisp air. Gangs of laborers were swarming
+over the lumber piles, pitching down the planks, and other gangs were
+carrying them away and piling them on "dollies," to be pushed along the
+plank runways to the hoist. There was a black fringe of heads between the
+posts on the top of the elevator, where the carpenters were spiking down
+the last planks of the walls and bins.
+
+Miss Vogel was at work on the ledger when Bannon entered the office. He
+pushed his hat back on his head and came up beside her.
+
+"How's it coming out?" he asked. "Do we know how much we're good for?"
+
+She looked up, smiling.
+
+"I think so. I'm nearly through. It's a little mixed in some places, but I
+think everything has been entered."
+
+"Can you drop it long enough to take a letter or so?"
+
+"Oh, yes." She reached for her notebook, saying, with a nod toward the
+table: "The mail is here."
+
+Bannon went rapidly through the heap of letters and bills.
+
+"There's nothing much," he said. "You needn't wait for me to open it after
+this. You'll want to read everything to keep posted. These bills for
+cribbing go to your brother, you know." There was one chair within the
+enclosure; he brought it forward and sat down, tipping back against the
+railing. "Well, I guess we may as well go ahead and tell the firm that
+we're still moving around and drawing our salaries. To MacBride & Company,
+Minneapolis, Gentlemen: Cribbing is now going up on elevator and annex. A
+little over two feet remains to be done on the elevator beneath the
+distributing floor. The timber is ready for framing the cupola. Two
+hundred thousand feet of the Ledyard cribbing reached here by steamer last
+night, and the balance will be down in a few days. Very truly yours,
+MacBride & Company. That will do for them. Now, we'll write to Mr. Brown--
+no, you needn't bother, though; I'll do that one myself. You might run off
+the other and I'll sign it." He got up and moved his chair to the table.
+"I don't generally seem able to say just what I want to Brown unless I
+write it out." His letter ran:--
+
+DEAR MR. BROWN: We've finally got things going. Had to stir them up a
+little at Ledyard. Can you tell me who it is that's got hold of our coat
+tails on this job? There's somebody trying to hold us back, all right. Had
+a little fuss with a red-headed walking delegate last night, but fixed
+him. That hat hasn't come yet. Shall I call up the express company and see
+what's the matter? 7 1/4 is my size.
+
+Yours,
+BANNON.
+
+He had folded the letter and addressed the envelope, when he paused and
+looked around. The typewritten letter to MacBride & Company lay at his
+elbow. He signed it before he spoke.
+
+"Miss Vogel, have you come across any letters or papers about an agreement
+with the C. & S. C?"
+
+"No," she replied, "there is nothing here about the railroad."
+
+Bannon drummed on the table; then he went to the door and called to a
+laborer who was leaving the tool house:--
+
+"Find Mr. Peterson and ask him if he will please come to the office for a
+moment."
+
+He came slowly back and sat on the corner of the table, watching Miss
+Vogel as her pencil moved rapidly up column after column.
+
+"Had quite a time up there in Michigan," he said. "Those G.&M. people were
+after us in earnest. If they'd had their way, we'd never have got the
+cribbing."
+
+She looked up.
+
+"You see, they had told Sloan--he's the man that owns the lumber company
+and the city of Ledyard and pretty much all of the Lower Peninsula--that
+they hadn't any cars; and he'd just swallowed it down and folded up his
+napkin. I hadn't got to Ledyard before I saw a string of empties on a
+siding that weren't doing a thing but waiting for our cribbing, so I
+caught a train to Blake City and gave the Division Superintendent some
+points on running railroads. He was a nice, friendly man."--Bannon clasped
+his hands about one knee and smiled reminiscently--"I had him pretty busy
+there for a while thinking up lies. He was wondering how he could get
+ready for the next caller, when I came at him and made him wire the
+General Manager of the line. The operator was sitting right outside the
+door, and when the answer came I just took it in--it gave the whole snap
+away, clear as you want."
+
+Miss Vogel turned on her stool.
+
+"You took his message?"
+
+"I should say I did. It takes a pretty lively man to crowd me off the end
+of a wire. He told the superintendent not to give us cars. That was all I
+wanted to know. So I told him how sorry I was that I couldn't stay to
+lunch, caught the next train back to Ledyard, and built a fire under
+Sloan."
+
+Miss Vogel was looking out of the window.
+
+"He said he could not give us cars?" she repeated.
+
+Bannon smiled.
+
+"But we didn't need them," he said. "I got a barge to come over from
+Milwaukee, and we loaded her up and started her down."
+
+"I don't understand, Mr. Bannon. Ledyard isn't on the lake--and you
+couldn't get cars."
+
+"That wasn't very hard." He paused, for a step sounded outside the door
+and in a moment Peterson had come in.
+
+"I guess you wanted to talk to me, didn't you, Charlie?"
+
+"Yes, I'm writing to the office. It's about this C. & S. C. business. You
+said you'd had trouble with them before."
+
+"Oh, no," said Peterson, sitting on the railing and removing his hat, with
+a side glance at Miss Vogel, "not to speak of. There wasn't nothing so bad
+as last night."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"Why, just a little talk when we opened the fence first time. That section
+boss was around, but I told him how things was, and he didn't seem to have
+no kick coming as long as we was careful."
+
+Bannon had taken up his letter to Brown, and was slowly unfolding it and
+looking it over. When Peterson got to his feet, he laid it on the table.
+
+"Anything else, Charlie? I'm just getting things to going on the annex.
+We're going to make her jump, I tell you. I ain't allowing any loafing
+there."
+
+"No," Bannon replied, "I guess not." He followed the foreman out of doors.
+"Do you remember having any letters, Pete, about our agreement with the C.
+& S. C. to build over the tracks--from the office or anybody?"
+
+Peterson brought his brows together and tried to remember. After a moment
+he slowly shook his head.
+
+"Nothing, eh?" said Bannon.
+
+"Not that I can think of. Something may have come in while Max was here in
+the office--"
+
+"I wish you'd ask him."
+
+"All right. He'll be around my way before long, taking the time."
+
+"And say," Bannon added, with one foot on the doorstep, "you haven't seen
+anything more of that man Briggs, have you?"
+
+Peterson shook his head.
+
+"If you see him hanging around, you may as well throw him right off the
+job."
+
+Peterson grinned.
+
+"I guess he won't show up very fast. Max did him up good last night, when
+he was blowing off about bringing the delegate around."
+
+Bannon had drawn the door to after him when he came out. He was turning
+back, with a hand on the knob, when Peterson, who was lingering, said in a
+low voice, getting out the words awkwardly:--
+
+"Say, Charlie, she's all right, ain't she."
+
+Bannon did not reply, and Peterson jerked his thumb toward the office.
+
+"Max's sister, there. I never saw any red hair before that was up to the
+mark. Ain't she a little uppish, though, don't you think?"
+
+"I guess not."
+
+"Red-haired girls generally is. They've got tempers, too, most of them.
+It's funny about her looks. She don't look any more like Max than
+anything." He grinned again. "Lord, Max is a peach, though, ain't he."
+
+Bannon nodded and reentered the office. He sat down and added a postscript
+to his letter:
+
+The C. & S. C. people are trying to make it warm for us about working
+across their tracks. Can't we have an understanding with them before we
+get ready to put up the belt gallery? If we don't, we'll have to build a
+suspension bridge.  C. B.
+
+He sealed the envelope and tossed it to one side.
+
+"Miss Vogel," he said, pushing his chair back, "didn't you ask me
+something just now?"
+
+"It was about getting the cribbing across the lake," she replied. "I don't
+see how you did it."
+
+Her interest in the work pleased Bannon.
+
+"It ain't a bad story. You see the farmers up in that country hate the
+railroads. It's the tariff rebate, you know. They have to pay more to ship
+their stuff to market than some places a thousand miles farther off. And I
+guess the service is pretty bad all around. I was figuring on something
+like that as soon as I had a look at things. So we got up a poster and had
+it printed, telling what they all think of the G.&M."--he paused, and his
+eyes twinkled--"I wouldn't mind handing one to that Superintendent just
+for the fun of seeing him when he read it. It told the farmers to come
+around to Sloan's lumber yard with their wagons."
+
+"And you carried it across in the wagons?"
+
+"I guess we did."
+
+"Isn't it a good ways?"
+
+"Eighteen to thirty miles, according to who you ask. As soon as things got
+to going we went after the General Manager and gave him a bad half hour;
+so I shouldn't be surprised to see the rest of the bill coming in by rail
+any time now."
+
+Bannon got up and slowly buttoned his coat. He was looking about the
+office, at the mud-tracked floor and the coated windows, and at the
+hanging shreds of spider web in the corners and between the rafters
+overhead.
+
+"It ain't a very cheerful house to live in all day, is it?" he said. "I
+don't know but what we'd better clean house a little. There's not much
+danger of putting a shine on things that'll hurt your eyes. We ought to be
+able to get hold of some one that could come in once in a while and stir
+up the dust. Do you know of any one?"
+
+"There is a woman that comes to our boarding-house. I think they know
+about her at the hotel."
+
+He went to the telephone and called up the hotel.
+
+"She'll be here this afternoon," he said as he hung up the receiver. "Will
+she bring her own scrubbing things, or are we supposed to have them for
+her? This is some out of my line."
+
+Miss Vogel was smiling.
+
+"She'll have her own things, I guess. When she comes, would you like me to
+start her to work?"
+
+"If you'd just as soon. And tell her to make a good job of it. I've got to
+go out now, but I'll be around off and on during the day."
+
+When the noon whistle blew Bannon and Max were standing near the annex.
+Already the bins and walls had been raised more than a foot above the
+foundation, which gave it the appearance of a great checker-board.
+
+"Looks like business, doesn't it," said Max. He was a little excited, for
+now there was to be no more delaying until the elevator should stand
+completed from the working floor to the top, one hundred and sixty feet
+above the ground; until engines, conveyors, and scales should be working
+smoothly and every bin filled with grain. Indeed, nearly everybody on the
+job had by this time caught the spirit of energy that Bannon had infused
+into the work.
+
+"I'll be glad when it gets up far enough to look like something, so we can
+feel that things are really getting on."
+
+"They're getting on all right," Bannon replied.
+
+"How soon will we be working on the cupola?"
+
+"Tomorrow."
+
+"Tomorrow!" Max stopped (they had started toward the office) and looked at
+Bannon in amazement. "Why, we can't do it, can we?"
+
+"Why not?" Bannon pointed toward a cleared space behind the pile of
+cribbing, where the carpenters had been at work on the heavy timbers,
+"They're all ready for the framing."
+
+Max made no reply, but he looked up as they passed the elevator and
+measured with his eyes the space remaining between the cribbing and the
+tops of the posts. He had yet to become accustomed to Bannon's methods;
+but he had seen enough of him to believe that it would be done if Bannon
+said so.
+
+They were halfway to the office when Max said, with a touch of
+embarrassment:--
+
+"How's Hilda going to take hold, Mr. Bannon?"
+
+"First-class."
+
+Max's eyes sparkled.
+
+"She can do anything you give her. Her head's as clear as a bell."
+
+For the moment Bannon made no reply, but as they paused outside the office
+door he said:
+
+"We'd better make a point of dropping in at the office now and then during
+the day. Any time you know I'm out on the job and you're up this way, just
+look in."
+
+Max nodded.
+
+"And nights when we're working overtime, there won't be any trouble about
+your getting off long enough to see your sister home. She won't need to do
+any night work."
+
+They entered the office. Miss Vogel was standing by the railing gate,
+buttoning her jacket and waiting for Max. Behind her, bending over the
+blue prints on the table, stood Peterson, apparently too absorbed to hear
+the two men come in. Bannon gave him a curious glance, for no blue prints
+were needed in working on the annex, which was simply a matter of building
+bins up from the foundation. When Max and his sister had gone the foreman
+looked around, and said, with a show of surprise:--
+
+"Oh, hello, Charlie. Going up to the house?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Peterson's manner was not wholly natural. As they walked across the flats
+his conversation was a little forced, and he laughed occasionally at
+certain occurrences in the morning's work that were not particularly
+amusing.
+
+Bannon did not get back to the office until a half hour after work had
+commenced for the afternoon. He carried a large bundle under one arm and
+in his hand a wooden box with a slot cut in the cover. He found the
+scrubwoman hard at work on the office floor. The chair and the unused
+stool were on the table. He looked about with satisfaction.
+
+"It begins to look better already," he said to Miss Vogel. "You know we're
+not going to be able to keep it all clean; there'll be too many coming in.
+But there's going to be a law passed about tracking mud inside the
+railing."
+
+ He opened his bundle and unrolled a door mat, which he laid in front of
+the gate.
+
+Miss Vogel was smiling, but Bannon's face was serious. He cut a square
+piece from the wrapping paper, and sitting on the table, printed the
+placard: "Wipe your feet! Or put five cents in the box." Then he nailed
+both box and placard to the railing, and stood back to look at his work.
+
+"That will do it," he said.
+
+She nodded. "There's no danger that they won't see it."
+
+"We had a box down on the New Orleans job," said Bannon, "only that was
+for swearing. Every time anybody swore he put in a nickel, and then when
+Saturday came around we'd have ten or fifteen dollars to spend."
+
+"It didn't stop the swearing, then?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Everybody was broke a day or so after pay day, and for a few
+days every week it was the best crowd you ever saw. But we won't spend
+this money that way. I guess we'll let you decide what to do with it."
+
+Hour by hour the piles of cribbing dwindled, and on the elevator the
+distance from bin walls to post-tops grew shorter. Before five o'clock the
+last planks were spiked home on the walls and bins in the northwest
+corner. A few hours' work in the morning would bring the rest of the house
+to the same level, and then work could commence on the distributing floor
+and on the frame of the cupola. Before the middle of the afternoon he had
+started two teams of horses dragging the cupola timbers, which had been
+cut ready for framing, to the foot of the hoist. By ten o'clock in the
+morning, Bannon figured, the engine would be lifting timbers instead of
+bundles of cribbing.
+
+There was a chill wind, up there on the top of the elevator, coming across
+the flats out of the glowing sunset. But Bannon let his coat flap open, as
+he gave a hand now and then to help the men. He liked to feel the wind
+tugging at sleeves and cap, and he leaned against it, bare-throated and
+bare-handed--bareheaded, too, he would have been had not a carpenter, rods
+away on the cribbing, put out a hand to catch his cap as it tried to whirl
+past on a gust. The river wound away toward the lake, touched with the
+color of the sky, to lose itself half a mile away among the straggling
+rows of factories and rolling mills. From the splendid crimson of the
+western sky to the broken horizon line of South Chicago, whose buildings
+hid Lake Michigan, the air was crisp and clear; but on the north, over the
+dim shops and blocks of houses that grew closer together as the eye went
+on, until spires and towers and gray walls were massed in confusion, hung
+a veil of smoke, like a black cloud, spreading away farther than eye could
+see. This was Chicago.
+
+Bannon climbed to the ground and took a last look about the work before
+going to the office. The annex was growing slowly but surely; and
+Peterson, coatless and hatless as usual, with sleeves rolled up, was at
+work with the men, swinging a hammer here, impatiently shouldering a
+bundle of planks there. And Bannon saw more clearly what he had known
+before, that Peterson was a good man when kept within his limitations.
+Certainly the annex could not have been better started.
+
+When Bannon entered the office, Miss Vogel handed him a sheet of paper. He
+came in through the gate and stood at the desk beside her to have the
+light of the lamp. It was a balance sheet, giving the results of her
+examination of the books.
+
+ "All right, eh?" he said. A glance had been enough to show him that
+hereafter there would be no confusion in the books; the cashier of a
+metropolitan bank could not have issued a more businesslike statement. He
+tossed it on the desk, saying, "You might file it."
+
+Then he took time to look about the office. It was as clean as blackened,
+splintered planks could be made; even the ceiling had been attacked and
+every trace of cobweb removed.
+
+"Well," he said, "this is business. And we'll keep it this way, too."
+
+She had faced about on the stool and was looking at him with a twinkle in
+her eye.
+
+"Yes," she said, evidently trying not to laugh; "we'll try to."
+
+He was not looking at her as she spoke, but when, a moment later, the
+laugh broke away from her, he turned. She was looking at his feet. He
+glanced down and saw a row of black footprints leading from the door to
+where he stood, one of them squarely in the centre of the new mat. He
+gazed ruefully, then he reached into his pocket and drew out a quarter,
+dropping it in the box.
+
+"Well--" he said, wiping his feet; but the whistle just then gave a long
+blast, and he did not finish the sentence.
+
+After supper Bannon and Peterson sat in the room they occupied together.
+In the walk home and during supper there had been the same sullen manner
+about the younger man that Bannon had observed at noon. Half a day was a
+long time for Peterson to keep to himself something that bothered him, and
+before the close of dinner he had begun working the talk around. Now,
+after a long silence, that Bannon filled with sharpening pencils, he said:
+
+"Some people think a lot of themselves, don't they, Charlie?"
+
+Bannon looked up from his pencils; he was sitting on the edge of the bed.
+
+"She seems to think she's better'n Max and you and me, and everybody. I
+thought she looked pretty civil, and I didn't say a word she need to have
+got stuck-up about."
+
+Bannon asked no questions. After waiting to give him an opportunity,
+Peterson went on:--
+
+"There's going to be a picnic Sunday of the Iron Workers up at
+Sharpshooters' Park. I know a fellow that has tickets. It'd be just as
+quiet as anywhere--and speeches, you know. I don't see that she's any
+better than a lot of the girls that'll be there."
+
+"Do you mean to say you asked her to go?" Bannon asked.
+
+"Yes, and she--"
+
+Bannon had turned away to strop his razor on his hand, and Peterson, after
+one or two attempts to begin the story, let the subject drop.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Bannon had the knack of commanding men. He knew the difference between an
+isolated--or better, perhaps, an insulated--man and the same man in a
+crowd. Without knowing how he did it, he could, nevertheless, distinguish
+between the signs of temporary ill feeling among the men and the perhaps
+less apparent danger signal that meant serious mischief.
+
+Since his first day on the job the attitude of the men had worried him a
+little. There was something in the air he did not like. Peterson,
+accustomed to handling smaller bodies of men, had made the natural mistake
+of driving the very large force employed on the elevator with much too
+loose a rein. The men were still further demoralized by the episode with
+the walking delegate, Grady, on Thursday night. Bannon knew too much to
+attempt halfway measures, so he waited for a case of insubordination
+serious enough to call for severe treatment.
+
+When he happened into the office about the middle of Saturday morning,
+Miss Vogel handed him two letters addressed to him personally. One was
+from Brown,--the last paragraph of it as follows:--
+
+Young Page has told MacBride in so many words what we've all been guessing
+about, that is, that they are fighting to break the corner in December
+wheat. They have a tremendous short line on the Chicago Board, and they
+mean to deliver it. Twenty two hundred thousand has got to be in the bins
+there at Calumet before the first of January unless the Day of Judgment
+happens along before then. Never mind what it costs you.  BROWN.
+
+P.S. MacBride has got down an atlas and is trying to figure out how you
+got that cribbing to the lake. I told him you put the barge on rollers and
+towed it up to Ledyard with a traction engine.
+
+The letter from Sloan was to the effect that twelve cars were at that
+moment on the yard siding, loading with cribbing, and that all of it,
+something more than eighteen hundred thousand feet, would probably be in
+Chicago within a week. A note was scribbled on the margin in Sloan's
+handwriting. "Those fool farmers are still coming in expecting a job. One
+is out in the yard now. Came clear from Victory. I've had to send out a
+man to take down the posters."
+
+"That's just like a farmer," Bannon said to Miss Vogel. "Time don't count
+with him. Tomorrow morning or two weeks from next Tuesday--he can't see
+the difference. I suppose if one of those posters on an inconspicuous tree
+happens to be overlooked that some old fellow'll come driving in next
+Fourth of July."
+
+He buttoned his coat as though going out, but stood looking at her
+thoughtfully awhile. "All the same," he said, "I'd like to be that way
+myself; never do anything till tomorrow. I'm going to turn farmer some
+day. Once I get this job done, I'd like to see the man who can hurry me.
+I'll say to MacBride: 'I'm willing to work on nice, quiet, easy little
+jobs that never have to be finished. I'll want to sit at the desk and
+whittle most of the time. But if you ever try to put me on a rush job I'll
+quit and buy a small farm.' I could make the laziest farmer in twelve
+states. Well, I've got to go out on the job."
+
+An elevator is simply a big grain warehouse, and of course the bins where
+the grain is kept occupy most of the building. But for handling the grain
+more than bin room is necessary. Beneath the bins is what is called the
+working story, where is the machinery for unloading cars and for lifting
+the grain. The cupola, which Bannon was about to frame, is a five-story
+building perched atop the bins. It contains the appliances for weighing
+the grain and distributing it.
+
+When Bannon climbed out on top of the bins, he found the carpenters
+partially flooring over the area, preparatory to putting in place the
+framework of the cupola. Below them in the bins, like bees in a honeycomb,
+laborers were taking down the scaffolding which had served in building
+their walls. At the south side of the building a group of laborers, under
+one of the foremen, was rigging what is known as a boom hoist, which was
+to lift the timbers for framing the cupola.
+
+While Bannon stood watching the carpenters, one of them sawed off the end
+of a plank and dropped it down into the bin. There was a low laugh, and
+one or two of the men glanced uneasily at Bannon. He spoke to the
+offender.
+
+"Don't do that again if you want to stay on this job. You know there are
+men at work down there." Then: "Look here," he called, getting the
+attention of all the carpenters, "every man that drops anything into the
+bins gets docked an hour's pay. If he does it twice he leaves the job just
+as quick as we can make out a time-check. I want you to be careful."
+
+He was picking his way over to the group of men about the hoisting pole,
+when he heard another general laugh from the carpenters. Turning back he
+saw them all looking at a fellow named Reilly, who, trying to suppress a
+smile, was peering with mock concern down into the dark bin. "My hammer
+slipped," Bannon heard him say in a loud aside to the man nearest him.
+Then, with a laugh: "Accidents will happen."
+
+Bannon almost smiled himself, for the man had played right into his hand.
+He had, in the four days since he took command, already become aware of
+Reilly and had put him down for the sort ambitious to rise rather in the
+organization of his union than in his trade.
+
+"I guess we won't take the trouble to dock you," he said. "Go to the
+office and get your time. And be quick about it, too."
+
+"Did ye mean me?" the man asked impudently, but Bannon, without heeding,
+went over to the hoist. Presently a rough hand fell on his shoulder.
+"Say," demanded Reilly again, "did ye mean me?"
+
+"No doubt of that. Go and get your time."
+
+"I guess not," said the man. "Not me. My hammer just slipped. How're you
+going to prove I meant to do it?"
+
+"I'm not. I'm going to fire you. You ain't laid off, you understand;
+you're fired. If you ever come back, I'll have you kicked off the place."
+
+"You don't dare fire me," the man said, coming nearer. "You'll have to
+take me back tomorrow."
+
+"I'm through talking with you," said Bannon, still quietly. "The faster
+you can light out of here the better."
+
+"We'll see about that. You can't come it on the union that way--"
+
+Then, without any preparatory gesture whatever, Bannon knocked him down.
+The man seemed to fairly rebound from the floor. He rushed at the boss,
+but before he could come within striking distance, Bannon whipped out a
+revolver and dropped it level with Reilly's face.
+
+"I've talked to you," he said slowly, his eye blazing along the barrel,
+"and I've knocked you down. But--"
+
+The man staggered back, then walked away very pale, but muttering. Bannon
+shoved back the revolver into his hip pocket. "It's all right, boys," he
+said, "nothing to get excited about."
+
+He walked to the edge and looked over. "We can't wait to pick it up a
+stick at a time," he said. "I'll tell 'em to load four or five on each
+larry. Then you can lift the whole bunch."
+
+"We run some chances of a spill or a break that way," said the foreman.
+
+"I know it," answered Bannon, dryly. "That's the kind of chances we'll
+have to run for the next two months."
+
+Descending to the ground, he gave the same order to the men below; then he
+sent word to Peterson and Vogel that he wished to see them in the office.
+He wiped his feet on the mat, glancing at Hilda as he did so, but she was
+hard at work and did not look up. He took the one unoccupied chair and
+placed it where he could watch the burnished light in her red hair.
+Presently she turned toward him.
+
+"Did you want something?" she asked.
+
+"Excuse me. I guess--I--"
+
+In the midst of his embarrassment, Max and Pete came in. "I've got a
+couple of letters I want to talk over with you boys," he said. "That's why
+I sent for you."
+
+Pete laughed and vaulted to a seat on the draughting-table. "I was most
+afraid to come," he said. "I heard you drawed a gun on that fellow,
+Reilly. What was he doing to make you mad?"
+
+"Nothing much."
+
+"Well, I'm glad you fired him. He's made trouble right along. How'd it
+happen you had a gun with you? Do you always carry one?"
+
+"Haven't been without one on a job since I've worked for the old man."
+
+"Well," said Pete, straightening up, "I've never so much as owned one, and
+I never want to. I don't like 'em. If my fists ain't good enough to take
+care of me against any fellow that comes along, why, he's welcome to lick
+me, that's all."
+
+Hilda glanced at him, and for a moment her eyes rested on his figure.
+There was not a line of it but showed grace and strength and a magnificent
+confidence. Then, as if for the contrast, she looked at Bannon. He had
+been watching her all the while, and he seemed to guess her thought.
+
+"That's all right," he said in answer to Peterson, "when it's just you and
+him and a fellow to hold your coats. But it don't always begin that way.
+I've been in places where things got pretty miscellaneous sometimes, but I
+never had a man come up and say: 'Mr. Bannon, I'm going to lick you. Any
+time when you're ready.' There's generally from three to thirty, and they
+all try to get on your back."
+
+Peterson laughed reminiscently. "I was an attendant in the insane ward of
+the Massachusetts General Hospital for a while, and one time when I wasn't
+looking for it, twenty four of those lunatics all jumped on me at once.
+They got me on the floor and 'most killed me." He paused, as though there
+was nothing more to tell.
+
+"Don't stop there," said Max.
+
+"Why," he went on, "I crawled along the floor till I got to a chair, and I
+just knocked 'em around with that till they was quiet."
+
+Bannon looked at his watch; then he took Brown's letter from his pocket.
+"It's from the office," he said. "We've got to have the bins full before
+New Year's Day."
+
+"Got to!" exclaimed Pete. "I don't see it that way. We can't do it."
+
+"Can or can't, that don't interest MacBride a bit. He says it's got to be
+done and it has."
+
+"Why, he can't expect us to do it. He didn't say anything about January
+first to me. I didn't know it was a rush job. And then we played in hard
+luck, too, before you came. That cribbing being tied up, for instance. He
+certainly can't blame us if--"
+
+"That's got nothing to do with it," Bannon cut in shortly. "He don't pay
+us to make excuses; he pays us to do as we're told. When I have to begin
+explaining to MacBride why it can't be done, I'll send my resignation
+along in a separate envelope and go to peddling a cure for corns. What we
+want to talk about is how we're going to do it."
+
+Peterson flushed, but said nothing, and Bannon went on: "Now, here's what
+we've got to do. We've got to frame the cupola and put on the roof and
+sheathe the entire house with galvanized iron; we've got to finish the
+spouting house and sheathe that; we've got to build the belt gallery--and
+we'll have no end of a time doing it if the C. & S. C. is still looking
+for trouble. Then there's all the machinery to erect and the millwright
+work to do. And we've got to build the annex."
+
+"I thought you was going to forget that," said Pete. "That's the worst job
+of all."
+
+"No, it ain't. It's the easiest. It'll build itself. It's just a case of
+two and two makes four. All you've got to do is spike down two-inch planks
+till it's done, and then clap on some sort of a roof. There's no
+machinery, no details, just straight work. It's just a question of having
+the lumber to do it with, and we've got it now. It's the little work that
+can raise Ned with you. There is more than a million little things that
+any man ought to do in half an hour, but if one of 'em goes wrong, it may
+hold you up for all day. Now, I figure the business this way."
+
+He took a memorandum from his pocket and began reading. There was very
+little guesswork about it; he had set down as nearly as possible the
+amount of labor involved in each separate piece of construction, and the
+number of men who could work on it at once. Allowing for the different
+kinds of work that could be done simultaneously, he made out a total of
+one hundred and twenty days.
+
+"Well, that's all right, I guess," said Pete, "but you see that takes us
+way along into next year sometime."
+
+"About March first," said Max.
+
+"You haven't divided by three yet," said Bannon. "We'll get three
+eight-hour days into every twenty-four hours, and twenty-one of 'em
+into every week."
+
+"Why, that's better than we need to do," said Pete, after a moment. "That
+gets us about two weeks ahead of time."
+
+"Did you ever get through when you thought you would?" Bannon demanded. "I
+never did. Don't you know that you always get hit by something you ain't
+looking for? I'm figuring in our hard-luck margin, that's all. There are
+some things I am looking for, too. We'll have a strike here before we get
+through."
+
+"Oh, I guess not," said Pete, easily. "You're still thinking of Reilly,
+aren't you."
+
+"And for another thing, Page & Company are likely to spring something on
+us at the last moment."
+
+"What sort of thing?"
+
+"If I knew I'd go ahead and build it now, but I don't."
+
+"How are you going to work three gangs? Who'll look after'em?"
+
+"One of us has got to stay up nights, I guess," said Bannon. "We'll have
+to get a couple of boys to help Max keep time. It may take us a day or two
+to get the good men divided up and the thing to running properly, but we
+ought to be going full blast by the first of the week."
+
+He arose and buttoned his coat. "You two know the men better than I do. I
+wish you'd go through the pay roll and pick out the best men and find out,
+if you can, who'll work nights at regular night wages."
+
+Peterson came out of the office with him.
+
+"I suppose you'll put me in the night gang," he said.
+
+"I haven't decided yet what I'll do."
+
+"When I came by the main hoist," Pete went on, "they was picking up four
+and five sticks at once. I stopped 'em, and they said it was your orders.
+You'll come to smash that way, sure as a gun."
+
+"Not if they don't take more than I told 'em to and if they're careful.
+They have to do it to keep up with the carpenters."
+
+"Well, it's running a big risk, that's all. I don't like it."
+
+"My God, don't I know it's a risk! Do you suppose I like it? We've got
+something to do, and we've got to do it somehow."
+
+Pete laughed uneasily. "I--I told 'em not to pick up more than two sticks
+at a time till they heard from me."
+
+"I think," said Bannon, with a look that was new to Pete, "I think you'd
+better go as fast as you can and tell them to go on as they were when you
+found them."
+
+Late on Tuesday afternoon the hoist broke. It was not easy to get from the
+men a clear account of the accident. The boss of the gang denied that he
+had carried more of a load than Bannon had authorized, but some of the
+talk among the men indicated the contrary. Only one man was injured and he
+not fatally, a piece of almost miraculous good luck. Some scaffolding was
+torn down and a couple of timbers badly sprung, but the total damage was
+really slight.
+
+Bannon in person superintended rigging the new hoist. It was ready for
+work within two hours after the accident. "She's guyed a little better
+than the other was, I think," said Bannon to the foreman. "You won't have
+any more trouble. Go ahead."
+
+"How about the load?"
+
+"Carry the same load as before. You weren't any more than keeping up."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Five minutes after the noon whistle blew, on Saturday, every carpenter and
+laborer knew that Bannon had "pulled a gun" on Reilly. Those who heard it
+last heard more than that, for when the story had passed through a few
+hands it was bigger and it took longer to tell. And every man, during the
+afternoon, kept his eyes more closely on his work. Some were angry, but
+these dropped from muttering into sullenness; the majority were relieved,
+for a good workman is surer of himself under a firm than under a slack
+hand; but all were cowed. And Bannon, when after dinner he looked over the
+work, knew more about all of them and their feelings, perhaps, than they
+knew themselves. He knew, too, that the incident might in the long run
+make trouble. But trouble was likely in any case, and it was better to
+meet it after he had established his authority than while discipline was
+at loose ends.
+
+But Hilda and Max were disappointed. They were in the habit of talking
+over the incidents and problems of the day every night after supper. And
+while Hilda, as Max used to say, had a mind of her own, she had fallen
+into the habit of seeing things much as Max saw them. Max had from the
+start admired, in his boyish way, Peterson's big muscles and his easy good
+nature. He had been the first to catch the new spirit that Bannon had got
+into the work, but it was more the outward activity that he could
+understand and admire than Bannon's finer achievements in organization.
+Like Hilda, he did not see the difference between dropping a hammer down a
+bin and overloading a hoist. Bannon's distinction between running risks in
+order to push the work and using caution in minor matters was not
+recognized in their talks. And as Bannon was not in the habit of giving
+his reasons, the misunderstanding grew. But more than all Max felt, and in
+a way Hilda felt, too, that Peterson would never have found it necessary
+to use a revolver; his fists would have been enough for a dozen Reillys.
+Max did not tell Hilda about all the conversations he and Peterson had had
+during the last week, for they were confidential. Peterson had never been
+without a confidant, and though he still shared a room with Bannon, he
+could not talk his mind out with him. Max, who to Bannon was merely an
+unusually capable lumber-checker, was to Peterson a friend and adviser.
+And though Max tried to defend Bannon when Peterson fell into criticism of
+the way the work was going, he was influenced by it.
+
+During the few days after the accident Hilda was so deeply distressed
+about the injured man that Max finally went to see him.
+
+"He's pretty well taken care of," he said when he returned. "There's some
+ribs broken, he says, and a little fever, but it ain't serious. He's got a
+couple of sneaking little lawyers around trying to get him to sue for
+damages, but I don't think he'll do it. The Company's giving him full pay
+and all his doctor's bills."
+
+Nearly every evening after that Max took him some little delicacy. Hilda
+made him promise that he would not tell who sent them.
+
+Bannon had quickly caught the changed attitude toward him, and for several
+days kept his own counsel. But one morning, after dictating some letters
+to Hilda, he lingered.
+
+"How's our fund getting on?" he said, smiling. "Have you looked lately?"
+
+"No," she said, "I haven't."
+
+He leaned over the railing and opened the box.
+
+"It's coming slow," he said, shaking his head. "Are you sure nobody's been
+getting away from us?"
+
+Hilda was seated before the typewriter. She turned partly around, without
+taking her ringers from the keys.
+
+"I don't know," she said quietly. "I haven't been watching it."
+
+"We'll have to be stricter about it," said Bannon. "These fellows have got
+to understand that rules are rules."
+
+He spoke with a little laugh, but the remark was unfortunate. The only men
+who came within the railing were Max and Peterson.
+
+"I may have forgotten it, myself," she said.
+
+"That won't do, you know. I don't know but what I can let you off this
+time--I'll tell you what I'll do, Miss Vogel: I'll make a new rule that
+you can come in without wiping your feet if you'll hand in a written
+excuse. That's the way they did things when I went to school." He turned
+to go, then hesitated again. "You haven't been out on the job yet, have
+you?"
+
+"No, I haven't."
+
+"I rather think you'd like it. It's pretty work, now that we're framing
+the cupola. If you say so, I'll fix it for you to go up to the
+distributing floor this afternoon."
+
+She looked back at the machine.
+
+"The view ain't bad," he went on, "when you get up there. You can see down
+into Indiana, and all around. You could see all Chicago, too, if it wasn't
+for the smoke."
+
+There was a moment's silence.
+
+"Why, yes, Mr. Bannon," she said; "I'd like to go very much."
+
+"All right," he replied, his smile returning. "I'll guarantee to get you
+up there somehow, if I have to build a stairway. Ninety feet's pretty
+high, you know."
+
+When Bannon reached the elevator he stood for a moment in the well at the
+west end of the structure. This well, or "stairway bin," sixteen by
+thirty-two feet, and open from the ground to the distributing floor,
+occupied the space of two bins. It was here that the stairway would be,
+and the passenger elevator, and the rope-drive for the transmission of
+power from the working to the distributing floor. The stairway was barely
+indicated by rude landings. For the present a series of eight ladders
+zigzagged up from landing to landing. Bannon began climbing; halfway up he
+met Max, who was coming down, time book in hand.
+
+"Look here, Max," he said, "we're going to have visitors this afternoon.
+If you've got a little extra time I'd like to have you help get things
+ready."
+
+"All right," Max replied. "I'm not crowded very hard today."
+
+"I've asked your sister to come up and see the framing."
+
+Max glanced down between the loose boards on the landing.
+
+"I don't know," he said slowly; "I don't believe she could climb up here
+very well."
+
+"She won't have to. I'm going to put in a passenger elevator, and carry
+her up as grand as the Palmer House. You put in your odd minutes between
+now and three o'clock making a box that's big and strong enough."
+
+Max grinned.
+
+"Say, that's all right. She'll like that. I can do most of it at noon."
+
+Bannon nodded and went on up the ladders. At the distributing floor he
+looked about for a long timber, and had the laborers lay it across the
+well opening. The ladders and landings occupied only about a third of the
+space; the rest was open, a clear drop of eighty feet.
+
+At noon he found Max in an open space behind the office, screwing iron
+rings into the corners of a stout box. Max glanced up and laughed.
+
+"I made Hilda promise not to come out here," he said. He waved his hand
+toward the back wall of the office. Bannon saw that he had nailed strips
+over the larger cracks and knot holes. "She was peeking, but I shut that
+off before I'd got very far along. I don't think she saw what it was. I
+only had part of the frame done."
+
+"She'll be coming out in a minute," said Bannon.
+
+"I know. I thought of that." Max threw an armful of burlap sacking over
+the box. "That'll cover it up enough. I guess it's time to quit, anyway,
+if I'm going to get any dinner. There's a little square of carpet up to
+the house that I'm going to get for the bottom, and we can run pieces of
+half-inch rope from the rings up to a hook, and sling it right on the
+hoist."
+
+"It's not going on the hoist," said Bannon. "I wouldn't stop the timbers
+for Mr. MacBride himself. When you go back, you'll see a timber on the
+top of the well. I'd like you to sling a block under it and run an
+inch-and-a-quarter rope through. We'll haul it up from below."
+
+"What power?"
+
+"Man power."
+
+"All right, Mr. Bannon. I'll see to it. There's Hilda now."
+
+He called to her to wait while he got his coat, and then the two
+disappeared across the tracks. Hilda had bowed to Bannon, but without the
+smile and the nod that he liked. He looked after her as if he would
+follow; but he changed his mind, and waited a few minutes.
+
+The "elevator" was ready soon after the afternoon's work had commenced.
+Bannon found time between two and three o'clock to inspect the tackle. He
+picked up an end of rope and lashed the cross timber down securely. Then
+he went down the ladders and found Max, who had brought the carpet for the
+box and was looking over his work. The rope led up to the top of the well
+through a pulley and then back to the working floor and through another
+pulley, so that the box could be hoisted from below.
+
+"It's all ready," said Max. "It'll run up as smooth as you want."
+
+"You'd better go for your sister, then," Bannon replied.
+
+Max hesitated.
+
+"You meant for me to bring her?"
+
+"Yes, I guess you might as well."
+
+Bannon stood looking after Max as he walked along the railroad track out
+into the open air. Then he glanced up between the smooth walls of cribbing
+that seemed to draw closer and closer together until they ended, far
+overhead, in a rectangle of blue sky. The beam across the top was a black
+line against the light. The rope, hanging from it, swayed lazily. He
+walked around the box, examining the rings and the four corner ropes, and
+testing them.
+
+Hilda was laughing when she came with Max along the track. Bannon could
+not see her at first for the intervening rows of timbers that supported
+the bins. Then she came into view through an opening between two "bents"
+of timber, beyond a heap of rubbish that had been thrown at one side of
+the track. She was trying to walk on the rail, one arm thrown out to
+balance, the other resting across Max's shoulders. Her jacket was buttoned
+snugly up to the chin, and there was a fresh color in her face.
+
+Bannon had called in three laborers to man the rope; they stood at one
+side, awaiting the order to haul away. He found a block of wood, and set
+it against the box for a step.
+
+"This way, Miss Vogel," he called. "The elevator starts in a minute. You
+came pretty near being late."
+
+"Am I going to get in that?" she asked; and she looked up, with a little
+gasp, along the dwindling rope.
+
+"Here," said Max, "don't you say nothing against that elevator. I call it
+pretty grand."
+
+She stood on the block, holding to one of the ropes, and looking
+alternately into the box and up to the narrow sky above them.
+
+"It's awfully high," she said. "Is that little stick up there all that's
+going to hold me up?"
+
+"That little stick is ten-by-twelve," Max replied. "It would hold more'n a
+dozen of you."
+
+She laughed, but still hesitated. She lowered her eyes and looked about
+the great dim space of the working story with its long aisles and its
+solid masses of timber. Suddenly she turned to Bannon, who was standing at
+her side, waiting to give her a hand.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bannon," she said, "are you sure it's strong enough? It doesn't
+look safe."
+
+"I think it's safe," he replied quietly. He vaulted into the box and
+signalled to the laborers. Hilda stepped back off the block as he went up
+perhaps a third of the way, and then came down. She said nothing, but
+stepped on the block.
+
+"How shall I get in?" she asked, laughing a little, but not looking at
+Bannon.
+
+"Here," said Bannon, "give us each a hand. A little jump'll do it. Max
+here'll go along the ladders and steady you if you swing too much. Wait a
+minute, though." He hurried out of doors, and returned with a light line,
+one end of which he made fast to the box, the other he gave to Max.
+
+"Now," he said, "you can guide it as nice as walking upstairs."
+
+They started up, Hilda sitting in the box and holding tightly to the
+sides, Max climbing the ladders with the end of the line about his wrist.
+Bannon joined the laborers, and kept a hand on the hoisting rope.
+
+"You'd better not look down," he called after her.
+
+She laughed and shook her head. Bannon waited until they had reached the
+top, and Max had lifted her out on the last landing; then, at Max's shout,
+he made the rope fast and followed up the ladders.
+
+He found them waiting for him near the top of the well.
+
+"We might as well sit down," he said. He led the way to a timber a few
+steps away. "Well, Miss Vogel, how do you like it?"
+
+She was looking eagerly about; at the frame, a great skeleton of new
+timber, some of it still holding so much of the water of river and
+mill-yard that it glistened in the sunlight; at the moving groups of men,
+the figure of Peterson standing out above the others on a high girder,
+his arms knotted, and his neck bare, though the day was not warm; at the
+straining hoist, trembling with each new load that came swinging from
+somewhere below, to be hustled off to its place, stick by stick; and then
+out into the west, where the November sun was dropping, and around at the
+hazy flats and the strip of a river. She drew in her breath quickly, and
+looked up at Bannon with a nervous little gesture.
+
+"I like it," she finally said, after a long silence, during which they had
+watched a big stick go up on one of the small hoists, to be swung into
+place and driven home on the dowel pins by Peterson's sledge.
+
+"Isn't Pete a hummer?" said Max. "I never yet saw him take hold of a thing
+that was too much for him."
+
+Neither Hilda nor Bannon replied to this, and there was another silence.
+
+"Would you like to walk around and see things closer to?" Bannon asked,
+turning to Miss Vogel.
+
+"I wouldn't mind. It's rather cold, sitting still."
+
+He led the way along one side of the structure, guiding her carefully in
+places where the flooring was not yet secure.
+
+"I'm glad you came up," he said. "A good many people think there's nothing
+in this kind of work but just sawing wood and making money for somebody up
+in Minneapolis. But it isn't that way. It's pretty, and sometimes it's
+exciting; and things happen every little while that are interesting enough
+to tell to anybody, if people only knew it. I'll have you come up a little
+later, when we get the house built and the machinery coming in. That's
+when we'll have things really moving. There'll be some fun putting up the
+belt gallery, too. That'll be over here on the other side."
+
+He turned to lead the way across the floor to the north side of the
+building. They had stopped a little way from the boom hoist, and she was
+standing motionless, watching as the boom swung out and the rope rattled
+to the ground. There was the purring of the engine far below, the
+straining of the rope, and the creaking of the blocks as the heavy load
+came slowly up. Gangs of men were waiting to take the timbers the moment
+they reached the floor. The foreman of the hoist gang was leaning out over
+the edge, looking down and shouting orders.
+
+Hilda turned with a little start and saw that Bannon was waiting for her.
+Following him, she picked her way between piles of planks and timber, and
+between groups of laborers and carpenters, to the other side. Now they
+could look down at the four tracks of the C. & S. C, the unfinished
+spouting house on the wharf, and the river.
+
+"Here's where the belt gallery will go," he said, pointing downward:
+"right over the tracks to the spouting house. They carry the grain on
+endless belts, you know."
+
+"Doesn't it ever fall off?"
+
+"Not a kernel. It's pretty to watch. When she gets to running we'll come
+up some day and look at it."
+
+They walked slowly back toward the well. Before they reached it Peterson
+and Max joined them. Peterson had rolled down his sleeves and put on his
+coat.
+
+"You ain't going down now, are you?" he said. "We'll be starting in pretty
+soon on some of the heavy framing. This is just putting in girders."
+
+He was speaking directly to Miss Vogel, but he made an effort to include
+Bannon in the conversation by an awkward movement of his head. This
+stiffness in Peterson's manner when Bannon was within hearing had been
+growing more noticeable during the past few days.
+
+"Don't you think of going yet," he continued, with a nervous laugh, for
+Hilda was moving on. "She needn't be in such a rush to get to work, eh,
+Charlie?"
+
+Hilda did not give Bannon a chance to reply.
+
+"Thank you very much, Mr. Peterson," she said, smiling, "but I must go
+back, really. Maybe you'll tell me some day when you're going to do
+something special, so I can come up again."
+
+Peterson's disappointment was so frankly shown in his face that she smiled
+again. "I've enjoyed it very much," she said. She was still looking at
+Peterson, but at the last word she turned to include Bannon, as if she had
+suddenly remembered that he was in the party. There was an uncomfortable
+feeling, shown by all in their silence and in their groping about for
+something to say.
+
+"I'll go ahead and clear the track," said Bannon. "I'll holler up to you,
+Max, when we're ready down below."
+
+"Here," said Max, "let me go down."
+
+But Bannon had already started down the first ladder.
+
+"The next time you come to visit us, Miss Vogel," he called back, "I guess
+we'll have our real elevator in, and we can run you up so fast it'll take
+your breath away. We'll be real swells here yet."
+
+When he reached the working floor, he called in the laborers and shouted
+to Max. But when the box, slowly descending, appeared below the bin walls,
+it was Peterson who held the line and chatted with Hilda as he steadied
+her.
+
+The next day a lot of cribbing came from Ledyard, and Bannon at once set
+about reorganizing his forces so that work could go on night and day. He
+and Peterson would divide the time equally into twelve-hour days; but
+three divisions were necessary for the men, the morning shift working from
+midnight until eight o'clock, the day shift from eight to four, and the
+night shift from four to midnight.
+
+Finally, when the whistle blew, at noon, Bannon tipped back his chair and
+pushed his hat back on his head.
+
+"Well," he said, "that's fixed."
+
+"When will we begin on it?" Peterson asked.
+
+"Today. Have the whistle blow at four. It'll make some of the men work
+overtime today, but we'll pay them for it."
+
+Miss Vogel was putting on her jacket. Before joining Max, who was waiting
+at the door, she asked:--
+
+"Do you want me to make any change in my work, Mr. Bannon?"
+
+"No, you'd better go ahead just as you are. We won't try to cut you up
+into three shifts yet awhile. We can do what letters and accounts we have
+in the daytime."
+
+She nodded and left the office.
+
+All through the morning's work Peterson had worn a heavy, puzzled
+expression, and now that they had finished, he seemed unable to throw it
+off. Bannon, who had risen and was reaching for his ulster, which he had
+thrown over the railing, looked around at him.
+
+"You and I'll have to make twelve-hour days of it, you know," he said. He
+knew, from his quick glance and the expression almost of relief that came
+over his face, that this was what Peterson had been waiting for. "You'd
+better come on in the evening, if it's all the same to you--at seven. I'll
+take it in the morning and keep an eye on it during the day."
+
+Peterson's eyes had lowered at the first words. He swung one leg over the
+other and picked up the list of carpenters that Max had made out,
+pretending to examine it. Bannon was not watching him closely, but he
+could have read the thoughts behind that sullen face. If their
+misunderstanding had arisen from business conditions alone, Bannon would
+have talked out plainly. But now that Hilda had come between them, and
+particularly that it was all so vague--a matter of feeling, and not at all
+of reason--he had decided to say nothing. It was important that he should
+control the work during the day, and coming on at seven in the morning, he
+would have a hand on the work of all three shifts. He knew that Peterson
+would not see it reasonably; that he would think it was done to keep him
+away from Hilda. He stood leaning against the gate to keep it open,
+buttoning his ulster.
+
+"Coming on up to the house, Pete?"
+
+Peterson got down off the railing.
+
+"So you're going to put me on the night shift," he said, almost as a child
+would have said it.
+
+"I guess that's the way it's got to work out," Bannon replied. "Coming
+up?"
+
+"No--not yet. I'll be along pretty soon."
+
+Bannon started toward the door, but turned with a snap of his finger.
+
+"Oh, while we're at it, Pete--you'd better tell Max to get those men to
+keep time for the night shifts."
+
+"You mean you want him to go on with you in the daytime?"
+
+"That's just as he likes. But I guess he'll want to be around while his
+sister is here. You see about that after lunch, will you?"
+
+Peterson came in while Bannon was eating his dinner and stayed after he
+had gone. In the evening, when he returned to the house for his supper,
+after arranging with Peterson to share the first night's work, Bannon
+found that the foreman's clothes and grip had been taken from the room. On
+the stairs he met the landlady, and asked her if Mr. Peterson had moved.
+
+"Yes," she replied; "he took his things away this noon. I'm sorry he's
+gone, for he was a good young man. He never give me any trouble like some
+of the men do that's been here. The trouble with most of them is that they
+get drunk on pay-days and come home simply disgusting."
+
+Bannon passed on without comment. During the evening he saw Peterson on
+the distributing floor, helping the man from the electric light company
+rig up a new arc light. His expression when he caught sight of Bannon,
+sullen and defiant, yet showing a great effort to appear natural, was the
+only explanation needed of how matters stood between them.
+
+It took a few days to get the new system to running smoothly--new
+carpenters and laborers had to be taken on, and new foremen worked into
+their duties--but it proved to be less difficult than Max and Hilda had
+supposed from what Peterson had to say about the conduct of the work. The
+men all worked better than before; each new move of Bannon's seemed to
+infuse more vigor and energy into the work; and the cupola and annex began
+rapidly, as Max said, "to look like something." Bannon was on hand all
+day, and frequently during a large part of the night. He had a way of
+appearing at any hour to look at the work and keep it moving. Max, after
+hearing the day men repeat what the night men had to tell of the boss and
+his work, said to his sister: "Honest, Hilda, I don't see how he does it.
+I don't believe he ever takes his clothes off."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The direct result of the episode with the carpenter Reilly was
+insignificant. He did not attempt to make good his boast that he would be
+back at work next day, and when he did appear, on Wednesday of the next
+week, his bleared eyes and dilapidated air made the reason plain enough. A
+business agent of his union was with him; Bannon found them in the office.
+
+He nodded to the delegate. "Sit down," he said. Then he turned to Reilly.
+"I don't ask you to do the same. You're not wanted on the premises. I told
+you once before that I was through talking."
+
+Reilly started to reply, but his companion checked him. "That's all
+right," he said. "I know your side of it. Wait for me up by the car line."
+
+When Reilly had gone Bannon repeated his invitation to sit down.
+
+"You probably know why I've come," the delegate began. "Mr. Reilly has
+charged you with treating him unjustly and with drawing a revolver on him.
+Of course, in a case like this, we try to get at both sides before we take
+any action. Would you give me your account of it?"
+
+Bannon told in twenty words just how it had happened. The agent said
+cautiously: "Reilly told another story."
+
+"I suppose so. Now, I don't ask you to take my word against his. If you'd
+like to investigate the business, I'll give you all the opportunity you
+want."
+
+"If we find that he did drop the hammer by accident, would you be willing
+to take him back?"
+
+Bannon smiled. "There's no use in my telling you what I'll do till you
+tell me what you want me to do, is there?"
+
+Bannon held out his hand when the man rose to go.
+
+"Any time you think there's something wrong out here, or anything you
+don't understand, come out and we'll talk it over. I treat a man as well
+as I can, if he's square with me."
+
+He walked to the door with the agent and closed it after him. As he turned
+back to the draughting table, he found Hilda's eyes on him. "They're very
+clean chaps, mostly, those walking delegates," he said. "If you treat 'em
+half as well as you'd treat a yellow dog, they're likely to be very
+reasonable. If one of 'em does happen to be a rascal, though, he's meaner
+to handle than frozen dynamite. I expect to be white-headed before I'm
+through with that man Grady."
+
+"Is he a rascal?" she asked.
+
+"He's as bad as you find 'em. Even if he'd been handled right--"
+
+Bannon broke off abruptly and began turning over the blue prints. "Suppose
+I'd better see how this next story looks," he said. Hilda had heard how
+Pete had dealt with Grady at their first meeting, and she could complete
+the broken sentence.
+
+Bannon never heard whether the agent from the carpenters' union had looked
+further into Reilly's case, but he was not asked to take him back on the
+pay roll. But that was not the end of the incident. Coming out on the
+distributing floor just before noon on Thursday, he found Grady in the act
+of delivering an impassioned oration to the group of laborers about the
+hoist. Before Grady saw him, Bannon had come near enough to hear something
+about being "driven at the point of a pistol."
+
+The speech came suddenly to an end when Grady, following the glances of
+his auditors, turned and saw who was coming. Bannon noted with
+satisfaction the scared look of appeal which he turned, for a second,
+toward the men. It was good to know that Grady was something of a coward.
+
+Bannon nodded to him pleasantly enough. "How are you, Grady?" he said.
+
+Seeing that he was in no danger, the delegate threw back his shoulders,
+held up his head, and, frowning in an important manner, he returned
+Bannon's greeting with the scantest civility.
+
+Bannon walked up and stood beside him. "If you can spare the time," he
+said politely, "I'd like to see you at the office for a while."
+
+Convinced now that Bannon was doing everything in his power to conciliate
+him, Grady grew more important. "Very well," he said; "when I've got
+through up here, ye can see me if ye like."
+
+"All right," said Bannon, patiently; "no hurry."
+
+During the full torrent of Grady's eloquence the work had not actually
+been interrupted. The big boom bearing its load of timber swept in over
+the distributing floor with unbroken regularity; but the men had worked
+with only half their minds and had given as close attention as they dared
+to the delegate's fervid utterances. But from the moment Bannon appeared
+there had been a marked change in the attitude of the little audience;
+they steered the hoist and canted the timbers about with a sudden
+enthusiasm which made Bannon smile a little as he stood watching them.
+
+Grady could not pump up a word to say. He cleared his throat loudly once
+or twice, but the men ignored him utterly. He kept casting his shifty
+little sidewise glances at the boss, wondering why he didn't go away, but
+Bannon continued to stand there, giving an occasional direction, and
+watching the progress of the work with much satisfaction. The little
+delegate shifted his weight from one foot to the other and cleared his
+throat again. Then he saw that two or three of the men were grinning. That
+was too much.
+
+"Well, I'll go with you," he snapped.
+
+Bannon could not be sure how much of an impression Grady's big words and
+his ridiculous assumption of importance had made upon the men, but he
+determined to counteract it as thoroughly as possible, then and there. It
+was a sort of gallery play that he had decided on, but he felt sure it
+would prove effective.
+
+Grady turned to go down as he had come up, by the ladders, but Bannon
+caught him by the shoulder, saying with a laugh: "Oh, don't waste your
+time walking. Take the elevator." His tone was friendly but his grip was
+like a man-trap, and he was propelling Grady straight toward the edge of
+the building. Four big timbers had just come up and Bannon caught the
+released rope as it came trailing by. "Here," he said; "put your foot in
+the hook and hang on, and you'll come down in no time."
+
+Grady laughed nervously. "No you don't. I suppose you'd be glad to get rid
+of me that way. You don't come that on me."
+
+The men were watching with interest; Bannon raised his voice a little.
+"All right," he said, thrusting his foot into the great hook, "if you feel
+that way about it. We'll have a regular passenger elevator in here by and
+by, with an electric bell and sliding door, for the capitalist crowd that
+are going to own the place. But we workingmen get along all right on this.
+Swing off, boys."
+
+He waited for Grady down below. It mattered very little to him now whether
+the walking delegate chose to follow him down the hoist or to walk down on
+the ladders, for every one had seen that Grady was afraid. Bannon had seen
+all the men grinning broadly as he began his descent, and that was all he
+wanted.
+
+Evidently Grady's fear of the rope was less than his dread of the ridicule
+of the men, for Bannon saw him preparing to come down after the next load.
+He took a long time getting ready, but at last they started him. He was
+the color of a handful of waste when he reached the ground, and he
+staggered as he walked with Bannon over to the office. He dropped into a
+chair and rubbed his forehead with his coat-sleeve.
+
+"Well," said Bannon, "do you like the look of things? I hope you didn't
+find anything out of the way?"
+
+"Do you dare ask me that?" Grady began. His voice was weak at first, but
+as his giddiness passed away it arose again to its own inimitable
+oratorical level. "Do you dare pretend that you are treating these men
+right? Who gave you the right to decide that this man shall live and this
+man shall die, and that this poor fellow who asks no more than to be
+allowed to earn his honest living with his honest sweat shall be stricken
+down with two broken ribs?"
+
+"I don't know," said Bannon. "You're speaking of the hoist accident, I
+suppose. Well, go and ask that man if he has any complaint to make. If he
+has, come and let me know about it."
+
+"They call this a free country, and yet you oppressors can compel men to
+risk their lives--"
+
+"Have you any changes to suggest in the way that hoist is rigged?" Bannon
+cut in quietly. "You've been inspecting it. What did you think was unsafe
+about it?"
+
+Grady was getting ready for his next outburst, but Bannon prevented him.
+"There ain't many jobs, if you leave out tacking down carpets, where a man
+don't risk his life more or less. MacBride don't compel men to risk their
+lives; he pays 'em for doing it, and you can bet he's done it himself. We
+don't like it, but it's necessary. Now, if you saw men out there taking
+risks that you think are unnecessary, why, say so, and we'll talk it
+over."
+
+"There's another thing you've got to answer for, Mr. Bannon. These are
+free men that are devoting their honest labor to you. You may think you're
+a slave driver, but you aren't. You may flourish your revolver in the
+faces of slaves, but free American citizens will resent it--"
+
+"Mr. Grady, the man I drew a gun on was a carpenter. His own union is
+looking after him. He had thrown a hammer down into a bin where some of
+your laborers were at work, so I acted in their defence."
+
+Grady stood up. "I come here to give you warning today, Mr. Bannon. There
+is a watchful eye on you. The next time I come it will not be to warn, but
+to act. That's all I've got to say to you now."
+
+Bannon, too, was on his feet. "Mr. Grady, we try to be fair to our men.
+It's your business to see that we are fair, so we ought to get on all
+right together. After this, if the men lodge any complaint with you, come
+to me; don't go out on the job and make speeches. If you're looking for
+fair play, you'll get it. If you're looking for trouble, you'll get it.
+Good-morning."
+
+The new regime in operation at the elevator was more of a hardship to
+Peterson than to any one else, because it compelled him to be much alone.
+Not only was he quite cut off from the society of Max and Hilda, but it
+happened that the two or three under-foremen whom he liked best were on
+the day shift. The night's work with none of those pleasant little
+momentary interruptions that used to occur in the daytime was mere
+unrelieved drudgery, but the afternoons, when he had given up trying to
+sleep any longer, were tedious enough to make him long for six o'clock.
+
+Naturally, his disposition was easy and generous, but he had never been in
+the habit of thinking much, and thinking, especially as it led to
+brooding, was not good for him. From the first, of course, he had been
+hurt that the office should have thought it necessary to send Bannon to
+supersede him, but so long as he had plenty to do and was in Bannon's
+company every hour of the day, he had not taken time to think about it
+much. But now he thought of little else, and as time went on he succeeded
+in twisting nearly everything the new boss had said or done to fit his
+theory that Bannon was jealous of him and was trying to take from him the
+credit which rightfully belonged to him. And Bannon had put him in charge
+of the night shift, so Peterson came to think, simply because he had seen
+that Hilda was beginning to like him.
+
+About four o'clock one afternoon, not many days after Grady's talk with
+Bannon, Peterson sat on the steps of his boarding-house, trying to make up
+his mind what to do, and wishing it were six o'clock. He wanted to stroll
+down to the job to have a chat with his friends, but he had somewhat
+childishly decided he wasn't wanted there while Miss Vogel was in the
+office, so he sat still and whittled, and took another view of his
+grievances. Glancing up, he saw Grady, the walking delegate, coming along
+the sidewalk. Now that the responsibility of the elevator was off his
+shoulders he no longer cherished any particular animosity toward the
+little Irishman, but he remembered their last encounter and wondered
+whether he should speak to him or not.
+
+But Grady solved his doubt by calling out cheerfully to know how he was
+and turning in toward the steps. "I suppose I ought to lick you after
+what's passed between us," he added with a broad smile, "but if you're
+willing we'll call it bygones."
+
+"Sure," said Peterson.
+
+"It's fine seasonable weather we're having, and just the thing for you on
+the elevator. It's coming right along."
+
+"First-rate."
+
+"It's as interesting a bit of work as I ever saw. I was there the other
+day looking at it. And, by the way, I had a long talk with Mr. Bannon.
+He's a fine man."
+
+Grady had seated himself on the step below Peterson. Now for the first
+time he looked at him.
+
+"He's a good hustler," said Peterson.
+
+"Well, that's what passes for a fine man, these days, though mistakes are
+sometimes made that way. But how does it happen that you're not down there
+superintending? I hope some carpenter hasn't taken it into his head to
+fire the boss."
+
+"I'm not boss there any longer. The office sent Bannon down to take it
+over my head."
+
+"You don't tell me that? It's a pity." Grady was shaking his head
+solemnly. "It's a pity. The men like you first-rate, Mr. Peterson. I'm not
+saying they don't like anybody else, but they like you. But people in an
+office a thousand miles away can't know everything, and that's a fact. And
+so he laid you off."
+
+"Oh, no, I ain't quite laid off--yet. He's put me in charge of the night
+shift."
+
+"So you're working nights, then? It seemed to me you was working fast
+enough in the daytime to satisfy anybody. But I suppose some rich man is
+in a hurry for it and you must do your best to accommodate him."
+
+"You bet, he's in a hurry for it. He won't listen to reason at all. Says
+the bins have got to be chock full of grain before January first, no
+matter what happens to us. He don't care how much it costs, either."
+
+"I must be going along," said Grady, getting to his feet. "That man must
+be in a hurry. January first! That's quick work, and he don't care how
+much it costs him. Oh, these rich devils! They're hustlers, too, Mr.
+Peterson. Well, good-night to you."
+
+Peterson saw Bannon twice every day,--for a half hour at night when he
+took charge of the job, and for another half hour in the morning when he
+relinquished it. That was all except when they chanced to meet during
+Bannon's irregular nightly wanderings about the elevator. As the days had
+gone by these conversations had been confined more and more rigidly to
+necessary business, and though this result was Peterson's own fringing
+about, still he charged it up as another of his grievances against Bannon.
+
+When, about an hour after his conversation with Grady, he started down to
+the elevator to take command, he knew he ought to tell Bannon of his
+conversation with Grady, and he fully intended doing so. But his
+determination oozed away as he neared the office, and when he finally saw
+Bannon he decided to say nothing about it whatever. He decided thus partly
+because he wished to make his conversation with Bannon as short as
+possible, partly because he had not made up his mind what significance, if
+any, the incident had, and (more than either of these reasons) because
+ever since Grady had repeated the phrase: "He don't care what it costs
+him," Peterson had been uneasily aware that he had talked too much.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Grady's affairs were prospering beyond his expectations, confident though
+he had been. Away back in the summer, when the work was in its early
+stages, his eye had been upon it; he had bided his time in the somewhat
+indefinite hope that something would turn up. But he went away jubilant
+from his conversation with Peterson, for it seemed that all the cards were
+in his hands.
+
+Just as a man running for a car is the safest mark for a gamin's snowball,
+so Calumet K, through being a rush job as well as a rich one, offered a
+particularly advantageous field for Grady's endeavors. Men who were trying
+to accomplish the impossible feat of completing, at any cost, the great
+hulk on the river front before the first of January, would not be likely
+to stop to quibble at paying the five thousand dollars or so that Grady,
+who, as the business agent of his union was simply in masquerade, would
+like to extort.
+
+He had heard that Peterson was somewhat disaffected to Bannon's authority,
+but had not expected him to make so frank an avowal of it. That was almost
+as much in his favor as the necessity for hurry. These, with the hoist
+accident to give a color of respectability to the operation, ought to make
+it simple enough. He had wit enough to see that Bannon was a much harder
+man to handle than Peterson, and that with Peterson restored to full
+authority, the only element of uncertainty would be removed. And he
+thought that if he could get Peterson to help him it might be possible to
+secure Bannon's recall. If the scheme failed, he had still another shot in
+his locker, but this one was worth a trial, anyway.
+
+One afternoon in the next week he went around to Peterson's boarding-house
+and sent up his card with as much ceremony as though the night boss had
+been a railway president.
+
+"I hope you can spare me half an hour, Mr. Peterson. There's a little
+matter of business I'd like to talk over with you."
+
+The word affected Peterson unpleasantly. That was a little farther than he
+could go without a qualm. "Sure," he said uneasily, looking at his watch.
+
+"I don't know as I should call it business, either," Grady went on. "When
+you come right down to it, it's a matter of friendship, for surely it's no
+business of mine. Maybe you think it's queer--I think it's queer myself,
+that I should be coming 'round tendering my friendly services to a man
+who's had his hands on my throat threatening my life. That ain't my way,
+but somehow I like you, Mr. Peterson, and there's an end of it. And when I
+like a man, I like him, too. How's the elevator? Everything going to
+please you?"
+
+"I guess it's going all right. It ain't--" Pete hesitated, and then gave
+up the broken sentence. "It's all right," he repeated.
+
+Grady smiled. "There's the good soldier. Won't talk against his general.
+But, Mr. Peterson, let me ask you a question; answer me as a man of sense.
+Which makes the best general--the man who leads the charge straight up to
+the intrenchments, yellin': 'Come on, boys!'--or the one who says, very
+likely shaking a revolver in their faces: 'Get in there, ye damn low-down
+privates, and take that fort, and report to me when I've finished my
+breakfast'? Which one of those two men will the soldiers do the most for?
+For the one they like best, Mr. Peterson, and don't forget it. And which
+one of these are they going to like best, do you suppose--the brave leader
+who scorns to ask his men to go where he wouldn't go himself, who isn't
+ashamed to do honest work with honest hands, whose fists are good enough
+to defend him against his enemies; or the man who is afraid to go out
+among the men without a revolver in his hip pocket? Answer me as a man of
+sense, Mr. Peterson."
+
+Peterson was manifestly disturbed by the last part of the harangue. Now he
+said: "Oh, I guess Bannon wasn't scared when he drawed that gun on Reilly.
+He ain't that kind."
+
+"Would you draw a gun on an unarmed, defenceless man?" Grady asked
+earnestly.
+
+"No, I wouldn't. I don't like that way of doing."
+
+"The men don't like it either, Mr. Peterson. No more than you do. They
+like you. They'll do anything you ask them to. They know that you can do
+anything that they can. But, Mr. Peterson, I'll be frank with you. They
+don't like the man who crowded you out. That's putting it mild. I won't
+say they hate him for an uncivil, hard-tongued, sneaking weasel of a
+spy--"
+
+"I never knew Bannon to do anything like that," said Peterson, slowly.
+
+"I did. Didn't he come sneaking up and hear what I was saying--up on top
+of the elevator the other day? I guess he won't try that again. I told him
+that when I was ready to talk to him, I'd come down to the office to do
+it."
+
+Grady was going almost too far; Pete would not stand very much more;
+already he was trying to get on his feet to put an end to the
+conversation. "I ask your pardon, Mr. Peterson. I forgot he was a friend
+of yours. But the point is right here. The men don't like him. They've
+been wanting to strike these three days, just because they don't want to
+work for that ruffian. I soothed them all I can, but they won't hold in
+much longer. Mark my words, there'll be a strike on your hands before the
+week's out unless you do something pretty soon."
+
+"What have they got to strike about? Don't we treat them all right? What
+do they kick about?"
+
+"A good many things, big and little. But the real reason is the one I've
+been giving you--Bannon. Neither more nor less."
+
+"Do you mean they'd be all right if another man was in charge?"
+
+Grady could not be sure from Peterson's expression whether the ice were
+firm enough to step out boldly upon, or not. He tested it cautiously.
+
+"Mr. Peterson, I know you're a good man. I know you're a generous man. I
+know you wouldn't want to crowd Bannon out of his shoes the way he crowded
+you out of yours; not even after the way he's treated you. But look here,
+Mr. Peterson. Who's your duty to? The men up in Minneapolis who pay your
+salary, or the man who has come down here and is giving orders over your
+head?
+
+"--No, just let me finish, Mr. Peterson. I know what you're going to say.
+But do your employers want to get the job done by New Year's? They do.
+Do they pay you to help get it done? They do. Will it be done if that
+would-be murderer of a Bannon is allowed to stay here? It will not, you
+can bet on that. Then it's your duty to get him out of here, and I'm going
+to help you do it."
+
+Grady was on his feet when he declaimed the last sentence. He flung out
+his hand toward Pete. "Shake on it!" he cried.
+
+Peterson had also got to his feet, but more slowly. He did not take the
+hand. "I'm much obliged, Mr. Grady," he said. "It's very kind in you. If
+that's so as you say, I suppose he'll have to go. And he'll go all right
+without any shoving when he sees that it is so. You go and tell just what
+you've told me to Charlie Bannon. He's boss on this job."
+
+Grady would have fared better with a man of quicker intelligence. Peterson
+was so slow at catching the blackmailer's drift that he spoke in perfectly
+good faith when he made the suggestion that he tell Bannon, and Grady went
+away a good deal perplexed as to the best course to pursue,--whether to go
+directly to Bannon, or to try the night boss again.
+
+As for Peterson, four or five times during his half-hour talk with Bannon
+at the office that evening, he braced himself to tell the boss what Grady
+had said, but it was not till just as Bannon was going home that it
+finally came out. "Have you seen Grady lately?" Pete asked, as calmly as
+he could.
+
+"He was around here something more than a week ago; gave me a little
+bombthrowers' anniversary oratory about oppressors and a watchful eye.
+There's no use paying any attention to him yet. He thinks he's got some
+trouble cooking for us on the stove, but we'll have to wait till he turns
+it into the dish. He ain't as dangerous as he thinks he is."
+
+"He's been around to see me lately--twice."
+
+"He has! What did he want with you? When was it he came?"
+
+"The first time about a week ago. That was nothing but a little friendly
+talk, but--"
+
+"Friendly! Him! What did he have to say?"
+
+"Why, it was nothing. I don't remember. He wanted to know if I was laid
+off, and I told him I was on the night shift."
+
+"Was that all?"
+
+"Pretty near. He wanted to know what we was in such a hurry about, working
+nights, and I said we had to be through by January first. Then he said he
+supposed it must be for some rich man who didn't care how much it cost
+him; and I said yes, it was. That was all. He didn't mean nothing. We were
+just passing the time of day. I don't see any harm in that."
+
+Bannon was leaning on the rail, his face away from Peterson. After a while
+he spoke thoughtfully. "Well, that cinches it. I guess he meant to hold us
+up, anyway, but now he knows we're a good thing."
+
+"How's that? I don't see," said Peterson; but Bannon made no reply.
+
+"What did he have to offer the next time he came around? More in the same
+friendly way? When was it?"
+
+"Just this afternoon. Why, he said he was afraid we'd have a strike on our
+hands."
+
+"He ought to know," said Bannon. "Did he give any reason?"
+
+"Yes, he did. You won't mind my speaking it right out, I guess. He said
+the men didn't like you, and if you wasn't recalled they'd likely strike.
+He said they'd work under me if you was recalled, but he didn't think he
+could keep 'em from going out if you stayed. That ain't what I think, mind
+you; I'm just telling you what he said. Then he kind of insinuated that I
+ought to do something about it myself. That made me tired, and I told him
+to come to you about it. I said you was the boss here now, and I was only
+the foreman of the night shift."
+
+Until that last sentence Bannon had been only half listening. He made no
+sign, indeed, of having heard anything, but stood hacking at the pine
+railing with his pocket-knife. He was silent so long that at last Peterson
+arose to go. Bannon shut his knife and wheeled around to face him.
+
+"Hold on, Pete," he said. "We'd better talk this business out right here."
+
+"Talk out what?"
+
+"Oh, I guess you know. Why don't we pull together better? What is it
+you're sore about?"
+
+"Nothing. You don't need to worry about it."
+
+"Look here, Pete. You've known me a good many years. Do you think I'm
+square?"
+
+"I never said you wasn't square."
+
+"You might have given me the benefit of the doubt, anyway. I know you
+didn't like my coming down here to take charge. Do you suppose I did? You
+were unlucky, and a man working for MacBride can't afford to be unlucky;
+so he told me to come and finish the job. And once I was down here he held
+me responsible for getting it done. I've got to go ahead just the best I
+can. I thought you saw that at first, and that we'd get on all right
+together, but lately it's been different."
+
+"I thought I'd been working hard enough to satisfy anybody."
+
+"It ain't that, and you know it ain't. It's just the spirit of the thing.
+Now, I don't ask you to tell me why it is you feel this way. If you want
+to talk it out now, all right. If you don't, all right again. But if you
+ever think I'm not using you right, come to me and say so. Just look at
+what we've got to do here, Pete, before the first of January. Sometimes I
+think we can do it, and sometimes I think we can't, but we've got to
+anyway. If we don't, MacBride will just make up his mind we're no good.
+And unless we pull together, we're stuck for sure. It ain't a matter of
+work entirely. I want to feel that I've got you with me. Come around in
+the afternoon if you happen to be awake, and fuss around and tell me what
+I'm doing wrong. I want to consult you about a good many things in the
+course of a day."
+
+Pete's face was simply a lens through which one could see the feelings at
+work beneath, and Bannon knew that he had struck the right chord at last.
+"How is it? Does that go?"
+
+"Sure," said Pete. "I never knew you wanted to consult me about anything,
+or I'd have been around before."
+
+Friday afternoon Bannon received a note from Grady saying that if he had
+any regard for his own interests or for those of his employers, he would
+do well to meet the writer at ten o'clock Sunday morning at a certain
+downtown hotel. It closed with a postscript containing the disinterested
+suggestion that delays were dangerous, and a hint that the writer's time
+was valuable and he wished to be informed whether the appointment would be
+kept or not.
+
+Bannon ignored the note, and all day Monday expected Grady's appearance at
+the office. He did not come, but when Bannon reached his boarding-house
+about eight o'clock that evening, he found Grady in his room waiting for
+him.
+
+"I can't talk on an empty stomach," said the boss, cheerfully, as he was
+washing up. "Just wait till I get some supper."
+
+"I'll wait," said Grady, grimly.
+
+When Bannon came back to talk, he took off his coat and sat down astride a
+chair. "Well, Mr. Grady, when you came here before you said it was to warn
+me, but the next time you came you were going to begin to act. I'm all
+ready."
+
+"All right," said Grady, with a vicious grin. "Be as smart as you like.
+I'll be paid well for every word of it and for every minute you've kept me
+waiting yesterday and tonight. That was the most expensive supper you ever
+ate. I thought you had sense enough to come, Mr. Bannon. That's why I
+wasted a stamp on you. You made the biggest mistake of your life--"
+
+During the speech Bannon had sat like a man hesitating between two courses
+of action. At this point he interrupted:--
+
+"Let's get to business, Mr. Grady."
+
+"I'll get to it fast enough. And when I do you'll see if you can safely
+insult the representative of the mighty power of the honest workingman of
+this vast land."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I hear you folks are in a hurry, Mr. Bannon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And that you'll spend anything it costs to get through on time. How'd it
+suit you to have all your laborers strike about now? Don't that idea make
+you sick?"
+
+"Pretty near."
+
+"Well, they will strike inside two days."
+
+"What for? Suppose we settle with them direct."
+
+"Just try that," said Grady, with withering sarcasm. "Just try that and
+see how it works."
+
+"I don't want to. I only wanted to hear you confess that you are a
+rascal."
+
+"You'll pay dear for giving me that name. But we come to that later. Do
+you think it would be worth something to the men who hire you for a dirty
+slave-driver to be protected against a strike? Wouldn't they be willing to
+pay a round sum to get this work done on time? Take a minute to think
+about it. Be careful how you tell me they wouldn't. You're not liked here,
+Mr. Bannon, by anybody--"
+
+"You're threatening to have me recalled, according to your suggestions to
+Mr. Peterson the other night. Well, that's all right if you can do it. But
+I think that sooner than recall me or have a strike they would be willing
+to pay for protection."
+
+"You do. I didn't look for that much sense in you. If you'd shown it
+sooner it might have saved your employers a large wad of bills. If you'd
+taken the trouble to be decent when I went to you in a friendly way a very
+little would have been enough. But now I've got to be paid. What do you
+say to five thousand as a fair sum?"
+
+"They'd be willing to pay fully that to save delay," said Bannon,
+cheerfully.
+
+"They would!" To save his life Grady could not help looking crestfallen.
+It seemed then that he might have got fifty. "All right," he went on,
+"five thousand it is; and I want it in hundred-dollar bills."
+
+"You do!" cried Bannon, jumping to his feet. "Do you think you're going to
+get a cent of it? I might pay blackmail to an honest rascal who delivered
+the goods paid for. But I had your size the first time you came around.
+Don't you think I knew what you wanted? If I'd thought you were worth
+buying, I'd have settled it up for three hundred dollars and a box of
+cigars right at the start. That's about your market price. But as long as
+I knew you'd sell us out again if you could, I didn't think you were even
+worth the cigars. No; don't tell me what you're going to do. Go out and do
+it if you can. And get out of here."
+
+For the second time Bannon took the little delegate by the arm. He marched
+him to the head of the long, straight flight of stairs. Then he hesitated
+a moment. "I wish you were three sizes larger," he said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+The organization of labor unions is generally democratic. The local lodge
+is self-governing; it elects its delegate, who attends a council of
+fellow-delegates, and this council may send representatives to a still
+more powerful body. But however high their titles, or their salaries,
+these dignitaries have power only to suggest action, except in a very
+limited variety of cases. There must always be a reference back to the
+rank and file. The real decision lies with them.
+
+That is the theory. The laborers on Calumet K, with some others at work in
+the neighborhood, had organized into a lodge and had affiliated with the
+American Federation of Labor. Grady, who had appeared out of nowhere, who
+had urged upon them the need of combining against the forces of
+oppression, and had induced them to organize, had been, without dissent,
+elected delegate. He was nothing more in theory than this: simply their
+concentrated voice. And this theory had the fond support of the laborers.
+"He's not our boss; he's our servant," was a sentiment they never tired of
+uttering when the delegate was out of earshot.
+
+They met every Friday night, debated, passed portentous resolutions, and
+listened to Grady's oratory. After the meeting was over they liked to hear
+their delegate, their servant, talk mysteriously of the doings of the
+council, and so well did Grady manage this air of mystery that each man
+thought it assumed because of the presence of others, but that he himself
+was of the inner circle. They would not have dreamed of questioning his
+acts in meeting or after, as they stood about the dingy, reeking hall over
+Barry's saloon. It was only as they went to their lodgings in groups of
+two and three that they told how much better they could manage things
+themselves.
+
+Bannon enjoyed his last conversation with Grady, though it left him a good
+deal to think out afterward. He had acted quite deliberately, had said
+nothing that afterward he wished unsaid; but as yet he had not decided
+what to do next. After he heard the door slam behind the little delegate,
+he walked back into his room, paced the length of it two or three times,
+then put on his ulster and went out. He started off aimlessly, paying no
+attention to whither he was going, and consequently he walked straight to
+the elevator. He picked his way across the C. & S. C. tracks, out to the
+wharf, and seated himself upon an empty nail keg not far from the end of
+the spouting house.
+
+He sat there for a long while, heedless of all that was doing about him,
+turning the situation over and over in his mind. Like a good strategist,
+he was planning Grady's campaign as carefully as his own. Finally he was
+recalled to his material surroundings by a rough voice which commanded,
+"Get off that keg and clear out. We don't allow no loafers around here."
+
+Turning, Bannon recognized one of the under-foremen. "That's a good idea,"
+he said. "Are you making a regular patrol, or did you just happen to see
+me?"
+
+"I didn't know it was you. No, I'm tending to some work here in the
+spouting house."
+
+"Do you know where Mr. Peterson is?"
+
+"He was right up here a bit ago. Do you want to see him?"
+
+"Yes, if he isn't busy. I'm not the only loafer here, it seems," added
+Bannon, nodding toward where the indistinct figures of a man and a woman
+could be seen corning slowly toward them along the narrow strip of wharf
+between the building and the water. "Never mind," he added, as the foreman
+made a step in their direction, "I'll look after them myself."
+
+The moment after he had called the foreman's attention to them he had
+recognized them as Hilda and Max. He walked over to meet them. "We can't
+get enough of it in the daytime, can we."
+
+"It's a great place for a girl, isn't it, Mr. Bannon," said Max. "I was
+coming over here and Hilda made me bring her along. She said she thought
+it must look pretty at night."
+
+"Doesn't it?" she asked. "Don't you think it does, Mr. Bannon?"
+
+He had been staring at it for half an hour. Now for the first time he
+looked at it. For ninety feet up into the air the large mass was one
+unrelieved, unbroken shadow, barely distinguishable from the night sky
+that enveloped it. Above was the skeleton of the cupola, made brilliant,
+fairly dazzling, in contrast, by scores of arc lamps. At that distance and
+in that confused tangle of light and shadow the great timbers of the frame
+looked spidery. The effect was that of a luminous crown upon a gigantic,
+sphinx-like head.
+
+"I guess you are right," he said slowly. "But I never thought of it that
+way before. And I've done more or less night work, too."
+
+A moment later Peterson came up. "Having a tea party out here?" he asked;
+then turning to Bannon: "Was there something special you wanted, Charlie?
+I've got to go over to the main house pretty soon."
+
+"It's our friend Grady. He's come down to business at last. He wants
+money."
+
+Hilda was quietly signalling Max to come away, and Bannon, observing it,
+broke off to speak to them. "Don't go," he said. "We'll have a brief
+council of war right here." So Hilda was seated on the nail keg, while
+Bannon, resting his elbows on the top of a spile which projected waist
+high through the floor of the wharf, expounded the situation.
+
+"You understand his proposition," he said, addressing Hilda, rather than
+either of the men. "It's just plain blackmail. He says, 'If you don't want
+your laborers to strike, you'll have to pay my price.'"
+
+"Not much," Pete broke in. "I'd let the elevator rot before I'd pay a cent
+of blackmail."
+
+"Page wouldn't," said Bannon, shortly, "or MacBride, neither. They'd be
+glad to pay five thousand or so for protection. But they'd want protection
+that would protect. Grady's trying to sell us a gold brick. He hated us to
+begin with, and when he'd struck us for about all he thought we'd stand,
+he'd call the men off just the same, and leave us to waltz the timbers
+around all by ourselves."
+
+"How much did he want?"
+
+"All he could get. I think he'd have been satisfied with a thousand, but
+he'd come 'round next week for a thousand more."
+
+"What did you tell him?"
+
+"I told him that a five-cent cigar was a bigger investment than I cared to
+make on him and that when we paid blackmail it would be to some fellow
+who'd deliver the goods. I said he could begin to make trouble just as
+soon as he pleased."
+
+"Seems to me you might have asked for a few days' time to decide. Then we
+could have got something ready to come at him with. He's liable to call
+our men out tonight, ain't he?"
+
+"I don't think so. I thought of trying to stave him off for a few days,
+but then I thought, 'Why, he'll see through that game and he'll go on with
+his scheme for sewing us up just the same.' You see, there's no good
+saying we're afraid. So I told him that we didn't mind him a bit; said he
+could go out and have all the fun he liked with us. If he thinks we've got
+something up our sleeve he may be a little cautious. Anyway, he knows that
+our biggest rush is coming a little later, and he's likely to wait for
+it."
+
+Then Hilda spoke for the first time. "Has he so much power as that? Will
+they strike just because he orders them to?"
+
+"Why, not exactly," said Bannon. "They decide that for themselves, or at
+least they think they do. They vote on it."
+
+"Well, then," she asked hesitatingly, "why can't you just tell the men
+what Mr. Grady wants you to do and show them that he's dishonest? They
+know they've been treated all right, don't they?"
+
+Bannon shook his head. "No use," he said. "You see, these fellows don't
+know much. They aren't like skilled laborers who need some sense in their
+business. They're just common roustabouts, and most of 'em have gunpowder
+in place of brains. They don't want facts or reason either; what they like
+is Grady's oratory. They think that's the finest thing they ever heard.
+They might all be perfectly satisfied and anxious to work, but if Grady
+was to sing out to know if they wanted to be slaves, they'd all strike
+like a freight train rolling down grade.
+
+"No," he went on, "there's nothing to be done with the men. Do you know
+what would happen if I was to go up to their lodge and tell right out that
+Grady was a blackmailer? Why, after they'd got through with me,
+personally, they'd pass a resolution vindicating Grady. They'd resolve
+that I was a thief and a liar and a murderer and an oppressor of the poor
+and a traitor, and if they could think of anything more than that, they'd
+put it in, too. And after vindicating Grady to their satisfaction, they'd
+take his word for law and the gospel more than ever. In this sort of a
+scrape you want to hit as high as you can, strike the biggest man who will
+let you in his office. It's the small fry that make the trouble. I guess
+that's true 'most everywhere. I know the general manager of a railroad is
+always an easier chap to get on with than the division superintendent."
+
+"Well," said Pete, after waiting a moment to see if Bannon had any
+definite suggestion to make as to the best way to deal with Grady, "I'm
+glad you don't think he'll try to tie us up tonight. Maybe we'll think of
+something tomorrow. I've got to get back on the job."
+
+"I'll go up with you," said Max, promptly. Then, in answer to Hilda's
+gesture of protest, "You don't want to climb away up there tonight. I'll
+be back in ten minutes," and he was gone before she could reply. "I guess
+I can take care of you till he comes back," said Bannon. Hilda made no
+answer. She seemed to think that silence would conceal her annoyance
+better than anything she could say. So, after waiting a moment, Bannon
+went on talking.
+
+"I suppose that's the reason why I get ugly sometimes and call names;
+because I ain't a big enough man not to. If I was getting twenty-five
+thousand a year maybe I'd be as smooth as anybody. I'd like to be a
+general manager for a while, just to see how it would work."
+
+"I don't see how anybody could ever know enough to run a railroad." Hilda
+was looking up at the C. & S. C. right of way, where red and white
+semaphore lights were winking.
+
+"I was offered that job once myself, though, and turned it down," said
+Bannon. "I was superintendent of the electric light plant at Yawger.
+Yawger's quite a place, on a branch of the G.T. There was another road ran
+through the town, called the Bemis, Yawger and Pacific. It went from Bemis
+to Stiles Corners, a place about six miles west of Yawger. It didn't get
+any nearer the Pacific than that. Nobody in Yawger ever went to Bemis or
+Stiles, and there wasn't anybody in Bemis and Stiles to come to Yawger, or
+if they did come they never went back, so the road didn't do a great deal
+of business. They assessed the stock every year to pay the officers'
+salaries--and they had a full line of officers, too--but the rest of the
+road had to scrub along the best it could.
+
+"When they elected me alderman from the first ward up at Yawger, I found
+out that the B.Y.&P. owed the city four hundred and thirty dollars, so I
+tried to find out why they wasn't made to pay. It seemed that the city had
+had a judgment against them for years, but they couldn't get hold of
+anything that was worth seizing. They all laughed at me when I said I
+meant to get that money out of 'em.
+
+"The railroad had one train; there was an engine and three box cars and a
+couple of flats and a combination--that's baggage and passenger. It made
+the round trip from Bemis every day, fifty-two miles over all, and
+considering the roadbed and the engine, that was a good day's work.
+
+"Well, that train was worth four hundred and thirty dollars all right
+enough, if they could have got their hands on it, but the engineer was
+such a peppery chap that nobody ever wanted to bother him. But I just
+bided my time, and one hot day after watering up the engine him and the
+conductor went off to get a drink. I had a few lengths of log chain handy,
+and some laborers with picks and shovels, and we made a neat, clean little
+job of it. Then I climbed up into the cab. When the engineer came back and
+wanted to know what I was doing there, I told him we'd attached his train.
+'Don't you try to serve no papers on me,' he sung out, 'or I'll split your
+head.' 'There's no papers about this job,' said I. 'We've attached it to
+the track.' At that he dropped the fire shovel and pulled open the
+throttle. The drivers spun around all right, but the train never moved an
+inch.
+
+"He calmed right down after that and said he hadn't four hundred and
+thirty dollars with him, but if I'd let the train go, he'd pay me in a
+week. I couldn't quite do that, so him and the conductor had to walk 'way
+to Bemis, where the general offices was. They was pretty mad. We had that
+train chained up there for 'most a month, and at last they paid the
+claim."
+
+"Was that the railroad that offered to make you general manager?" Hilda
+asked.
+
+"Yes, provided I'd let the train go. I'm glad I didn't take it up, though.
+You see, the farmers along the road who held the stock in it made up their
+minds that the train had quit running for good, so they took up the rails
+where it ran across their farms, and used the ties for firewood. That's
+all they ever got out of their investment."
+
+A few moments later Max came back and Bannon straightened up to go. "I
+wish you'd tell Pete when you see him tomorrow," he said to the boy, "that
+I won't be on the job till noon."
+
+"Going to take a holiday?"
+
+"Yes. Tell him I'm taking the rest cure up at a sanitarium."
+
+At half-past eight next morning Bannon entered the outer office of R. S.
+Carver, president of the Central District of the American Federation of
+Labor, and seated himself on one of the long row of wood-bottomed chairs
+that stood against the wall. Most of them were already occupied by poorly
+dressed men who seemed also to be waiting for the president. One man, in
+dilapidated, dirty finery, was leaning over the stenographer's desk,
+talking about the last big strike and guessing at the chance of there
+being any fun ahead in the immediate future. But the rest of them waited
+in stolid, silent patience, sitting quite still in unbroken rank along the
+wall, their overcoats, if they had them, buttoned tight around their
+chins, though the office was stifling hot. The dirty man who was talking
+to the stenographer filled a pipe with some very bad tobacco and
+ostentatiously began smoking it, but not a man followed his example.
+
+Bannon sat in that silent company for more than an hour before the great
+man came. Even then there was no movement among those who sat along the
+wall, save as they followed him almost furtively with their eyes. The
+president never so much as glanced at one of them; for all he seemed to
+see the rank of chairs might have been empty. He marched across to his
+private office, and, leaving the door open behind him, sat down before his
+desk. Bannon sat still a moment, waiting for those who had come before him
+to make the first move, but not a man of them stirred, so, somewhat out of
+patience with this mysteriously solemn way of doing business, he arose and
+walked into the president's office with as much assurance as though it had
+been his own. He shut the door after him. The president did not look up,
+but went on cutting open his mail.
+
+"I'm from MacBride & Company, of Minneapolis," said Bannon.
+
+"Guess I don't know the parties."
+
+"Yes, you do. We're building a grain elevator at Calumet."
+
+The president looked up quickly. "Sit down," he said. "Are you
+superintending the work?"
+
+"Yes. My name's Bannon--Charles Bannon."
+
+"Didn't you have some sort of an accident out there? An overloaded hoist?
+And you hurt a man, I believe."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And I think one of your foremen drew a revolver on a man."
+
+"I did, myself."
+
+The president let a significant pause intervene before his next question.
+"What do you want with me?"
+
+"I want you to help me out. It looks as though we might get into trouble
+with our laborers."
+
+"You've come to the wrong man. Mr. Grady is the man for you to talk with.
+He's their representative."
+
+"We haven't got on very well with Mr. Grady. The first time he came on the
+job he didn't know our rule that visitors must apply at the office, and we
+weren't very polite to him. He's been down on us ever since. We can't make
+any satisfactory agreement with him."
+
+Carver turned away impatiently. "You'll have to," he said, "if you want to
+avoid trouble with your men. It's no business of mine. He's acting on
+their instructions."
+
+"No, he isn't," said Bannon, sharply. "What they want, I guess, is to be
+treated square and paid a fair price. What he wants is blackmail."
+
+"I've heard that kind of talk before. It's the same howl that an employer
+always makes when he's tried to bribe an agent who's active in the
+interest of the men, and got left at it. What have you got to show for it?
+Anything but just your say so?"
+
+Bannon drew out Grady's letter of warning and handed it to him. Carver
+read it through, then tossed it on his desk. "You certainly don't offer
+that as proof that he wants blackmail, Mr. Bannon."
+
+"There's never any proof of blackmail. When a man can see me alone, he
+isn't going to talk before witnesses, and he won't commit himself in
+writing. Grady told me that unless we paid his price he'd tie us up. No
+one else was around when he said it."
+
+"Then you haven't anything but your say so. But I know him, and I don't
+know you. Do you think I'd take your word against his?"
+
+"That letter doesn't prove blackmail," said Bannon, "but it smells of it.
+And there's the same smell about everything Grady has done. When he came
+to my office a day or two after that hoist accident, I tried to find out
+what he wanted, and he gave me nothing but oratory. I tried to pin him
+down to something definite, but my stenographer was there and Grady didn't
+have a suggestion to make. Then by straining his neck and asking
+questions, he found out we were in a hurry, that the elevator was no good
+unless it was done by January first, and that we had all the money we
+needed.
+
+"Two days after he sent me that letter. Look at it again. Why does he want
+to take both of us to Chicago on Sunday morning, when he can see me any
+time at my office on the job?" Bannon spread the letter open before
+Carver's face. "Why doesn't he say right here what it is he wants, if it's
+anything he dares to put in black and white? I didn't pay any attention to
+that letter; it didn't deserve any. And then will you tell me why he came
+to my room at night to see me instead of to my office in the daytime? I
+can prove that he did. Does all that look as if I tried to bribe him?
+Forget that we're talking about Grady, and tell me what you think it looks
+like."
+
+Carver was silent for a moment. "That wouldn't do any good," he said at
+last. "If you had proof that I could act on, I might be able to help you.
+I haven't any jurisdiction in the internal affairs of that lodge; but if
+you could offer proof that he is what you say he is, I could tell them
+that if they continued to support him, the federation withdraws its
+support. But I don't see that I can help you as it is. I don't see any
+reason why I should."
+
+"I'll tell you why you should. Because if there's any chance that what
+I've said is true, it will be a lot better for your credit to have the
+thing settled quietly. And it won't be settled quietly if we have to
+fight. It isn't very much you have to do; just satisfy yourself as to how
+things are going down there. See whether we're square, or Grady is. Then
+when the scrap comes on you'll know how to act. That's all. Do your
+investigating in advance."
+
+"That's just what I haven't any right to do. I can't mix up in the
+business till it comes before me in the regular way."
+
+"Well," said Bannon, with a smile, "if you can't do it yourself, maybe
+some man you have confidence in would do it for you."
+
+Carver drummed thoughtfully on his desk for a few minutes. Then he
+carefully folded Grady's letter and put it in his pocket. "I'm glad to
+have met you, Mr. Bannon," he said, holding out his hand. "Good morning."
+
+Next morning while Bannon was opening his mail, a man came to the
+timekeeper's window and asked for a job as a laborer. "Guess we've got men
+enough," said Max. "Haven't we, Mr. Bannon?"
+
+The man put his head in the window. "A fellow down in Chicago told me if
+I'd come out here to Calumet K and ask Mr. Bannon for a job, he'd give me
+one."
+
+"Are you good up high?" Bannon asked.
+
+The man smiled ruefully, and said he was afraid not.
+
+"Well, then," returned Bannon, "we'll have to let you in on the ground
+floor. What's your name?"
+
+"James."
+
+"Go over to the tool house and get a broom. Give him a check, Max."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+On the twenty-second of November Bannon received this telegram:--
+
+MR. CHARLES BANNON, care of MacBride & Company, South Chicago:
+
+We send today complete drawings for marine tower which you will build in
+the middle of spouting house. Harahan Company are building the Leg.
+
+MACBRIDE & Co.
+
+Bannon read it carefully, folded it, opened it and read it again, then
+tossed it on the desk. "We're off now, for sure," he said to Miss Vogel.
+"I've known that was coming sure as Christmas."
+
+Hilda picked it up.
+
+"Is there an answer, Mr. Bannon?"
+
+"No, just file it. Do you make it out?"
+
+She read it and shook her head. Bannon ignored her cool manner.
+
+"It means that your friends on MacBride & Company's Calumet house are
+going to have the time of their lives for the next few weeks. I'm going to
+carry compressed food in my pockets, and when meal time comes around, just
+take a capsule."
+
+"I think I know," she said slowly; "a marine leg is the thing that takes
+grain up out of ships."
+
+"That's right. You'd better move up head."
+
+"And we've been building a spouting house instead to load it into ships."
+
+"We'll have to build both now. You see, it's getting around to the time
+when the Pages'll be having a fit every day until the machinery's running,
+and every bin is full. And every time they have a fit, the people up at
+the office'll have another, and they'll pass it on to us."
+
+"But why do they want the marine leg?" she asked, "any more now than they
+did at first?"
+
+"They've got to get the wheat down by boat instead of rail, that's all. Or
+likely it'll be coming both ways. There's no telling now what's behind it.
+Both sides have got big men fighting. You've seen it in the papers,
+haven't you?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Of course, what the papers say isn't all true, but it's lively doings all
+right."
+
+The next morning's mail brought the drawings and instructions; and with
+them came a letter from Brown to Bannon. "I suppose there's not much good
+in telling you to hurry," it ran; "but if there is another minute a day
+you can crowd in, I guess you know what to do with it. Page told me today
+that this elevator will make or break them. Mr. MacBride says that you can
+have all January for a vacation if you get it through. We owe you two
+weeks off, anyhow, that you didn't take last summer. We're running down
+that C. & S. C. business, though I don't believe, myself, that they'll
+give you any more trouble."
+
+Bannon read it to Hilda, saying as he laid it down:--
+
+"That's something like. I don't know where'll I go, though. Winter ain't
+exactly the time for a vacation, unless you go shooting, and I'm no hand
+for that."
+
+"Couldn't you put it off till summer?" she asked, smiling a little.
+
+"Not much. You don't know those people. By the time summer'd come around,
+they'd have forgotten I ever worked here. I'd strike for a month and Brown
+would grin and say: 'That's all right, Bannon, you deserve it if anybody
+does. It'll take a week or so to get your pass arranged, and you might
+just run out to San Francisco and see if things are going the way they
+ought to.' And then the first thing I knew I'd be working three shifts
+somewhere over in China, and Brown would be writing me I was putting in
+too much time at my meals. No, if MacBride & Company offer you a holiday,
+the best thing you can do is to grab it, and run, and saw off the
+telegraph poles behind you. And you couldn't be sure of yourself then."
+
+He turned the letter over in his hand.
+
+"I might go up on the St. Lawrence," he went on. "That's the only place
+for spending the winter that ever struck me."
+
+"Isn't it pretty cold?"
+
+"It ain't so bad. I was up there last winter. We put up at a house at
+Coteau, you know. When I got there the foundation wasn't even begun, and
+we had a bad time getting laborers, I put in the first day sitting on the
+ice sawing off spiles."
+
+Hilda laughed.
+
+"I shouldn't think you'd care much about going back."
+
+"Were you ever there?" he asked.
+
+"No, I've never been anywhere but home and here, in Chicago."
+
+"Where is your home?"
+
+"It was up in Michigan. That's where Max learned the lumber business. But
+he and I have been here for nearly two years."
+
+"Well," said Bannon, "some folks may think it's cold up there, but there
+ain't anywhere else to touch it. It's high ground, you know--nothing like
+this"--he swept his arm about to indicate the flats outside--"and the
+scenery beats anything this side of the Rockies. It ain't that there's
+mountains there, you understand, but it's all big and open, and they've
+got forests there that would make your Michigan pine woods look like weeds
+on a sandhill. And the river's great. You haven't seen anything really
+fine till you've seen the rapids in winter. The people there have a good
+time too. They know how to enjoy life--it isn't all grime and sweat and
+making money."
+
+"Well," said Hilda, looking down at her pencil and drawing aimless designs
+as she talked, "I suppose it is a good place to go. I've seen the
+pictures, of course, in the timetables; and one of the railroad offices on
+Clark Street used to have some big photographs of the St. Lawrence in the
+window. I looked at them sometimes, but I never thought of really seeing
+anything like that. I've had some pretty good times on the lake and over
+at St. Joe. Max used to take me over to Berrien Springs last summer, when
+he could get off. My aunt lives there."
+
+Bannon was buttoning his coat, and looking at her. He felt the different
+tone that had got into their talk. It had been impersonal a few minutes
+before.
+
+"Oh, St. Joe isn't bad," he was saying; "it's quiet and restful and all
+that, but it's not the same sort of thing at all. You go over there and
+ride up the river on the May Graham, and it makes you feel lazy and
+comfortable, but it doesn't stir you up inside like the St. Lawrence
+does."
+
+She looked up. Her eyes were sparkling as they had sparkled that afternoon
+on the elevator when she first looked out into the sunset.
+
+"Yes," she replied. "I think I know what you mean. But I never really felt
+that way; I've only thought about it."
+
+Bannon turned half away, as if to go.
+
+"You'll have to go down there, that's all," he said abruptly. He looked
+back at her over his shoulder, and added, "That's all there is about it."
+
+Her eyes were half startled, half mischievous, for his voice had been
+still less impersonal than before. Then she turned back to her work, her
+face sober, but an amused twinkle lingering in her eyes.
+
+"I should like to go," she said, her pencil poised at the top of a long
+column. "Max would like it, too."
+
+After supper that evening Max returned early from a visit to the injured
+man, and told Hilda of a new trouble.
+
+"Do you know that little delegate that's been hanging around?" he asked.
+
+"Grady," she said, and nodded.
+
+"Yes, he's been working the man. I never saw such a change in my life. He
+just sat up there in bed and swore at me, and said I needn't think I could
+buy him off with this stuff"--he looked down and Hilda saw that the bowl
+in his hand was not empty--"and raised a row generally."
+
+"Why?" she asked.
+
+"Give it up. From what he said, I'm sure Grady's behind it."
+
+"Did he give his name?"
+
+"No, but he did a lot of talking about justice to the down-trodden and the
+power of the unions, and that kind of stuff. I couldn't understand all he
+said--he's got a funny lingo, you know; I guess it's Polack--but I got
+enough to know what he meant, and more, too."
+
+"Can he do anything?"
+
+"I don't think so. If we get after him, it'll just set him worse'n pig's
+bristles. A man like that'll lose his head over nothing. He may be all
+right in the morning."
+
+But Hilda, after Max had given her the whole conversation as nearly as he
+could remember it, thought differently. She did not speak her mind out to
+Max, because she was not yet certain what was the best course to take. The
+man could easily make trouble, she saw that. But if Max were to lay the
+matter before Bannon, he would be likely to glide over some of the details
+that she had got only by close questioning. And a blunder in handling it
+might be fatal to the elevator, so far as getting it done in December was
+concerned. Perhaps she took it too seriously; for she was beginning, in
+spite of herself, to give a great deal of thought to the work and to
+Bannon. At any rate, she lay awake later than usual that night, going over
+the problem, and she brought it up, the next morning, the first time that
+Bannon came into the office after Max had gone out.
+
+"Mr. Bannon," she said, when he had finished dictating a letter to the
+office, "I want to tell you about that man that was hurt."
+
+Bannon tried not to smile at the nervous, almost breathless way in which
+she opened the conversation. He saw that, whatever it was, it seemed to
+her very important, and he settled comfortably on the table, leaning back
+against the wall with his legs stretched out before him. She had turned on
+her stool.
+
+"You mean the hoist man?" he asked.
+
+She nodded. "Max goes over to see him sometimes. We've been trying to help
+make him comfortable--"
+
+"Oh," said Bannon; "it's you that's been sending those things around to
+him."
+
+She looked at him with surprise.
+
+"Why, how did you know?"
+
+"I heard about it."
+
+Hilda hesitated. She did not know exactly how to begin. It occurred to her
+that perhaps Bannon was smiling at her eager manner.
+
+"Max was there last night and he said the man had changed all around. He's
+been friendly, you know, and grateful"--she had forgotten herself again,
+in thinking of her talk with Max--"and he's said all the time that he
+wasn't going to make trouble--" She paused.
+
+"Yes, I know something about that," said Bannon. "The lawyers always get
+after a man that's hurt, you know."
+
+"But last night he had changed all around. He said he was going to have
+you arrested. He thinks Max has been trying to buy him off with the things
+we've sent him."
+
+Bannon whistled.
+
+"So our Mr. Grady's got his hands on him!"
+
+"That's what Max and I thought, but he didn't give any names. He wouldn't
+take the jelly."
+
+"I'm glad you told me," said Bannon, swinging his legs around and sitting
+up. "It's just as well to know about these things. Grady's made him think
+he can make a good haul by going after me, poor fool--he isn't the man
+that'll get it."
+
+"Can he really stop the work?" Hilda asked anxiously.
+
+"Not likely. He'll probably try to make out a case of criminal
+carelessness against me, and get me jerked up. He ought to have more
+sense, though. I know how many sticks were on that hoist when it broke.
+I'll drop around there tonight after dinner and have a talk with him. I'd
+like to find Grady there--but that's too good to expect."
+
+Hilda had stepped down from the stool, and was looking out through the
+half-cleaned window at a long train of freight cars that was clanking in
+on the Belt Line.
+
+"That's what I wanted to see you about most," she said slowly. "Max says
+he's been warned that you'll come around and try to buy him off, and it
+won't go, because he can make more by standing out."
+
+"Well," said Bannon, easily, amused at her unconscious drop into Max's
+language, "there's usually a way of getting after these fellows. We'll do
+anything within reason, but we won't be robbed. I'll throw Mr. Grady into
+the river first, and hang him up on the hoist to dry."
+
+"But if he really means to stand out." she said, "wouldn't it hurt us for
+you to go around there?"
+
+"Why?" He was openly smiling now. Then, of a sudden, he looked at her with
+a shrewd, close gaze, and repeated, "Why?"
+
+"Maybe I don't understand it," she said nervously. "Max doesn't think I
+see things very clearly. But I thought perhaps you would be willing for me
+to see him this evening. I could go with Max, and--"
+
+She faltered, when she saw how closely he was watching her, but he nodded,
+and said, "Go on."
+
+"Why, I don't know that I could do much, but--no"--she tossed her head
+back and looked at him--"I won't say that. If you'll let me go, I'll fix
+it. I know I can."
+
+Bannon was thinking partly of her--of her slight, graceful figure that
+leaned against the window frame, and of her eyes, usually quiet, but now
+snapping with determination--and partly of certain other jobs that had
+been imperiled by the efforts of injured workingmen to get heavy damages.
+One of the things his experience in railroad and engineering work had
+taught him was that men will take every opportunity to bleed a
+corporation. No matter how slight the accident, or how temporary in its
+effects, the stupidest workman has it in his power to make trouble. It was
+frankly not a matter of sentiment to Bannon. He would do all that he
+could, would gladly make the man's sickness actually profit him, so far as
+money would go; but he did not see justice in the great sums which the
+average jury will grant. As he sat there, he recognized what Hilda had
+seen at a flash, that this was a case for delicate handling.
+
+She was looking at him, tremendously in earnest, yet all the while
+wondering at her own boldness. He slowly nodded.
+
+"You're right," he said. "You're the one to do the talking. I won't ask
+you what you're going to say. I guess you understand it as well as
+anybody."
+
+"I don't know yet, myself," she answered. "It isn't that, it isn't that
+there's something particular to say, but he's a poor man, and they've been
+telling him that the company is cheating him and stealing from him--I
+wouldn't like it myself, if I were in his place and didn't know any more
+than he does. And maybe I can show him that we'll be a good deal fairer to
+him before we get through than Mr. Grady will."
+
+"Yes," said Bannon, "I think you can. And if you can keep this out of the
+courts I'll write Brown that there's a young lady down here that's come
+nearer to earning a big salary than I ever did to deserving a silk hat."
+
+"Oh," she said, the earnest expression skipping abruptly out of her eyes;
+"did your hat come?"
+
+"Not a sign of it. I'd clean forgotten. I'll give Brown one more warning--
+a long 'collect' telegram, about forty words--and then if he doesn't toe
+up, I'll get one and send him the bill.
+
+"There was a man that looked some like Grady worked for me on the
+Galveston house. He was a carpenter, and thought he stood for the whole
+Federation of Labor. He got gay one day. I warned him once, and then I
+threw him off the distributing floor."
+
+Hilda thought he was joking until she looked up and saw his face.
+
+"Didn't it--didn't it kill him?" she asked.
+
+"I don't remember exactly. I think there were some shavings there." He
+stood looking at her for a moment. "Do you know," he said, "if Grady comes
+up on the job again, I believe I'll tell him that story? I wonder if he'd
+know what I meant."
+
+The spouting house, or "river house," was a long, narrow structure, one
+hundred feet by thirty-six, built on piles at the edge of the wharf. It
+would form, with the connecting belt gallery that was to reach out over
+the tracks, a T-shaped addition to the elevator. The river house was no
+higher than was necessary for the spouts that would drop the grain through
+the hatchways of the big lake steamers, twenty thousand bushels an hour--
+it reached between sixty and seventy feet above the water. The marine
+tower that was to be built, twenty-four feet square, up through the centre
+of the house, would be more than twice as high. A careful examination
+convinced Bannon that the pile foundations would prove strong enough to
+support this heavier structure, and that the only changes necessary would
+be in the frame of the spouting house. On the same day that the plans
+arrived, work on the tower commenced.
+
+Peterson had about got to the point where startling developments no longer
+alarmed him. He had seen the telegram the day before, but his first
+information that a marine tower was actually under way came when Bannon
+called off a group of laborers late in the afternoon to rig the "trolley"
+for carrying timber across the track.
+
+"What are you going to do, Charlie?" he called. "Got to slide them timbers
+back again?"
+
+"Some of 'em," Bannon replied.
+
+"Don't you think we could carry 'em over?" said Peterson. "If we was quiet
+about it, they needn't be any trouble?"
+
+Bannon shook his head.
+
+"We're not taking any more chances on this railroad. We haven't time."
+
+Once more the heavy timbers went swinging through the air, high over the
+tracks, but this time back to the wharf. Before long the section boss of
+the C. & S. C. appeared, and though he soon went away, one of his men
+remained, lounging about the tracks, keeping a close eye on the sagging
+ropes and the timbers. Bannon, when he met Peterson a few minutes later,
+pointed out the man.
+
+"What'd I tell you, Pete? They're watching us like cats. If you want to
+know what the C. & S. C. think about us, you just drop one timber and
+you'll find out."
+
+But nothing dropped, and when Peterson, who had been on hand all the
+latter part of the afternoon, took hold, at seven o'clock, the first
+timbers of the tower had been set in place, somewhere down inside the
+rough shed of a spouting house, and more would go in during the night, and
+during other days and nights, until the narrow framework should go
+reaching high into the air. Another thing was recognized by the men at
+work on that night shift, even by the laborers who carried timbers, and
+grunted and swore in strange tongues; this was that the night shift men
+had suddenly begun to feel a most restless energy crowding them on, and
+they worked nearly as well as Bannon's day shifts. For Peterson's spirits
+had risen with a leap, once the misunderstanding that had been weighing on
+him had been removed, and now he was working as he had never worked
+before. The directions he gave showed that his head was clearer; and there
+was confidence in his manner.
+
+Hilda was so serious all day after her talk with Bannon that once, in the
+afternoon, when he came into the office for a glance at the new pile of
+blue prints, he smiled, and asked if she were laying out a campaign. It
+was the first work of the kind that she had ever undertaken, and she was a
+little worried over the need for tact and delicacy. After she had closed
+her desk at supper time, she saw Bannon come into the circle of the
+electric light in front of the office, and, asking Max to wait, she went
+to meet him.
+
+"Well," he said, "are you loaded up to fight the 'power of the union'?"
+
+She smiled, and then said, with a trace of nervousness:--
+
+"I don't believe I'm quite so sure about it as I was this morning."
+
+"It won't bother you much. When you've made him see that we're square and
+Grady isn't, you've done the whole business. We won't pay fancy damages,
+that's all."
+
+"Yes," she said, "I think I know. What I wanted to see you about was--
+was--Max and I are going over right after supper, and--"
+
+She stopped abruptly; and Bannon, looking down at her, saw a look of
+embarrassment come into her face; and then she blushed, and lowering her
+eyes, fumbled with her glove. Bannon was a little puzzled. His eyes rested
+on her for a moment, and then, without understanding why, he suddenly knew
+that she had meant to ask him to see her after the visit, and that the new
+personal something in their acquaintance had flashed a warning. He spoke
+quickly, as if he were the first to think of it.
+
+"If you don't mind, I'll come around tonight and hear the report of the
+committee of adjusters. That's you, you know. Something might come up that
+I ought to know right away."
+
+"Yes," she replied rapidly, without looking up, "perhaps that would be the
+best thing to do."
+
+He walked along with her toward the office, where Max was waiting, but she
+did not say anything, and he turned in with: "I won't say good-night,
+then. Good luck to you."
+
+It was soon after eight that Bannon went to the boarding-house where Hilda
+and Max lived, and sat down to wait in the parlor. When a quarter of an
+hour had gone, and they had not returned, he buttoned up his coat and went
+out, walking slowly along the uneven sidewalk toward the river. The night
+was clear, and he could see, across the flats and over the tracks, where
+tiny signal lanterns were waving and circling, and freight trains were
+bumping and rumbling, the glow of the arc lamps on the elevator, and its
+square outline against the sky. Now and then, when the noise of the
+switching trains let down, he could hear the hoisting engines. Once he
+stopped and looked eastward at the clouds of illuminated smoke above the
+factories and at the red blast of the rolling mill. He went nearly to the
+river and had to turn back and walk slowly. Finally he heard Max's laugh,
+and then he saw them coming down a side street.
+
+"Well," he said, "you don't sound like bad news."
+
+"I don't believe we are very bad," replied Hilda.
+
+"Should say not," put in Max. "It's finer'n silk."
+
+Hilda said, "Max," in a low voice, but he went on:--
+
+"The best thing, Mr. Bannon, was when I told him it was Hilda that had
+been sending things around. He thought it was you, you see, and Grady'd
+told him it was all a part of the game to bamboozle him out of the money
+that was rightfully his. It's funny to hear him sling that Grady talk
+around. I don't think he more'n half knows what it means. I'd promised not
+to tell, you know, but I just saw there wasn't no use trying to make him
+understand things without talking pretty plain. There ain't a thing he
+wouldn't do for Hilda now--"
+
+"Max," said Hilda again, "please don't."
+
+When they reached the house, Max at once started in. Hilda hesitated, and
+then said:--
+
+"I'll come in a minute, Max."
+
+"Oh," he replied, "all right." But he waited a moment longer, evidently
+puzzled.
+
+"Well," said Bannon, "was it so hard?"
+
+"No--not hard exactly. I didn't know he was so poor. Somehow you don't
+think about it that way when you see them working. I don't know that I
+ever thought about it at all before."
+
+"You think he won't give us any trouble?"
+
+"I'm sure he won't. I--I had to promise I'd go again pretty soon."
+
+"Maybe you'll let me go along."
+
+"Why--why, yes, of course."
+
+She had been hesitating, looking down and picking at the splinters on the
+gate post. Neither was Bannon quick to speak. He did not want to question
+her about the visit, for he saw that it was hard for her to talk about it.
+Finally she straightened up and looked at him.
+
+"I want to tell you," she said, "I haven't understood exactly until
+tonight--what they said about the accident and the way you've talked about
+it--well, some people think you don't think very much about the men, and
+that if anybody's hurt, or anything happens, you don't care as long as the
+work goes on." She was looking straight at him. "I thought so, too. And
+tonight I found out some things you've been doing for him--how you've been
+giving him tobacco, and the things he likes best that I'd never have
+thought of, and I knew it was you that did it, and not the Company--and
+I--I beg your pardon."
+
+Bannon did not know what to reply. They stood for a moment without
+speaking, and then she smiled, and said "Good night," and ran up the steps
+without looking around.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+It was the night of the tenth of December. Three of the four stories of
+the cupola were building, and the upright posts were reaching toward the
+fourth. It still appeared to be a confused network of timbers, with only
+the beginnings of walls, but as the cupola walls are nothing but a shell
+of light boards to withstand the wind, the work was further along than
+might have been supposed. Down on the working story the machinery was
+nearly all in, and up here in the cupola the scales and garners were going
+into place as rapidly as the completing of the supporting framework
+permitted. The cupola floors were not all laid. If you had stood on the
+distributing floor, over the tops of the bins, you might have looked not
+only down through a score of openings between plank areas and piles of
+timbers, into black pits, sixteen feet square by seventy deep, but upward
+through a grill of girders and joists to the clear sky. Everywhere men
+swarmed over the work, and the buzz of the electric lights and the sounds
+of hundreds of hammers blended into a confused hum.
+
+If you had walked to the east end of the building, here and there
+balancing along a plank or dodging through gangs of laborers and around
+moving timbers, you would have seen stretching from off a point not
+halfway through to the ground, the annex bins, rising so steadily that it
+was a matter only of a few weeks before they would be ready to receive
+grain. Now another walk, this time across the building to the north side,
+would show you the river house, out there on the wharf, and the marine
+tower rising up through the middle with a single arc lamp on the topmost
+girder throwing a mottled, checkered shadow on the wharf and the water
+below.
+
+At a little after eight o'clock, Peterson, who had been looking at the
+stairway, now nearly completed, came out on the distributing floor. He was
+in good spirits, for everything was going well, and Bannon had frankly
+credited him, of late, with the improvement in the work of the night
+shifts. He stood looking up through the upper floors of the cupola, and he
+did not see Max until the timekeeper stood beside him.
+
+"Hello, Max," he said. "We'll have the roof on here in another ten days."
+
+Max followed Peterson's glance upward.
+
+"I guess that's right. It begins to look as if things was coming 'round
+all right. I just come up from the office. Mr. Bannon's there. He'll be up
+before long, he says. I was a-wondering if maybe I hadn't ought to go back
+and tell him about Grady. He's around, you know."
+
+"Who? Grady?"
+
+"Yes. Him and another fellow was standing down by one of the cribbin'
+piles. I was around there on the way up."
+
+"What was they doing?"
+
+"Nothing. Just looking on."
+
+Peterson turned to shout at some laborers, then he pushed back his hat and
+scratched his head.
+
+"I don't know but what you'd ought to 'a' told Charlie right off. That man
+Grady don't mean us no good."
+
+"I know it, but I wasn't just sure."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you--"
+
+Before Peterson could finish, Max broke in:--
+
+"That's him."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"That fellow over there, walking along slow. He's the one that was with
+Grady."
+
+"I'd like to know what he thinks he's doing here." Peterson started
+forward, adding, "I guess I know what to say to him."
+
+"Hold on, Pete," said Max, catching his arm. "Maybe we'd better speak to
+Mr. Bannon. I'll go down and tell him, and you keep an eye on this
+fellow."
+
+Peterson reluctantly assented, and Max walked slowly away, now and then
+pausing to look around at the men. But when he had nearly reached the
+stairway, where he could slip behind the scaffolding about the only scale
+hopper that had reached a man's height above the floor, he moved more
+rapidly. He met Bannon on the stairway, and told him what he had seen.
+Bannon leaned against the wall of the stairway bin, and looked thoughtful.
+
+"So he's come, has he?" was his only comment. "You might speak to Pete,
+Max, and bring him here. I'll wait."
+
+Max and Peterson found him looking over the work of the carpenters.
+
+"I may not be around much tonight," he said, with a wink, "but I'd like to
+see both of you tomorrow afternoon some time. Can you get around about
+four o'clock, Pete?"
+
+"Sure," the night boss replied.
+
+"We've got some thinking to do about the work, if we're going to put it
+through. I'll look for you at four o'clock then, in the office." He
+started down the stairs. "I'm going home now."
+
+"Why," said Peterson, "you only just come."
+
+Bannon paused and looked back over his shoulder. The light came from
+directly overhead, and the upper part of his face was in the shadow of his
+hat brim, but Max, looking closely at him, thought that he winked again.
+
+"I wanted to tell you," the foreman went on; "Grady's come around, you
+know--and another fellow--"
+
+"Yes, Max told me. I guess they won't hurt you. Good night."
+
+As he went on down he passed a group of laborers who were bringing
+stairway material to the carpenters.
+
+"I don't know but what you was talking pretty loud," said Max to Peterson,
+in a low voice. "Here's some of 'em now."
+
+"They didn't hear nothing," Peterson replied, and the two went back to the
+distributing floor. They stood in a shadow, by the scale hopper, waiting
+for the reappearance of Grady's companion. He had evidently gone on to the
+upper floors, where he could not be distinguished from the many other
+moving figures; but in a few minutes he came back, walking deliberately
+toward the stairs. He looked at Peterson and Max, but passed by without a
+second glance, and descended. Peterson stood looking after him.
+
+"Now, I'd like to know what Charlie meant by going home," he said.
+
+Max had been thinking hard. Finally he said:--
+
+"Say, Pete, we're blind."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Did you think he was going home?"
+
+Peterson looked at him, but did not reply.
+
+"Because he ain't."
+
+"Well, you heard what he said."
+
+"What does that go for? He was winking when he said it. He wasn't going to
+stand there and tell the laborers all about it, like we was trying to do.
+I'll bet he ain't very far off."
+
+"I ain't got a word to say," said Peterson. "If he wants to leave Grady to
+me, I guess I can take care of him."
+
+Max had come to the elevator for a short visit--he liked to watch the work
+at night--but now he settled down to stay, keeping about the hopper where
+he could see Grady if his head should appear at the top of the stairs.
+Something told him that Bannon saw deeper into Grady's manoeuvres than
+either Peterson or himself, and while he could not understand, yet he was
+beginning to think that Grady would appear before long, and that Bannon
+knew it.
+
+Sure enough, only a few minutes had gone when Max turned back from a
+glance at the marine tower and saw the little delegate standing on the top
+step, looking about the distributing floor and up through the girders
+overhead, with quick, keen eyes. Then Max understood what it all meant:
+Grady had chosen a time when Bannon was least likely to be on the job; and
+had sent the other man ahead to reconnoitre. It meant mischief--Max could
+see that; and he felt a boy's nervousness at the prospect of excitement.
+He stepped farther back into the shadow.
+
+Grady was looking about for Peterson; when he saw his burly figure
+outlined against a light at the farther end of the building, he walked
+directly toward him, not pausing this time to talk to the laborers or to
+look at them. Max, moving off a little to one side, followed, and reached
+Peterson's side just as Grady, his hat pushed back on his head and his
+feet apart, was beginning to talk.
+
+"I had a little conversation with you the other day, Mr. Peterson. I
+called to see you in the interests of the men, the men that are working
+for you--working like galley slaves they are, every man of them. It's
+shameful to a man that's seen how they've been treated by the nigger
+drivers that stands over them day and night." He was speaking in a loud
+voice, with the fluency of a man who is carefully prepared. There was none
+of the bitterness or the ugliness in his manner that had slipped out in
+his last talk with Bannon, for he knew that a score of laborers were
+within hearing, and that his words would travel, as if by wire, from mouth
+to mouth about the building and the grounds below. "I stand here, Mr.
+Peterson, the man chosen by these slaves of yours, to look after their
+rights. I do not ask you to treat them with kindness, I do not ask that
+you treat them as gentlemen. What do I ask? I demand what's accorded to
+them by the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of
+Independence, that says even a nigger has more rights than you've given to
+these men, the men that are putting money into your pocket, and Mr.
+Bannon's pocket, and the corporation's pocket, by the sweat of their
+brows. Look at them; will you look at them?" He waved his arm toward the
+nearest group, who had stopped working and were listening; and then,
+placing a cigar in his mouth and tilting it upward, he struck a match and
+sheltered it in his hands, looking over it for a moment at Peterson.
+
+The night boss saw by this time that Grady meant business, that his speech
+was preliminary to something more emphatic, and he knew that he ought to
+stop it before the laborers should be demoralized.
+
+"You can't do that here, Mister," said Max, over Peterson's shoulder,
+indicating the cigar.
+
+Grady still held the match, and looked impudently across the tip of his
+cigar. Peterson took it up at once.
+
+"You'll have to drop that," he said. "There's no smoking on this job."
+
+The match had gone out, and Grady lighted another.
+
+"So that's one of your rules, too?" he said, in the same loud voice. "It's
+a wonder you let a man eat."
+
+Peterson was growing angry. His voice rose as he talked.
+
+"I ain't got time to talk to you," he said. "The insurance company says
+there can't be no smoking here. If you want to know why, you'd better ask
+them."
+
+Grady blew out the match and returned the cigar to his pocket, with an air
+of satisfaction that Peterson could not make out.
+
+"That's all right, Mr. Peterson. I didn't come here to make trouble. I
+come here as a representative of these men"--he waved again toward the
+laborers--"and I say right here, that if you'd treated them right in the
+first place, I wouldn't be here at all. I've wanted you to have a fair
+show. I've put up with your mean tricks and threats and insults ever since
+you begun--and why? Because I wouldn't delay you and hurt the work. It's
+the industries of today, the elevators and railroads, and the work of
+strong men like these that's the bulwark of America's greatness. But what
+do I get in return, Mister Peterson? I come up here as a gentleman and
+talk to you. I treat you as a gentleman. I overlook what you've showed
+yourself to be. And how do you return it? By talking like the blackguard
+you are--you knock an innocent cigar--"
+
+"Your time's up!" said Pete, drawing a step nearer. "Come to business, or
+clear out. That's all I've got to say to you."
+
+"All right, Mister Peterson--all right. I'll put up with your insults. I
+can afford to forget myself when I look about me at the heavier burdens
+these men have to bear, day and night. Look at that--look at it, and then
+try to talk to me."
+
+He pointed back toward the stairs where a gang of eight laborers were
+carrying a heavy timber across the shadowy floor.
+
+"Well, what about it?" said Pete, with half-controlled rage.
+
+"What about it! But never mind. I'm a busy man myself. I've got no more
+time to waste on the likes of you. Take a good look at that, and then
+listen to me. That's the last stick of timber that goes across this floor
+until you put a runway from the hoist to the end of the building. And
+every stick that leaves the runway has got to go on a dolly. Mark my words
+now--I'm talking plain. My men don't lift another pound of timber on this
+house--everything goes on rollers. I've tried to be a patient man, but
+you've run against the limit. You've broke the last back you'll have a
+chance at." He put his hand to his mouth as if to shout at the gang, but
+dropped it and faced around. "No, I won't stop them. I'll be fair to the
+last." He pulled out his watch. "I'll give you one hour from now. At ten
+o'clock, if your runway and the dollies ain't working, the men go out. And
+the next time I see you, I won't be so easy."
+
+He turned away, waved to the laborers, with an, "All right, boys; go
+ahead," and walked grandly toward the stairway.
+
+Max whistled.
+
+"I'd like to know where Charlie is," said Peterson.
+
+"He ain't far. I'll find him;" and Max hurried away.
+
+Bannon was sitting in the office chair with his feet on the
+draughting-table, figuring on the back of a blotter. The light from the
+wall lamp was indistinct, and Bannon had to bend his head forward to see
+the figures. He did not look up when the door opened and Max came to the
+railing gate.
+
+"Grady's been up on the distributing floor," said Max, breathlessly, for
+he had been running.
+
+"What did he want?"
+
+"He's going to call the men off at ten o'clock if we don't put in a runway
+and dollies on the distributing floor."
+
+Bannon looked at his watch.
+
+"Is that all he wants?"
+
+Max, in his excitement, did not catch the sarcasm in the question.
+
+"That's all he said, but it's enough. We can't do it."
+
+Bannon closed his watch with a snap.
+
+"No," he said, "and we won't throw away any good time trying. You'd better
+round up the committee that's supposed to run this lodge and send them
+here. That young Murphy's one of them--he can put you straight. Bring Pete
+back with you, and the new man, James."
+
+Max lingered, with a look of awe and admiration.
+
+"Are you going to stand out, Mr. Bannon?" he asked.
+
+Bannon dropped his feet to the floor, and turned toward the table.
+
+"Yes," he said. "We're going to stand out."
+
+Since Bannon's talk with President Carver a little drama had been going on
+in the local lodge, a drama that neither Bannon, Max, nor Peterson knew
+about. James had been selected by Carver for this work because of proved
+ability and shrewdness. He had no sooner attached himself to the lodge,
+and made himself known as an active member, than his personality, without
+any noticeable effort on his part, began to make itself felt. Up to this
+time Grady had had full swing, for there had been no one among the
+laborers with force enough to oppose him.
+
+The first collision took place at an early meeting after Grady's last talk
+with Bannon. The delegate, in the course of the meeting, bitterly attacked
+Bannon, accusing him, at the climax of his oration, of an attempt to buy
+off the honest representative of the working classes for five thousand
+dollars. This had a tremendous effect on the excitable minds before him.
+He finished his speech with an impassioned tirade against the corrupt
+influences of the money power, and was mopping his flushed face, listening
+with elation to the hum of anger that resulted, confident that he had made
+his point, when James arose. The new man was as familiar with the tone of
+the meetings of laborers as Grady himself. At the beginning he had no wish
+further than to get at the truth. Grady had not stated his case well. It
+had convinced the laborers, but to James it had weak points. He asked
+Grady a few pointed questions, that, had the delegate felt the truth
+behind him, should not have been hard to answer. But Grady was still under
+the spell of his own oratory, and in attempting to get his feet back on
+the ground, he bungled. James did not carry the discussion beyond the
+point where Grady, in the bewilderment of recognizing this new element in
+the lodge, lost his temper, but when he sat down, the sentiment of the
+meeting had changed. Few of those men could have explained their feelings;
+it was simply that the new man was stronger than they were, perhaps as
+strong as Grady, and they were influenced accordingly.
+
+There was no decision for a strike at that meeting. Grady, cunning at the
+business, immediately dropped open discussion, and, smarting under the
+sense of lost prestige, set about regaining his position by well-planned
+talk with individual laborers. This went on, largely without James'
+knowledge, until Grady felt sure that a majority of the men were back in
+his control. This time he was determined to carry through the strike
+without the preliminary vote of the men. It was a bold stroke, but
+boldness was needed to defeat Charlie Bannon; and nobody knew better than
+Grady that a dashing show of authority would be hard for James or any one
+else to resist.
+
+And so he had come on the job this evening, at a time when he supposed
+Bannon safe in bed, and delivered his ultimatum. Not that he had any hope
+of carrying the strike through without some sort of a collision with the
+boss, but he well knew that an encounter after the strike had gathered
+momentum would be easier than one before. Bannon might be able to outwit
+an individual, even Grady himself, but he would find it hard to make
+headway against an angry mob. And now Grady was pacing stiffly about the
+Belt Line yards, while the minute hand of his watch crept around toward
+ten o'clock. Even if Bannon should be called within the hour, a few fiery
+words to those sweating gangs on the distributing floor should carry the
+day. But Grady did not think that this would be necessary. He was still in
+the mistake of supposing that Peterson and the boss were at cuts, and he
+had arrived, by a sort of reasoning that seemed the keenest strategy, at
+the conclusion that Peterson would take the opportunity to settle the
+matter himself. In fact, Grady had evolved a neat little campaign, and he
+was proud of himself.
+
+Bannon did not have to wait long. Soon there was a sound of feet outside
+the door, and after a little hesitation, six laborers entered, five of
+them awkwardly and timidly, wondering what was to come. Peterson followed,
+with Max, and closed the door. The members of the committee stood in a
+straggling row at the railing, looking at each other and at the floor and
+ceiling--anywhere but at the boss, who was sitting on the table, sternly
+taking them in. James stepped to one side.
+
+"Is this all the committee?" Bannon presently said.
+
+The men hesitated, and Murphy, who was in the centre, answered, "Yes,
+sir."
+
+"You are the governing members of your lodge?"
+
+There was an air of cool authority about Bannon that disturbed the men.
+They had been led to believe that his power reached only the work on the
+elevator, and that an attempt on his part to interfere in any way with
+their organization would be an act of high-handed tyranny, "to be resisted
+to the death" (Grady's words). But these men standing before their boss,
+in his own office, were not the same men that thrilled with righteous
+wrath under Grady's eloquence in the meetings over Barry's saloon. So they
+looked at the floor and ceiling again, until Murphy at last answered:--
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Bannon waited again, knowing that every added moment of silence gave him
+the firmer control.
+
+"I have nothing to say about the government of your organization," he
+said, speaking slowly and coldly. "I have brought you here to ask you this
+question, Have you voted to strike?"
+
+The silence was deep. Peterson, leaning against the closed door, held his
+breath; Max, sitting on the railing with his elbow thrown over the desk,
+leaned slightly forward. The eyes of the laborers wandered restlessly
+about the room. They were disturbed, taken off their guard; they needed
+Grady. But the thought of Grady was followed by the consciousness of the
+silent figure of the new man, James, standing behind them. Murphy's first
+impulse was to lie. Perhaps, if James had not been there, he would have
+lied. As it was, he glanced up two or three times, and his lips as many
+times framed themselves about words that did not come. Finally he said,
+mumbling the words:--
+
+"No, we ain't voted for no strike."
+
+"There has been no such decision made by your organization?"
+
+"No, I guess not."
+
+Bannon turned to Peterson.
+
+"Mr. Peterson, will you please find Mr. Grady and bring him here."
+
+Max and Peterson hurried out together. Bannon drew up the chair, and
+turned his back on the committee, going on with his figuring. Not a word
+was said; the men hardly moved; and the minutes went slowly by. Then there
+was a stir outside, and the sound of low voices. The door flew open,
+admitting Grady, who stalked to the railing, choking with anger. Max, who
+immediately followed, was grinning, his eyes resting on a round spot of
+dust on Grady's shoulder, and on his torn collar and disarranged tie.
+Peterson came in last, and carefully closed the door--his eyes were
+blazing, and one sleeve was rolled up over his bare forearm. Neither of
+them spoke. If anything in the nature of an assault had seemed necessary
+in dragging the delegate to the office, there had been no witnesses. And
+he had entered the room of his own accord.
+
+Grady was at a disadvantage, and he knew it. Breathing hard, his face red,
+his little eyes darting about the room, he took it all in--the members of
+the Committee; the boss, figuring at the table, with an air of
+exasperating coolness about his lean back; and last of all, James,
+standing in the shadow. It was the sight of the new man that checked the
+storm of words that was pressing on Grady's tongue. But he finally
+gathered himself and stepped forward, pushing aside one of the committee.
+
+Then Bannon turned. He faced about in his chair and began to talk straight
+at the committee, ignoring the delegate. Grady began to talk at the same
+time, but though his voice was the louder, no one seemed to hear him. The
+men were looking at Bannon. Grady hesitated, started again, and then,
+bound by his own rage and his sense of defeat, let his words die away, and
+stood casting about for an opening.
+
+"--This man Grady threatened a good while ago that I would have a strike
+on my hands. He finally came to me and offered to protect me if I would
+pay him five thousand dollars."
+
+"That's a lie!" shouted the delegate. "He come to me--"
+
+Bannon had hardly paused. He drew a typewritten copy of Grady's letter
+from his pocket, and read it aloud, then handed it over to Murphy. "That's
+the way he came at me. I want you to read it."
+
+The man took it awkwardly, glanced at it, and passed it on.
+
+"Tonight he's ordered a strike. He calls himself your representative, but
+he has acted on his own responsibility. Now, I am going to talk plain to
+you. I came here to build this elevator, and I'm going to do it. I propose
+to treat you men fair and square. If you think you ain't treated right,
+you send an honest man to this office, and I'll talk with him. But I'm
+through with Grady. I won't have him here at all. If you send him around
+again, I'll throw him off the job."
+
+The men were a little startled. They looked at one another, and the man on
+Murphy's left whispered something. Bannon sat still, watching them.
+
+Then Grady came to himself. He wheeled around to face the committee, and
+threw out one arm in a wide gesture.
+
+"I demand to know what this means! I demand to know if there is a law in
+this land! Is an honest man, the representative of the hand of labor, to
+be attacked by hired ruffians? Is he to be slandered by the tyrant who
+drives you at the point of the pistol? And you not men enough to defend
+your rights--the rights held by every American--the rights granted by the
+Constitution! But it ain't for myself I would talk. It ain't my own
+injuries that I suffer for. Your liberty hangs in the balance. This man
+has dared to interfere in the integrity of your lodge. Have you no
+words--"
+
+Bannon arose, caught Grady's arm, and whirled him around.
+
+"Grady," he said, "shut up." The delegate tried to jerk away, but he could
+not shake off that grip. He looked toward the committeemen, but they were
+silent. He looked everywhere but up into the eyes that were blazing down
+at him. And finally Bannon felt the muscles within his grip relax.
+
+"I'll tell you what I want you to do," said Bannon to the committeemen. "I
+want you to elect a new delegate. Don't talk about interference--I don't
+care how you elect him, or who he is, if he comes to me squarely."
+
+Grady was wriggling again.
+
+"This means a strike!" he shouted. "This means the biggest strike the West
+has ever seen! You won't get men for love or money--"
+
+Bannon gave the arm a wrench, and broke in:--
+
+"I'm sick of this. I laid this matter before President Carver. I have his
+word that if you hang on to this man after he's been proved a blackmailer,
+your lodge can be dropped from the Federation. If you try to strike, you
+won't hurt anybody but yourselves. That's all. You can go."
+
+"Wait--" Grady began, but they filed out without looking at him. James, as
+he followed them, nodded, and said, "Good night, Mr. Bannon."
+
+Then for the last time Bannon led Grady away. Peterson started forward,
+but the boss shook his head, and went out, marching the delegate between
+the lumber piles to the point where the path crossed the Belt Line tracks.
+
+"Now, Mr. Grady," he said, "this is where our ground stops. The other
+sides are the road there, and the river, and the last piles of cribbing at
+the other end. I'm telling you so you will know where you don't belong.
+Now, get out!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+The effect of the victory was felt everywhere. Not only were Max and Pete
+and Hilda jubilant over it, but the under-foremen, the timekeepers, even
+the laborers attacked their work with a fresher energy. It was like the
+first whiff of salt air to an army marching to the sea. Since the day when
+the cribbing came down from Ledyard, the work had gone forward with almost
+incredible rapidity; there had been no faltering during the weeks when
+Grady's threatened catastrophe was imminent, but now that the big shadow
+of the little delegate was dispelled, it was easier to see that the huge
+warehouse was almost finished. There was still much to do, and the handful
+of days that remained seemed absurdly inadequate; but it needed only a
+glance at what Charlie Bannon's tireless, driving energy had already
+accomplished to make the rest look easy.
+
+"We're sure of it now. She'll be full to the roof before the year is out."
+As Max went over the job with his time-book next morning, he said it to
+every man he met, and they all believed him. Peterson, the same man and
+not the same man either, who had once vowed that there wouldn't be any
+night work on Calumet K, who had bent a pair of most unwilling shoulders
+to the work Bannon had put upon them, who had once spent long, sulky
+afternoons in the barren little room of his new boarding-house; Peterson
+held himself down in bed exactly three hours the morning after that famous
+victory. Before eleven o'clock he was sledging down a tottering timber at
+the summit of the marine tower, a hundred and forty feet sheer above the
+wharf. Just before noon he came into the office and found Hilda there
+alone.
+
+He had stopped outside the door to put on his coat, but had not buttoned
+it; his shirt, wet as though he had been in the lake, clung to him and
+revealed the outline of every muscle in his great trunk. He flung his hat
+on the draughting-table, and his yellow hair seemed crisper and curlier
+than ever before.
+
+"Well, it looks as though we was all right," he said.
+
+Hilda nodded emphatically. "You think we'll get through in time, don't
+you, Mr. Peterson?"
+
+"Think!" he exclaimed. "I don't have to stop to think. Here comes Max;
+just ask him."
+
+Max slammed the door behind him, brought down the timekeeper's book on
+Hilda's desk with a slap that made her jump, and vaulted to a seat on the
+railing. "Well, I guess it's a case of hurrah for us, ain't it, Pete?"
+
+"Your sister asked me if I thought we'd get done on time. I was just
+saying it's a sure thing."
+
+"I don't know," said Max, laughing. "I guess an earthquake could stop us.
+But why ain't you abed, Pete?"
+
+"What do I want to be abed for? I ain't going to sleep any more this
+year--unless we get through a day or two ahead of time. I don't like to
+miss any of it. Charlie Bannon may have hustled before, but I guess this
+breaks his record. Where is he now, Max?"
+
+"Down in the cellar putting in the running gear for the 'cross-the-house
+conveyors. He has his nerve with him. He's putting in three drives
+entirely different from the way they are in the plans. He told me just now
+that there wasn't a man in the office who could design a drive that
+wouldn't tie itself up in square knots in the first ten minutes. I wonder
+what old MacBride'll say when he sees that he's changed the plans."
+
+"If MacBride has good sense, he'll pass anything that Charlie puts up,"
+said Pete.
+
+He was going to say more, but just then Bannon strode into the office and
+over to the draughting table. He tossed Pete's hat to one side and began
+studying a detail of the machinery plans.
+
+"Max." He spoke without looking up. "I wish you'd find a water boy and
+send him up to the hotel to get a couple of sandwiches and a bottle of
+coffee."
+
+"Well, that's a nice way to celebrate, I must say," Pete commented.
+
+"Celebrate what?"
+
+"Why, last night; throwing Grady down. You ought to take a day off on the
+strength of that."
+
+"What's Grady got to do with it? He ain't in the specifications."
+
+"No," said Pete, slowly; "but where would we have been if he'd got the men
+off?"
+
+"Where would we have been if the house had burned up?" Bannon retorted,
+turning away from the table. "That's got nothing to do with it. I haven't
+felt less like taking a day off since I came on the job. We may get
+through on time and we may not. If we get tangled up in the plans like
+this, very often, I don't know how we'll come out. But the surest way to
+get left is to begin now telling ourselves that this is easy and it's a
+cinch. That kind of talk makes me tired."
+
+Pete flushed, started an explanatory sentence, and another, and then, very
+uncomfortable, went out.
+
+Bannon did not look up; he went on studying the blue print, measuring here
+and there with his three-sided ruler and jotting down incomprehensible
+operations in arithmetic on a scrap of paper. Max was figuring tables in
+his time-book, Hilda poring over the cash account. For half an hour no one
+spoke. Max crammed his cap down over his ears and went out, and there were
+ten minutes more of silence. Then Bannon began talking. He still busied
+his fingers with the blue print, and Hilda, after discovering that he was
+talking to himself rather than to her, went on with her work. But
+nevertheless she heard, in a fragmentary way, what he was saying.
+
+"Take a day off--schoolboy trick--enough to make a man tired. Might as
+well do it, though. We ain't going to get through. The office ought to do
+a little work once in a while just to see what it's like. They think a
+man can do anything. I'd like to know why I ain't entitled to a night's
+sleep as well as MacBride. But he don't think so. After he'd worked me
+twenty-four hours a day up to Duluth, and I lost thirty-two pounds up
+there, he sends me down to a mess like this. With a lot of drawings that
+look as though they were made by a college boy. Where does he expect 'em
+to pile their car doors, I'd like to know."
+
+That was the vein of it, though the monologue ran on much longer. But at
+last he swung impatiently around and addressed Hilda. "I'm ready to throw
+up my hands. I think I'll go back to Minneapolis and tell MacBride I've
+had enough. He can come down here and finish the house himself."
+
+"Do you think he would get it done in time?" Hilda's eyes were laughing at
+him, but she kept them on her work.
+
+"Oh, yes," he said wearily. "He'd get the grain into her somehow. You
+couldn't stump MacBride with anything. That's why he makes it so warm for
+us."
+
+"Do you think," she asked very demurely, indeed, "that if Mr. MacBride had
+been here he could have built it any faster than--than we have, so far?"
+
+"I don't believe it," said Bannon, unwarily. Her smile told him that he
+had been trapped. "I see," he added. "You mean that there ain't any reason
+why we can't do it."
+
+He arose and tramped uneasily about the little shanty. "Oh, of course,
+we'll get it done--just because we have to. There ain't anything else we
+can do. But just the same I'm sick of the business. I want to quit."
+
+She said nothing, and after a moment he wheeled and, facing her, demanded
+abruptly: "What's the matter with me, anyway?" She looked at him frankly,
+a smile, almost mischievous, in her face. The hard, harassed look between
+his eyes and about his drawn mouth melted away, and he repeated the
+question: "What's the matter with me? You're the doctor. I'll take
+whatever medicine you say."
+
+"You didn't take Mr. Peterson's suggestion very well--about taking a
+holiday, I mean. I don't know whether I dare prescribe for you or not. I
+don't think you need a day off. I think that, next to a good, long
+vacation, the best thing for you is excitement." He laughed. "No, I mean
+it. You're tired out, of course, but if you have enough to occupy your
+mind, you don't know it. The trouble today is that everything is going too
+smoothly. You weren't a bit afraid yesterday that the elevator wouldn't be
+done on time. That was because you thought there was going to be a strike.
+And if just now the elevator should catch on fire or anything, you'd feel
+all right about it again."
+
+He still half suspected that she was making game of him, and he looked at
+her steadily while he turned her words over in his mind. "Well," he said,
+with a short laugh, "if the only medicine I need is excitement, I'll be
+the healthiest man you ever saw in a little while. I guess I'll find Pete.
+I must have made him feel pretty sore."
+
+"Pete," he said, coming upon him in the marine tower a little later, "I've
+got over my stomach-ache. Is it all right?"
+
+"Sure," said Pete; "I didn't know you was feeling bad. I was thinking
+about that belt gallery, Charlie. Ain't it time we was putting it up? I'm
+getting sort of nervous about it."
+
+"There ain't three days' work in it, the way we're going," said Bannon,
+thoughtfully, his eyes on the C. & S. C. right-of-way that lay between him
+and the main house, "but I guess you're right. We'll get at it now.
+There's no telling what sort of a surprise party those railroad fellows
+may have for us. The plans call for three trestles between the tracks.
+We'll get those up today."
+
+To Pete, building the gallery was a more serious business. He had not
+Bannon's years of experience at bridge repairing; it had happened that he
+had never been called upon to put up a belt gallery before, and this idea
+of building a wooden box one hundred and fifty feet long and holding it
+up, thirty feet in air, on three trestles, was formidable. Bannon's
+nonchalant air of setting about it seemed almost an affectation.
+
+Each trestle was to consist of a rank of four posts, planted in a line at
+right angles to the direction of the gallery; they were to be held
+together at the top by a corbel. No one gave rush orders any more on
+Calumet K, for the reason that no one ever thought of doing anything else.
+If Bannon sent for a man, he came on the run. So in an incredibly short
+time the fences were down and a swarm of men with spades, post augers,
+picks, and shovels had invaded the C. & S. C. right-of-way. Up and down
+the track a hundred yards each way from the line of the gallery Bannon had
+stationed men to give warning of the approach of trains. "Now," said
+Bannon, "we'll get this part of the job done before any one has time to
+kick. And they won't be very likely to try to pull 'em up by the roots
+once we get 'em planted."
+
+But the section boss had received instructions that caused him to be
+wide-awake, day or night, to what was going on in the neighborhood of
+Calumet K. Half an hour after the work was begun, the picket line up the
+track signalled that something was coming. There was no sound of bell or
+whistle, but presently Bannon saw a hand car spinning down the track as
+fast as six big, sweating men could pump the levers. The section boss had
+little to say; simply that they were to get out of there and put up that
+fence again, and the quicker the better. Bannon tried to tell him that the
+railroad had consented to their putting in the gallery, that they were
+well within their rights, that he, the section boss, had better be careful
+not to exceed his instructions. But the section boss had spoken his whole
+mind already. He was not of the sort that talk just for the pleasure of
+hearing their own voices, and he had categorical instructions that made
+parley unnecessary. He would not even tell from whom he had the orders. So
+the posts were lugged out of the way and the fence was put up and the men
+scattered out to their former work again, grinning a little over Bannon's
+discomfiture.
+
+Bannon's next move was to write to Minneapolis for information and
+instructions, but MacBride, who seemed to have all the information there
+was, happened to be in Duluth, and Brown's instructions were consequently
+foggy. So, after waiting a few days for something more definite, Bannon
+disappeared one afternoon and was gone more than an hour. When he strode
+into the office again, keen and springy as though his work had just begun,
+Hilda looked up and smiled a little. Pete was tilted back in the chair
+staring glumly out of the window. He did not turn until Bannon slapped him
+jovially on the shoulders and told him to cheer up.
+
+"Those railroad chaps are laying for us, sure enough," he said. "I've been
+talking to MacBride himself--over at the telephone exchange; he ain't in
+town--and he said that Porter--he's the vice-president of the C. & S. C.--
+Porter told him, when he was in Chicago, that they wouldn't object at all
+to our building the gallery over their tracks. But that's all we've got to
+go by. Not a word on paper. Oh, they mean to give us a picnic, and no
+mistake!"
+
+With that, Bannon called up the general offices of the C. & S. C. and
+asked for Mr. Porter. There was some little delay in getting the
+connection, and then three or four minutes of fencing while a young man at
+the other end of the line tried to satisfy himself that Bannon had the
+right to ask for Mr. Porter, let alone to talk with him, and Bannon,
+steadily ignoring his questions, continued blandly requesting him to call
+Mr. Porter to the telephone. Hilda was listening with interest, for
+Bannon's manner was different from anything she had ever seen in him
+before. It lacked nothing of his customary assurance, but its breeziness
+gave place to the most studied restraint; he might have been a railroad
+president himself. He hung up the receiver, however, without accomplishing
+anything, for the young man finally told him that Mr. Porter had gone out
+for the afternoon.
+
+So next morning Bannon tried again. He learned that Porter was in, and all
+seemed to be going well until he mentioned MacBride & Company, after which
+Mr. Porter became very elusive. Three or four attempts to pin him down, or
+at least to learn his whereabouts, proved unsuccessful, and at last
+Bannon, with wrath in his heart, started down town.
+
+It was nearly night before he came back, and as before, he found Pete
+sitting gloomily in the office waiting his return. "Well," exclaimed the
+night boss, looking at him eagerly; "I thought you was never coming back.
+We've most had a fit here, wondering how you'd come out. I don't have to
+ask you, though. I can see by your looks that we're all right."
+
+Bannon laughed, and glanced over at Hilda, who was watching him closely.
+"Is that your guess, too, Miss Vogel?"
+
+"I don't think so," she said. "I think you've had a pretty hard time."
+
+"They're both good guesses," he said, pulling a paper out of his pocket,
+and handing it to Hilda. "Read that." It was a formal permit for building
+the gallery, signed by Porter himself, and bearing the O.K. of the general
+manager.
+
+"Nice, isn't it?" Bannon commented. "Now read the postscript, Miss Vogel."
+It was in Porter's handwriting, and Hilda read it slowly. "MacBride &
+Company are not, however, allowed to erect trestles or temporary
+scaffolding in the C. & S. C. right-of-way, nor to remove any property of
+the Company, such as fences, nor to do anything which may, in the opinion
+of the local authorities, hinder the movement of trains."
+
+Pete's face went blank. "A lot of good this darned permit does us then.
+That just means we can't build it."
+
+Bannon nodded. "That's what it's supposed to mean," he said. "That's just
+the point."
+
+"You see, it's like this," he went on. "That man Porter would make the
+finest material for ring-oiling, dust proof, non-inflammable bearings that
+I ever saw. He's just about the hardest, smoothest, shiniest, coolest
+little piece of metal that ever came my way. Well, he wants to delay us on
+this job. I took that in the moment I saw him. Well, I told him how we
+went ahead, just banking on his verbal consent, and how his railroad had
+jumped on us; and I said I was sure it was just a misunderstanding, but I
+wanted it cleared up because we was in a hurry. He grinned a little over
+that, and I went on talking. Said we'd bother 'em as little as possible;
+of course we had to put up the trestles in their property, because we
+couldn't hold the thing up with a balloon.
+
+"He asked me, innocent as you please, if a steel bridge couldn't be made
+in a single span, and I said, yes, but it would take too long. We only had
+a few days. 'Well,' he says, 'Mr. Bannon, I'll give you a permit.' And
+that's what he gave me. I bet he's grinning yet. I wonder if he'll grin so
+much about three days from now."
+
+"Do you mean that you can build it anyway?" Hilda demanded breathlessly.
+
+He nodded, and, turning to Pete, plunged into a swift, technical
+explanation of how the trick was to be done. "Won't you please tell me,
+too?" Hilda asked appealingly.
+
+"Sure," he said. He sat down beside her at the desk and began drawing on a
+piece of paper. Pete came and looked over his shoulder. Bannon began his
+explanation.
+
+
+
+Illustration: ["HERE'S THE SPOUTING HOUSE"]
+
+
+
+"Here's the spouting house, and here's the elevator. Now, suppose they
+were only fifteen feet apart. Then if we had two ten-foot sticks and put
+'em up at an angle and fastened the floor to a bolt that came down between
+'em, the whole weight of the thing would be passed along to the foundation
+that the ends of the timbers rest on. But you see, it's got to be one
+hundred and fifty feet long, and to build it that way would take two one
+hundred-foot timbers, and we haven't got 'em that long.
+
+
+Illustration: [HE WAS DRAWING LINES ACROSS THE TIMBER]
+
+
+"But we've got plenty of sticks that are twenty feet long, and plenty of
+bolts, and this is the way we arrange 'em. We put up our first stick (x)
+at an angle just as before. Then we let a bolt (o) down through the upper
+end of it and through the floor of the gallery. Now the next timber (y) we
+put up at just the same angle as the first, with the foot of it bearing
+down on the lower end of the bolt.
+
+"That second stick pushes two ways. A straight down push and a sideways
+push. The bolt resists the down push and transmits it to the first stick,
+and that pushes against the sill that I marked a. Now, the sideways push
+is against the butt of the first timber of the floor, and that's passed
+on, same way, to the sill.
+
+
+Illustration: ["WELL, THAT'S THE WHOLE TRICK"]
+
+
+"Well, that's the whole trick. You begin at both ends at once and just
+keep right on going. When the thing's done it looks this way. You see
+where the two sections meet in the middle, it's just the same as the
+little fifteen-foot gallery that we made a picture of up here."
+
+"I understand that all right," said Pete, "but I don't see yet how you're
+going to do it without some kind of scaffolding."
+
+"Easy. I ain't going to use a balloon, but I've got something that's
+better. It'll be out here this afternoon. Come and help me get things
+ready."
+
+There was not much to do, for the timber was already cut to the right
+sizes, but Bannon was not content till everything was piled so that when
+work did begin on the gallery it could go without a hitch. He was already
+several days behind, and when one is figuring it as fine as Bannon was
+doing in those last days, even one day is a serious matter. He could do
+nothing more at the belt gallery until his substitute for a scaffold
+should arrive; it did not come that afternoon or evening, and next morning
+when he came on the job it still had not been heard from. There was enough
+to occupy every moment of his time and every shred of his thought without
+bothering about the gallery, and he did not worry about it as he would
+have worried if he had had nothing to do but wait for it.
+
+But when, well along in the afternoon, a water boy found him up on the
+weighing floor and told him there was something for him at the office, he
+made astonishing time getting down. "Here's your package," said Max, as
+Bannon burst into the little shanty. It was a little, round, pasteboard
+box. If Bannon had had the office to himself, he would, in his
+disappointment, have cursed the thing till it took fire. As it was, he
+stood speechless a moment and then turned to go out again.
+
+"Aren't you going to open it, now you're here?" asked Max.
+
+Bannon, after hesitating, acted on the suggestion, and when he saw what it
+was, he laughed. No, Brown had not forgotten the hat! Max gazed at it in
+unfeigned awe; it was shiny as a mirror, black as a hearse, tall, in
+his eyes--for this was his first near view of one--as the seat of a
+dining-room chair. "Put it on," he said to Bannon. "Let's see how it looks
+on you."
+
+"Not much. Wouldn't I look silly in a thing like that, though? I'd rather
+wear an ordinary length of stovepipe. That'd be durable, anyway. I wonder
+what Brown sent it for. I thought he knew a joke when he saw one."
+
+Just then one of the under-foremen came in. "Oh, Mr. Bannon," he said,
+"I've been looking for you. There's a tug in the river with a big, steel
+cable aboard that they said was for us. I told 'em I thought it was a
+mistake--"
+
+It was all one movement, Bannon's jamming that hat--the silk hat--down on
+his head, and diving through the door. He shouted orders as he ran, and a
+number of men, Pete among them, got to the wharf as soon as he did.
+
+"Now, boys, this is all the false work we can have. We're going to hang it
+up across the tracks and hang our gallery up on it till it's strong enough
+to hold itself. We've got just forty-eight hours to do the whole trick.
+Catch hold now--lively."
+
+
+Illustration: [IT WAS A SIMPLE SCHEME]
+
+
+It was a simple scheme of Bannon's. The floor of the gallery was to be
+built in two sections, one in the main house, one in the spouting house.
+As fast as the timbers were bolted together the halves of the floor were
+shoved out over the tracks, each free end being supported by a rope which
+ran up over a pulley. The pulley was held by an iron ring fast to the
+cable, but perfectly free to slide along it, and thus accompany the end of
+the floor as it was moved outward. Bannon explained it to Pete in a few
+quick words while the men were hustling the big cable off the tug.
+
+"Of course," he was concluding, "the thing'll wabble a good deal,
+specially if it's as windy as this, and it won't be easy to work on, but
+it won't fall if we make everything fast."
+
+Pete had listened pretty closely at first, but now Bannon noticed that his
+attention seemed to be wandering to a point a few inches above Bannon's
+head. He was about to ask what was the matter when he found out. It was
+windier on that particular wharf than anywhere else in the Calumet flats,
+and the hat he had on was not built for that sort of weather. It was
+perfectly rigid, and not at all accommodated to the shape of Bannon's
+head. So, very naturally, it blew off, rolled around among their feet for
+a moment, and then dropped into the river between the wharf and the tug.
+
+Bannon was up on the spouting house, helping make fast the cable end when
+a workman brought the hat back to him. Somebody on the tug had fished it
+out with a trolling line. But the hat was well past resuscitation. It had
+been thoroughly drowned, and it seemed to know it.
+
+"Take that to the office," said Bannon. "Have Vogel wrap it up just as it
+is and ship it to Mr. Brown. I'll dictate a letter to go with it by and
+by."
+
+For all Bannon's foresight, there threatened to be a hitch in the work on
+the gallery. The day shift was on again, and twenty-four of Bannon's
+forty-eight hours were spent, when he happened to say to a man:--
+
+"Never mind that now, but be sure you fix it tomorrow."
+
+"Tomorrow?" the man repeated. "We ain't going to work tomorrow, are we?"
+
+Bannon noticed that every man within hearing stopped work, waiting for the
+answer. "Sure," he said. "Why not?"
+
+There was some dissatisfied grumbling among them which he was quite at a
+loss to understand until he caught the word "Christmas."
+
+"Christmas!" he exclaimed, in perfectly honest astonishment. "Is tomorrow
+Christmas?" He ran his hand through his stubby hair. "Boys," he said, "I'm
+sorry to have to ask it of you. But can't we put it off a week? Look here.
+We need this day. Now, if you'll say Christmas is a week from tomorrow,
+I'll give every man on the job a Christmas dinner that you'll never
+forget; all you can eat and as much again, and you bring your friends, if
+we work tomorrow and we have her full of wheat a week from today. Does
+that go?"
+
+It went, with a ripping cheer to boot; a cheer that was repeated here and
+there all over the place as Bannon's offer was passed along.
+
+So for another twenty-four hours they strained and tugged and tusselled up
+in the big swing, for it was nothing else, above the railroad tracks.
+There was a northeast gale raging down off the lake, with squalls of rain
+and sleet mixed up in it, and it took the crazy, swaying box in its teeth
+and shook it and tossed it up in the air in its eagerness to strip it off
+the cable. But somewhere there was an unconquerable tenacity that held
+fast, and in the teeth of the wind the long box grew rigid, as the trusses
+were pounded into place by men so spent with fatigue that one might say it
+was sheer good will that drove the hammers.
+
+At four o'clock Christmas afternoon the last bolt was drawn taut. The
+gallery, was done. Bannon had been on the work since midnight--sixteen
+consecutive hours. He had eaten nothing except two sandwiches that he had
+stowed in his pockets. His only pause had been about nine o'clock that
+morning when he had put his head in the office door to wish Hilda a Merry
+Christmas.
+
+When the evening shift came on--that was just after four--one of the
+under-foremen tried to get him to talking, but Bannon was too tired to
+talk. "Get your tracks and rollers in," he said. "Take down the cable."
+
+"Don't you want to stay and see if she'll hold when the cable comes down?"
+called the foreman after him as he started away.
+
+"She'll hold," said Bannon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Before December was half gone--and while the mild autumn weather serenely
+held, in spite of weather predictions and of storm signs about the sun and
+days of blue haze and motionless trees--the newspaper-reading public knew
+all the outside facts about the fight in wheat, and they knew it to be the
+biggest fight since the days of "Old Hutch" and the two-dollar-a-bushel
+record. Indeed, there were men who predicted that the two-dollar mark
+would be reached before Christmas, for the Clique of speculators who held
+the floor were buying, buying, buying--millions upon millions of dollars
+were slipping through their ready hands, and still there was no
+hesitation, no weakening. Until the small fry had dropped out the deal had
+been confused; it was too big, there were too many interests involved, to
+make possible a clear understanding, but now it was settling down into a
+grim fight between the biggest men on the Board. The Clique were buying
+wheat--Page & Company were selling it to them: if it should come out, on
+the thirty-first of December, that Page & Company had sold more than they
+could deliver, the Clique would be winners; but if it should have been
+delivered, to the last bushel, the corner would be broken, and the Clique
+would drop from sight as so many reckless men had dropped before. The
+readers of every great newspaper in the country were watching Page &
+Company. The general opinion was that they could not do it, that such an
+enormous quantity of grain could not be delivered and registered in time,
+even if it were to be had.
+
+But the public overlooked, indeed it had no means of knowing, one
+important fact. The members of the Clique were new men in the public eye.
+They represented apparently unlimited capital, but they were young, eager,
+overstrung; flushed with the prospect of success, they were talking for
+publication. They believed they knew of every bushel in the country that
+was to be had, and they allowed themselves to say that they had already
+bought more than this. If this were true, Page was beaten. But it was not
+true. The young men of the Clique had forgotten that Page had trained
+agents in every part of the world; that he had alliances with great
+railroad and steamer lines, that he had a weather bureau and a system of
+crop reports that outdid those of the United States Government, that he
+could command more money than two such Cliques, and, most important of
+all, that he did not talk for publication. The young speculators were
+matching their wits against a great machine. Page had the wheat, he was
+making the effort of his career to deliver it, and he had no idea of
+losing.
+
+Already millions of bushels had been rushed into Chicago. It was here that
+the fight took on its spectacular features, for the grain must be weighed
+and inspected before it could be accepted by the Board of Trade, and this
+could be done only in "regular" warehouses. The struggle had been to get
+control of these warehouses. It was here that the Clique had done their
+shrewdest work, and they had supposed that Page was finally outwitted,
+until they discovered that he had coolly set about building a
+million-bushel annex to his new house, Calumet K. And so it was that the
+newspapers learned that on the chance of completing Calumet K before the
+thirty-first of December hung the whole question of winning and losing;
+that if Bannon should fail, Page would be short two million bushels. And
+then came reporters and newspaper illustrators, who hung about the office
+and badgered Hilda, or perched on timber piles and sketched until Bannon
+or Peterson or Max could get at them and drive them out. Young men with
+snap-shot cameras waylaid Bannon on his way to luncheon, and published,
+with his picture, elaborate stories of his skill in averting a strike--
+stories that were not at all true.
+
+Far out in Minnesota and Montana and South Dakota farmers were driving
+their wheat-laden wagons to the hundreds of local receiving houses that
+dotted the railroad lines. Box cars were waiting for the red grain, to
+roll it away to Minneapolis and Duluth--day and night the long trains were
+puffing eastward. Everywhere the order was, "Rush!" Railroad presidents
+and managers knew that Page was in a hurry, and they knew what Page's
+hurries meant, not only to the thousands of men who depended on him for
+their daily bread, but to the many great industries of the Northwest,
+whose credit and integrity were inextricably interwoven with his. Division
+superintendents knew that Page was in a hurry, and they snapped out orders
+and discharged half-competent men and sent quick words along the hot wires
+that were translated by despatchers and operators and yard masters into
+profane, driving commands. Conductors knew it, brakemen and switchmen knew
+it; they made flying switches in defiance of companies' orders, they ran
+where they used to walk, they slung their lunch pails on their arms and
+ate when and where they could, gazing over their cold tea at some portrait
+of Page, or of a member of the Clique, or of Bannon, in the morning's
+paper.
+
+Elevator men at Minneapolis knew that Page was in a hurry, and they worked
+day and night at shovel and scale. Steamboat masters up at Duluth knew it,
+and mates and deck hands and stevedores and dockwallopers--more than one
+steamer scraped her paint in the haste to get under the long spouts that
+waited to pour out grain by the hundred thousand bushels. Trains came down
+from Minneapolis, boats came down from Duluth, warehouse after warehouse
+at Chicago was filled; and overstrained nerves neared the breaking point
+as the short December days flew by. Some said the Clique would win, some
+said Page would win; in the wheat pit men were fighting like tigers; every
+one who knew the facts was watching Charlie Bannon.
+
+The storm came on the eighteenth of the month. It was predicted two days
+ahead, and ship masters were warned at all the lake ports. It was a
+Northwest blizzard, driven down from the Canadian Rockies at sixty miles
+an hour, leaving two feet of snow behind it over a belt hundreds of miles
+wide. But Page's steamers were not stopping for blizzards; they headed out
+of Duluth regardless of what was to come. And there were a bad few days,
+with tales of wreck on lake and railroad, days of wind and snow and bitter
+cold, and of risks run that supplied round-house and tug-office yarn
+spinners with stories that were not yet worn out. Down on the job the snow
+brought the work to a pause, but Bannon, within a half-hour, was out of
+bed and on the ground, and there was no question of changing shifts until,
+after twenty-four hours, the storm had passed, and elevator, annex and
+marine tower were cleared of snow. Men worked until they could not
+stagger, then snatched a few hours' sleep where they could. Word was
+passed that those who wished might observe the regular hours, but not a
+dozen men took the opportunity. For now they were in the public eye, and
+they felt as soldiers feel, when, after long months of drill and
+discipline, they are led to the charge.
+
+Then came two days of biting weather--when ears were nipped and fingers
+stiffened, and carpenters who earned three dollars a day envied the
+laborers, whose work kept their blood moving--and after this a thaw, with
+sleet and rain. James, the new delegate, came to Bannon and pointed out
+that men who are continually drenched to the skin are not the best
+workmen. The boss met the delegate fairly; he ordered an oilskin coat for
+every man on the job, and in another day they swarmed over the building,
+looking, at a distance, like glistening yellow beetles.
+
+But if Chicago was thawing, Duluth was not. The harbor at the western end
+of Lake Superior was ice-bound, and it finally reached a point that the
+tugs could not break open the channel. This was on the twenty-third and
+twenty-fourth. The wires were hot, but Page's agents succeeded in covering
+the facts until Christmas Day. It was just at dusk, after leaving the men
+to take down the cable, that Bannon went to the office.
+
+A newsboy had been on the grounds with a special edition of a cheap
+afternoon paper. Hilda had taken one, and when Bannon entered the office
+he found her reading, leaning forward on the desk, her chin on her hands,
+the paper spread out over the ledger.
+
+"Hello," he said, throwing off his dripping oilskin, and coming into the
+enclosure; "I'm pretty near ready to sit down and think about the
+Christmas tree that we ain't going to have."
+
+She looked up, and he saw that she was a little excited; her eyes always
+told him. During this last week she had been carrying the whole
+responsibility of the work on her shoulders.
+
+"Have you seen this?" she asked.
+
+"Haven't read a paper this week." He leaned over the desk beside her and
+read the article. In Duluth harbor, and at St. Mary's straits, a channel
+through the ice had been blasted out with dynamite, and the last laden
+steamer was now ploughing down Lake Michigan. Already one steamer was
+lying at the wharf by the marine tower, waiting for the machinery to
+start, and others lay behind her, farther down the river. Long strings of
+box cars filled the Belt Line sidings, ready to roll into the elevator at
+the word.
+
+Bannon seated himself on the railing, and caught his toes between the
+supports.
+
+"I'll tell you one thing," he said, "those fellows have got to get up
+pretty early in the morning if they're going to beat old Page."
+
+She looked at him, and then slowly folded the paper and turned toward the
+window. It was nearly dark outside. The rain, driving down from the
+northeast, tapped steadily on the glass. The arc lamp, on the pole near
+the tool house, was a blurred circle of light. She was thinking that they
+would have to get up pretty early to beat Charlie Bannon.
+
+They were silent for a time--silences were not so hard as they had been, a
+few weeks before--both looking out at the storm, and both thinking that
+this was Christmas night. On the afternoon before he had asked her to take
+a holiday, and she had shaken her head. "I couldn't--I'd be here before
+noon," was what she had said; and she had laughed a little at her own
+confession, and hurried away with Max.
+
+She turned and said, "Is it done--the belt gallery?"
+
+He nodded. "All done."
+
+"Well--" she smiled; and he nodded again.
+
+"The C. & S. C. man--the fellow that was around the other day and measured
+to see if it was high enough--he's out there looking up with his mouth
+open. He hasn't got much to say."
+
+"You didn't have to touch the tracks at all?"
+
+"Not once. Ran her out and bolted her together, and there she was. I'm
+about ready for my month off. We'll have the wheat coming in tomorrow, and
+then it's just walking down hill."
+
+"Tomorrow?" she asked. "Can you do it?"
+
+"Got to. Five or six days aren't any too much. If it was an old house and
+the machinery was working well, I'd undertake to do it in two or three,
+but if we get through without ripping up the gallery, or pounding the leg
+through the bottom of a steamer, it'll be the kind of luck I don't have."
+He paused and looked at the window, where the rain was streaking the
+glass. "I've been thinking about my vacation. I've about decided to go to
+the St. Lawrence. Maybe there are places I'd like better, but when a
+fellow hasn't had a month off in five years, he doesn't feel like
+experiments."
+
+It was the personal tone again, coming into their talk in spite of the
+excitement of the day and the many things that might have been said.
+
+Hilda looked down at the ledger, and fingered the pages. Bannon smiled.
+
+"If I were you," he said, "I'd shut that up and fire it under the table.
+This light isn't, good enough to work by, anyway."
+
+She slowly closed the book, saying:--
+
+"I never worked before on Christmas."
+
+"It's a mistake. I don't believe in it, but somehow it's when my hardest
+work always comes. One Christmas, when I was on the Grand Trunk, there was
+a big wreck at a junction about sixty miles down the road."
+
+She saw the memory coming into his eyes, and she leaned back against the
+desk, playing with her pen, and now and then looking up.
+
+"I was chief wrecker, and I had an old Scotch engineer that you couldn't
+move with a jack. We'd rubbed up together three or four times before I'd
+had him a month, and I was getting tired of it. We'd got about halfway to
+the junction that night, and I felt the brakes go on hard, and before I
+could get through the train and over the tender, we'd stopped dead. The
+Scotchman was down by the drivers fussing around with a lantern. I
+hollered out:--
+
+"'What's the matter there?'
+
+"'She's a bit 'ot,' said he.
+
+"You'd have thought he was running a huckleberry train from the time he
+took. I ordered him into the cab, and he just waved his hand and said:--
+
+"'Wait a bit, wait a bit. She'll be cool directly.'"
+
+Bannon chuckled at the recollection.
+
+"What did you do?" Hilda asked.
+
+"Jumped for the lever, and hollered for him to get aboard."
+
+"Did he come?"
+
+"No, he couldn't think that fast. He just stood still, looking at me,
+while I threw her open, and you could see his lantern for a mile back--he
+never moved. He had a good six-mile walk back to the last station."
+
+There was a long silence. Bannon got up and walked slowly up and down the
+enclosure with his hands deep in his pockets.
+
+"I wish this would let up," he said, after a time, pausing in his walk,
+and looking again at the window. "It's a wonder we're getting things done
+at all."
+
+Hilda's eye, roaming over the folded newspaper, fell on the weather
+forecast.
+
+"Fair tomorrow," she said, "and colder."
+
+"That doesn't stand for much. They said the same thing yesterday. It's a
+worse gamble than wheat."
+
+Bannon took to walking again; and Hilda stepped down and stood by the
+window, spelling out the word "Calumet" with her ringer on the misty
+glass. At each turn, Bannon paused and looked at her. Finally he stood
+still, not realizing that he was staring until she looked around, flushed,
+and dropped her eyes. Then he felt awkward, and he began turning over the
+blue prints on the table.
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll have to do," he said. "I rather think now I'll
+start on the third for Montreal, I'm telling you a secret, you know. I'm
+not going to let Brown or MacBride know where I'll be. And if I can pick
+up some good pictures of the river, I'll send them to you. I'll get one of
+the Montmorency Falls, if I can. They're great in winter."
+
+"Why--why, thank you," she said. "I'd like to have them."
+
+"I ain't much at writing letters," he went on, "but I'll send you the
+pictures, and you write and tell me how things are going."
+
+She laughed softly, and followed the zigzag course of the raindrop with
+her finger.
+
+"I wouldn't have very much to say," she said, speaking with a little
+hesitation, and without looking around. "Max and I never do much."
+
+"Oh, you can tell how your work goes, and what you do nights."
+
+"We don't do much of anything. Max studies some at night--a man he used to
+work for gave him a book of civil engineering."
+
+"What do you do?"
+
+"I read some, and then I like to learn things about--oh, about business,
+and how things are done."
+
+Bannon could not take his eyes from her--he was looking at her hair, and
+at the curved outline of one cheek, all that he could see of her face.
+They both stood still, listening to the patter of the rain, and to the
+steady drip from the other end of the office, where there was a leak in
+the roof. Once she cleared her throat, as if to speak, but no words came.
+
+There was a stamping outside, and she slipped back to the ledger, as the
+door flew open. Bannon turned to the blue prints.
+
+Max entered, pausing to knock his cap against the door, and wring it out.
+
+"You ought to have stayed out, Mr. Bannon," he said. "It's the greatest
+thing you ever saw--doesn't sag an inch. And say--I wish you could hear
+the boys talk--they'd lie down and let you walk on 'em, if you wanted to."
+
+Max's eyes were bright, and his face red with exercise and excitement. He
+came to the gate and stood wiping his feet and looking from one to the
+other for several moments before he felt the awkwardness that had come
+over him. His long rubber coat was thrown back, and little streams of
+water ran down his back and formed a pool on the floor behind him.
+
+"You'd better come out," he said. "It's the prettiest thing I ever saw--a
+clean straight span from the main house to the tower."
+
+Bannon stood watching him quizzically; then he turned to Hilda. She, too,
+had been looking at Max, but she turned at the same moment, and their eyes
+met.
+
+"Do you want to go?" he said.
+
+She nodded eagerly. "I'd like to ever so much."
+
+Then Bannon thought of the rain, but she saw his thought as he glanced
+toward the window, and spoke quickly.
+
+"I don't mind--really. Max will let me take his coat."
+
+"Sure," said Max, and he grinned. She slipped into it, and it enveloped
+her, hanging in folds and falling on the floor.
+
+"I'll have to hold it up," she said. "Do we have much climbing?"
+
+"No," said Max, "it ain't high. And the stairs are done, you know."
+
+Hilda lifted the coat a little way with both hands, and put out one small
+toe. Bannon looked at it, and shook his head. "You'll get your feet wet,"
+he said.
+
+She looked up and met Bannon's eyes again, with an expression that puzzled
+Max.
+
+"I don't care. It's almost time to go home, anyway."
+
+So they went out, and closed the door; and Max, who had been told to "stay
+behind and keep house," looked after them, and then at the door, and an
+odd expression of slow understanding came into his face. It was not in
+what they had said, but there was plainly a new feeling between them. For
+the first time in his life, Max felt that another knew Hilda better than
+he did. The way Bannon had looked at her, and she at him; the mutual
+understanding that left everything unsaid; the something--Max did not know
+what it was, but he saw it and felt it, and it disturbed him. He sat on
+the table, and swung his feet, while one expression chased another over
+his face. When he finally got himself together, he went to the door, and
+opening it, looked out at the black, dim shape of the elevator that, stood
+big and square, only a little way before him, shutting out whatever he
+might else have seen of rushing sky or dim-lighted river, or of the
+railroads and the steamboats and the factories and rolling mills beyond.
+It was as if this elevator were his fate, looming before him and shutting
+out the forward view. In whatever thoughts he had had of the future, in
+whatever plans, and they were few, which he had revolved in his head,
+there had always been a place for Hilda. He did not see just what he was
+to do, just what he was to become, without her. He stood there for a long
+time, leaning against the door-jamb with his hands in his pockets, and the
+sharper gusts of rain whirled around the end of the little building and
+beat on him. And then--well, it was Charlie Bannon; and Max knew that he
+was glad it was no one else.
+
+The narrow windows in the belt gallery had no glass, and the rain came
+driving through them into the shadows, each drop catching the white shine
+of the electric lights outside. The floor was trampled with mud and
+littered with scraps of lumber, tool boxes, empty nail kegs, and shavings.
+The long, gloomy gallery was empty when Bannon and Hilda stepped into it,
+excepting a group of men at the farther end, installing the rollers for
+the belt conveyor--they could be seen indistinctly against a light in the
+river house.
+
+The wind came roaring around the building, and the gallery trembled and
+shook. Hilda caught her breath and stopped short.
+
+"It's all right," said Bannon. "She's bound to move some."
+
+"I know--" she laughed--"I wasn't expecting it--it startled me a little."
+
+"Watch where you step." He took her arm and guided her slowly between the
+heaps of rubbish.
+
+At one of the windows she paused, and stood full in the rain, looking out
+at the C. & S. C. tracks, with their twinkling red and green lights, all
+blurred and seeming far off in the storm.
+
+"Isn't this pretty wet?" he said, standing beside her.
+
+"I don't care." She shook the folds of the rubber coat, and glanced down
+at it. "I like it."
+
+They looked out for a long time. Two millwrights came through the gallery,
+and glanced at them, but they did not turn. She stepped forward and let
+the rain beat on her face--he stood behind, looking at her. A light showed
+far down the track, and they heard a faint whistle. "A train," he said;
+and she nodded. The headlight grew, and the car lights appeared behind it,
+and then the black outline of the engine. There was a rush and a roar, and
+it passed under them.
+
+"Doesn't it make you want to jump down?" she said softly, when the roar
+had dwindled away.
+
+He nodded with a half-smile. "Say," he said, a little later, "I don't know
+about your writing--I don't believe we'd better--" he got the words out
+more rapidly--"I'll tell you what you do--you come along with me and we
+won't have to write."
+
+"Come--where?"
+
+"Up to the St. Lawrence. We can start on the third just the same."
+
+She did not answer, and he stopped. Then, after a moment, she slowly
+turned, and looked at him.
+
+"Why--" she said--"I don't think I--"
+
+"I've just been thinking about it. I guess I can't do anything else--I
+mean I don't want to go anywhere alone. I guess that's pretty plain, isn't
+it--what I mean?"
+
+She leaned back against the wall and looked at him; it was as if she could
+not take her eyes from his face.
+
+"Perhaps I oughtn't to expect you to say anything now," he went on. "I
+just thought if you felt anything like I did, you'd know pretty well, by
+this time, whether it was yes or no."
+
+She was still looking at him. He had said it all, and now he waited, his
+fists knotted tightly, and a peculiar expression on his face, almost as if
+he were smiling, but it came from a part of his nature that had never
+before got to the surface. Finally she said:--
+
+"I think we'd better go back."
+
+He did not seem to understand, and she turned away and started off alone.
+In a moment he was at her side. He guided her back as they had come, and
+neither spoke until they had reached the stairway. Then he said, in a low
+tone that the carpenters could not hear:--
+
+"You don't mean that--that you can't do it?"
+
+She shook her head and hurried to the office.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Bannon stood looking after her until she disappeared in the shadow of an
+arc lamp, and after that he continued a long time staring into the blot of
+darkness where the office was. At last the window became faintly luminous,
+as some one lighted the wall lamp; then, as if it were a signal he had
+been waiting for, Bannon turned away.
+
+An hour before, when he had seen the last bolt of the belt gallery drawn
+taut, he had become aware that he was quite exhausted. The fact was so
+obvious that he had not tried to evade it, but had admitted to himself, in
+so many words, that he was at the end of his rope. But when he turned from
+gazing at the dimly lighted window, it was not toward his boarding-house,
+where he knew he ought to be, but back into the elevator, that his feet
+led him.
+
+For once, his presence accomplished nothing. He went about without
+thinking where; he passed men without seeing who they were or what they
+were doing. When he walked through the belt gallery, he saw the foreman of
+the big gang of men at work there was handling them clumsily, so that they
+interfered with each other, but it did not occur to him to give the orders
+that would set things right. Then, as if his wire-drawn muscles had not
+done work enough, he climbed laboriously to the very top of the marine
+tower.
+
+He was leaning against a window-casing; not looking out, for he saw
+nothing, but with his face turned to the fleet of barges lying in the
+river; when some one spoke to him.
+
+"I guess you're thinking about that Christmas dinner, ain't you, Mr.
+Bannon?"
+
+"What's that?" he demanded, wheeling about. Then rallying his scattered
+faculties, he recognized one of the carpenters. "Oh, yes," he said,
+laughing tardily. "Yes, the postponed Christmas dinner. You think I'm in
+for it, do you? You know it's no go unless this house is full of wheat
+clear to the roof."
+
+"I know it," said the man. "But I guess we're going to stick you for it.
+Don't you think we are?"
+
+"I guess that's right."
+
+"I come up here," said the carpenter, well pleased at the chance for a
+talk with the boss, "to have a look at this--marine leg, do you call it? I
+haven't been to work on it, and I never saw one before. I wanted to find
+out how it works."
+
+"Just like any other leg over in the main house. Head pulley up here;
+another one down in the boot; endless belt running over 'em with steel
+cups rivetted on it to scoop up the grain. Only difference is that instead
+of being stationary and set up in a tank, this one's hung up. We let the
+whole business right down into the boat. Pull it up and down with that
+steam winch."
+
+The man shook his head. "What if it got away from you?"
+
+"That's happened," said Bannon. "I've seen a leg most as big as this smash
+through two decks. Thought it was going right on through the bottom of the
+boat. But that wasn't a leg that MacBride had hung up. This one won't
+fall."
+
+Bannon answered one or two more questions rather at random, then suddenly
+came back to earth. "What are you doing here, anyway?" he demanded. "Seems
+to me this is a pretty easy way to earn thirty cents an hour."
+
+"I--I was just going to see if there wasn't something I could do," the man
+answered, a good deal embarrassed. Then before Bannon could do more than
+echo, "Something to do?" added: "I don't get my time check till midnight.
+I ain't on this shift. I just come around to see how things was going.
+We're going to see you through, Mr. Bannon."
+
+Bannon never had a finer tribute than that, not even what young Page said
+when the race was over; and it could not have come at a moment when he
+needed it more. He did not think much in set terms about what it meant,
+but when the man had gone and he had turned back to the window, he took a
+long breath of the night air and he saw what lay beneath his eyes. He saw
+the line of ships in the river; down nearer the lake another of Page's
+elevators was drinking up the red wheat out of the hold of a snub-nosed
+barge; across the river, in the dark, they were backing another string of
+wheat-laden cars over the Belt Line switches. As he looked out and
+listened, his imagination took fire again, as it had taken fire that day
+in the waiting-room at Blake City, when he had learned that the little,
+one-track G.&M. was trying to hinder the torrent of the Northern wheat.
+
+Well, the wheat had come down. It had beaten a blizzard, it had churned
+and wedged and crushed its way through floating ice and in the trough of
+mauling seas; belated passenger trains had waited on lonely sidings while
+it thundered by, and big rotary ploughs had bitten a way for it across the
+drifted prairies. Now it was here, and Charlie Bannon was keeping it
+waiting.
+
+He stood there, looking, only a moment; then before the carpenter's
+footsteps were well out of hearing, he followed him down the stairway to
+the belt gallery. Before he had passed half its length you could have seen
+the difference. In the next two hours every man on the elevator saw him,
+learned a quicker way to splice a rope or align a shaft, and heard, before
+the boss went away, some word of commendation that set his hands to
+working the faster, and made the work seem easy. The work had gone on
+without interruption for weeks, and never slowly, but there were times
+when it went with a lilt and a laugh; when laborers heaved at a hoisting
+tackle with a Yo-ho, like privateersmen who have just sighted a sail;
+when, with all they could do, results came too slowly, and the hours flew
+too fast. And so it was that Christmas night; Charlie Bannon was back on
+the job.
+
+About ten o'clock he encountered Pete, bearing off to the shanty a quart
+bottle of cold coffee and a dozen big, thick sandwiches. "Come on,
+Charlie," he called. "Max is coming, too; but I guess we've got enough to
+spare you a little."
+
+So the three of them sat down to supper around the draughting-table, and
+between bites Bannon talked, a little about everything, but principally,
+and with much corroborative detail--for the story seemed to strain even
+Pete's easy credulity--of how, up at Yawger, he had been run on the
+independent ticket for Superintendent of the Sunday School, and had been
+barely defeated by two votes.
+
+When the sandwiches were put away, and all but three drinks of the coffee,
+Bannon held the bottle high in the air. "Here's to the house!" he said.
+"We'll have wheat in her tomorrow night!"
+
+They drank the toast standing; then, as if ashamed of such a sentimental
+demonstration, they filed sheepishly out of the office. They walked fifty
+paces in silence. Then Pete checked suddenly and turned to Bannon. "Hold
+on, Charlie, where are you going?"
+
+"Going to look over those 'cross-the-house conveyor drives down cellar."
+
+"No, you ain't either. You're going to bed."
+
+Bannon only laughed and started on toward the elevator.
+
+"How long is it since you had any sleep?" Pete demanded.
+
+"I don't know. Guess I must have slept part of the time while we was
+putting up that gallery. I don't remember much about it."
+
+"Don't be in such a hurry," said Pete, and as he said it he reached out
+his left hand and caught him by the shoulder. It was more by way of
+gesture than otherwise, but Bannon had to step back a pace to keep his
+feet. "I mean business," Pete went on, though laughing a little. "When we
+begin to turn over the machinery you won't want to go away, so this is
+your last chance to get any sleep. I can't make things jump like you can,
+but I can keep 'em going tonight somehow."
+
+"Hadn't you better wrap me up in cotton flannel and feed me warm milk with
+a spoon? Let go of me and quit your fooling. You delay the game."
+
+"I ain't fooling. I'm boss here at night, and I fire you till morning.
+That goes if I have to carry you all the way to your boarding house and
+tie you down to the bed." Pete meant it. As if, again, for illustration,
+he picked Bannon up in his arms. The boss was ready for the move this
+time, and he resisted with all his strength, but he would have had as much
+chance against the hug of a grizzly bear; he was crumpled up. Pete started
+off with him across the flat.
+
+"All right," said Bannon. "I'll go."
+
+At seven o'clock next morning Pete began expecting his return. At eight he
+began inquiring of various foremen if they had seen anything of Charlie
+Bannon. By nine he was avowedly worried lest something had gone wrong with
+him, and a little after ten Max set out for the boarding house.
+
+Encountering the landlady in the hall, he made the mistake of asking her
+if she had seen anything of Mr. Bannon that morning. She had some
+elementary notions of strategy, derived, doubtless, from experience, and
+before beginning her reply, she blocked the narrow stairway with her broad
+person. Then, beginning with a discussion of Mr. Bannon's excellent moral
+character and his most imprudent habits, and illustrating by anecdotes of
+various other boarders she had had at one time and another, she led up to
+the statement that she had seen nothing of him since the night before, and
+that she had twice knocked at his door without getting any reply.
+
+Max, who had laughed a little at Pete's alarm, was now pretty well
+frightened himself, but at that instant they heard the thud of bare feet
+on the floor just above them. "That's him now," said the landlady,
+thoughtlessly turning sideways, and Max bolted past her and up the stairs.
+
+He knocked at the door and called out to know if he could come in. The
+growl he heard in reply meant invitation as much as it meant anything, so
+he went in. Bannon, already in his shirt and trousers, stood with his back
+to the door, his face in the washbowl. As he scoured he sputtered. Max
+could make little out of it, for Bannon's face was under water half the
+time, but he caught such phrases as "Pete's darned foolishness," "College
+boy trick," "Lie abed all the morning," and "Better get an alarm clock"--
+which thing and the need for it Bannon greatly despised--and he reached
+the conclusion that the matter was nothing more serious than that Bannon
+had overslept.
+
+But the boss took it seriously enough. Indeed, he seemed deeply
+humiliated, and he marched back to the elevator beside Max without saying
+a word until just as they were crossing the Belt Line tracks, when the
+explanation of the phenomenon came to him.
+
+"I know where I get it from," he exclaimed, as if in some measure relieved
+by the discovery. "I must take after my uncle. He was the greatest fellow
+to sleep you ever saw."
+
+So far as pace was concerned that day was like the others; while the men
+were human it could be no faster; with Bannon on the job it could not
+flag; but there was this difference, that today the stupidest sweepers
+knew that they had almost reached the end, and there was a rally like that
+which a runner makes at the beginning of the last hundred yards.
+
+Late in the afternoon they had a broad hint of how near the end was. The
+sweepers dropped their brooms and began carrying fire buckets full of
+water. They placed one or more near every bearing all over the elevator.
+The men who were quickest to understand explained to the slower ones what
+the precaution meant, and every man had his eye on the nearest pulley to
+see when it would begin to turn.
+
+But Bannon was not going to begin till he was ready. He had inspected the
+whole job four times since noon, but just after six he went all over it
+again, more carefully than before. At the end he stepped out of the door
+at the bottom of the stairway bin, and pulled it shut after him. It was
+not yet painted, and its blank surface suggested something. He drew out
+his blue pencil and wrote on the upper panel:--
+
+O.K.
+C. H. BANNON.
+
+Then he walked over to the power house. It was a one-story brick building,
+with whose construction Bannon had had no concern, as Page & Company had
+placed the contract for it elsewhere. Every night for the past week lights
+had been streaming from its windows, and day and night men had waited,
+ready at any time for the word to go ahead. A dozen of them were lounging
+about the brick-paved space in front of the battery of boilers when Bannon
+opened the door, and they sprang to their feet as they read his errand in
+his face.
+
+"Steam up," he said. "We'll be ready as soon as you are."
+
+There was the accumulated tension of a week of inactivity behind these
+men, and the effect of Bannon's words was galvanic. Already low fires were
+burning under the boilers, and now the coal was piled on, the draughts
+roared, the smoke, thick enough to cut, came billowing out of the tall
+chimney. Every man in the room, even the wretchedest of the dripping
+stokers, had his eyes on the steam gauges, but for all that the water
+boiled, and the indicator needles crept slowly round the dials, and at
+last the engineer walked over and pulled the whistle cord.
+
+Hitherto they had marked the divisions of time on the job by the shrill
+note of the little whistle on the hoisting engine boiler, and there was
+not a man but started at the screaming crescendo of the big siren on top
+of the power house. Men in the streets, in the straggling boarding houses
+over across the flats, on the wharves along the river, men who had been
+forbidden to come to the elevator till they were needed lest they should
+be in the way, had been waiting days for that signal, and they came
+streaming into the elevator almost before the blast had died away.
+
+Page's superintendent was standing beside Bannon and Pete by the foot of
+the main drive. "Well," he said, "we're ready. Are you?"
+
+Bannon nodded and turned to a laborer who stood near. "Go tell the
+engineer to go ahead." The man, proud as though he had just been promoted,
+went out on the run.
+
+"Now," said Bannon, "here's where we go slow. All the machinery in the
+house has got to be thrown in, one thing at a time, line shafts first and
+then elevators and the rest of it. Pete, you see it done up top. I'll look
+out for it down here. See that there's a man to look at each bearing at
+least once in three minutes, and let me know if it gets warm."
+
+It took a long time to do it, but it had to be done, for Bannon was
+inflexible, but at last everything in elevator, annex, and spouting house
+that could turn was turning, and it was reported to Bannon. "Now," he
+said, "she's got to run light for fifteen minutes. No--" he went on in
+answer to the superintendent's protest; "you're lucky I didn't say two
+hours. It's the biggest chance I ever took as it is."
+
+So while they stared at the second hands of their watches the minutes
+crept away--Pete wound his watch up tight in the vain hope of making it go
+a little faster--and at last Bannon turned with a nod to the
+superintendent.
+
+"All right," he said. "You're the boss now."
+
+And then in a moment the straining hawsers were hauling cars up into the
+house. The seals were broken, the doors rolled back, and the wheat came
+pouring out. The shovellers clambered into the cars and the steam power
+shovels helped the torrent along. It fell through the gratings, into steel
+tanks, and then the tireless metal cups carried it up, up, up, 'way to the
+top of the building. And then it came tumbling down again; down into
+garners, and down again into the great weighing hoppers, and recognized
+and registered and marketable at last, part of the load that was to bury
+the Clique that had braved it out of sight of all but their creditors, it
+went streaming down the spouts into the bins.
+
+The first of the barges in the river was moved down beside the spouting
+house, her main hatch just opposite the tower. And now Pete, in charge
+there, gave the word, and the marine leg, gravely, deliberately descended.
+There is a magnificent audacity about that sort of performance. The leg
+was ninety feet long, steel-booted, framed of great timbers, heavy enough
+to have wrecked the barge like a birch baric canoe if it had got away. It
+went down bodily into the hold and the steel boot was buried in wheat.
+Then Pete threw another lever, and in a moment another endless series of
+cups was carrying the wheat aloft. It went over the cross-head and down a
+spout, then stretched out in a golden ribbon along the glistening white
+belt that ran the length of the gallery. Then, like the wheat from the
+cars, it was caught up again in the cups, and shot down through spouts,
+and carried along on belts to the remotest bins in the annex.
+
+For the first few hours of it the men's nerves were hair springs, but as
+time went on and the stream kept pouring in without pause, the tension
+relaxed though the watch never slackened. Men patted the bearings
+affectionately, and still the same report came to Bannon, "All cool."
+
+Late that night, as the superintendent was figuring his weighing reports,
+he said to Bannon, "At this rate, we'll have several hours to spare."
+
+"We haven't had our accident yet," said Bannon, shortly.
+
+It happened within an hour, at the marine leg, but it was not serious.
+They heard a splintering sound, down in the dark, somewhere, and Pete,
+shouting to them to throw out the clutch, climbed out and down on the
+sleet-clad girders that framed the leg. An agile monkey might have been
+glad to return alive from such a climb, but Pete came back presently with
+a curious specimen of marine hardware that had in some way got into the
+wheat, and thence into the boot and one of the cups. Part way up it had
+got jammed and had ripped up the sheathing of the leg. They started the
+leg again, but soon learned that it was leaking badly.
+
+"You'll have to haul up for repairs, I guess," the captain called up to
+them.
+
+"Haven't time," said Pete, under his breath, and with a hammer and nails,
+and a big piece of sacking, he went down the leg again, playing his neck
+against a half-hour's delay as serenely as most men would walk downstairs
+to dinner. "Start her up, boys," he called, when the job was done, and,
+with the leg jolting under his hands as he climbed, he came back into the
+tower.
+
+That was their only misfortune, and all it cost them was a matter of
+minutes, so by noon of the thirtieth, an hour or two after MacBride and
+young Page arrived from Minneapolis, it became clear that they would be
+through in time.
+
+At eight o'clock next morning, as Bannon and MacBride were standing in the
+superintendent's office, he came in and held out his hand. "She's full,
+Mr. Bannon. I congratulate you."
+
+"Full, eh?" said MacBride. Then he dropped his hand on Bannon's shoulder.
+"Well," he said, "do you want to go to sleep, or will you come and talk
+business with me for a little while?"
+
+"Sleep!" Bannon echoed. "I've been oversleeping lately."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+The elevator was the place for the dinner, if only the mild weather that
+had followed the Christmas storm should continue--on that Bannon, Pete,
+and Max were agreed. New Year's Day would be a holiday, and there was room
+on the distributing floor for every man who had worked an hour on the job
+since the first spile had been driven home in the Calumet clay. To be sure
+most of the laborers had been laid off before the installing of the
+machinery, but Bannon knew that they would all be on hand, and he meant to
+have seats for them. But on the night of the thirtieth the wind swung
+around to the northeast, and it came whistling through the cracks in the
+cupola walls with a sting in it that set the weighers to shivering. And as
+the insurance companies would have inquired curiously into any arrangement
+for heating that gloomy space on the tops of the bins, the plan had to be
+given up.
+
+As soon as the last of the grain was in, on the thirty-first, Max took a
+north-bound car and scoured South Chicago for a hall that was big enough.
+Before the afternoon was gone he had found it, and had arranged with
+a restaurant keeper to supply the dinner. Early the next morning the
+three set to work, making long tables and benches by resting planks on
+boxes, and covering the tables with pink and blue and white scalloped
+shelf-paper.
+
+It was nearly ten o'clock when Max, after draping a twenty-four-foot flag
+in a dozen different ways, let it slide down the ladder to the floor and
+sat down on the upper round, looking out over the gridiron of tables with
+a disgusted expression. Peterson, aided by a man from the restaurant, was
+bringing in load after load of thick white plates, stacking them waist
+high near the door. Max was on the point of calling to him, but he
+recollected that Pete's eye, though quick with timbers, would not help
+much in questions of art. Just then Bannon came through the doorway with
+another flag rolled under his arm.
+
+"They're here already, a couple of dozen of 'em," he said, as he dropped
+the flag at the foot of the ladder. "I've left James on the stairs to keep
+'em out until we're ready. Better have an eye on the fire escape, too--
+they're feeling pretty lively."
+
+"Say," Max said abruptly, "I can't make this thing look anyhow. I guess
+it's up to you."
+
+Bannon stepped back and looked up at the wall.
+
+"Why don't you just hang them from the ceiling and then catch them up from
+pretty near the bottom--so they'll drape down on both sides of the
+windows?"
+
+"I know," said Max, "but there's ways of making 'em look just right--if
+Hilda was here; she'd know--" He paused and looked down at the red, white,
+and blue heap on the floor.
+
+During the last week they had not spoken of Hilda, and Bannon did not know
+whether she had told Max. He glanced at him, but got no sign, for Max was
+gazing moodily downward.
+
+"Do you think," Bannon said, "do you think she'd care to come around?"
+
+He tried to speak easily, as he might have spoken of her at any time
+before Christmas Day, but he could not check a second glance at Max. At
+that moment Max looked up, and as their eyes met, with an awkward pause,
+Bannon knew that he understood; and for a moment the impatience that he
+had been fighting for a week threatened to get away with him. He had seen
+nothing of Hilda, except for the daily "Good morning," and a word now and
+then. The office had been besieged by reporters waiting for a chance at
+him; under-foremen had been rushing in and out; Page's representatives and
+the railroad and steamboat men had made it their headquarters. It may be
+that he would not have spoken in any case, for he had said all that he
+could say, and he knew that she would give him an answer when she could.
+
+Max's eyes had dropped again.
+
+"You mean for her to help fix things up?" he asked.
+
+Bannon nodded; and then, as Max did not look up, he said, "Yes."
+
+"Why--why, yes, I guess she'd just as soon." He hesitated, then began
+coming down the ladder, adding, "I'll go for her."
+
+Bannon looked over his shoulder--Pete was clattering about among the
+dishes. "Max," he said, "hold on a minute." Max turned and came slowly
+back. Bannon had seated himself on the end of a table, and now he waited,
+looking down at the two rows of plates, and slowly turning a caster that
+stood at his elbow. What he finally said was not what Max was awaiting.
+
+"What are you going to do now, Max--when you're through on this job?"
+
+"Why--I don't know--"
+
+"Have you got anything ahead?"
+
+"Nothing sure. I was working for a firm of contractors up on the North
+Side, and I've been thinking maybe they'd take me back."
+
+"You've had some experience in building before now, haven't you?" Bannon
+was speaking deliberately, as if he were saying what he had thought out
+before.
+
+"Yes, a good deal. It's what I've mostly done since I quit the lumber
+business."
+
+"When Mr. MacBride was here," said Bannon, "he told me that we've got a
+contract for a new house at Indianapolis. It's going to be concrete, from
+the spiles up--there ain't anything like it in the country. I'm going down
+next week to take charge of the job, and if you'd like to go along as my
+assistant, I'll take you."
+
+Max did not know what to say. At first he grinned and blushed, thinking
+only that Bannon had been pleased with his work; then he grew serious.
+
+"Well," said Bannon, "what do you say?"
+
+Max still hesitated. At last he replied:--
+
+"Can I have till tomorrow to think about it? I--you see, Hilda and I, we
+most always talk things over, and I don't exactly like to do anything
+without--"
+
+"Sure," said Bannon; "think it over if you like. There's no hurry up to
+the end of the week." He paused as if he meant to go on, but changed his
+mind and stood up. Max, too, was waiting, as if there were more to be
+said.
+
+"You two must think we've got all day to fix things." It was Pete calling
+from the other end of the room. "There ain't no loafing allowed here."
+
+Bannon smiled, and Max turned away. But after he had got a third of the
+way down the aisle, he came back.
+
+"Say, Mr. Bannon," he said, "I want to tell you that I--Hilda, she said--
+she's told me something about things--and I want to--" It had been a lame
+conversation; now it broke down, and they stood through a long silence
+without speaking. Finally Max pulled himself together, and said in a low,
+nervous voice: "Say, it's all right. I guess you know what I'm thinking
+about. And I ain't got a word to say." Then he hurried out.
+
+When Max and Hilda came in, the restaurant man was setting up the paper
+napkin tents on the raised table at the end of the hall, and Pete stood by
+the door, looking upon his work with satisfaction. He did not see them
+until they were fairly in the room.
+
+"Hello," he said; "I didn't know you was coming, Miss Vogel." He swept his
+arm around. "Ain't it fine? Make you hungry to look at all them plates?"
+
+Hilda followed his gesture with a smile. Her jacket was still buttoned
+tightly, and her eyes were bright and her cheeks red from the brisk outer
+air. Bannon and James were coming toward them, and she greeted them with a
+nod.
+
+"There's going to be plenty of room," she said.
+
+"That's right," Pete replied. "There won't be no elbows getting in the way
+at this dinner. Come up where you can see better." He led the way to the
+platform, and they all followed.
+
+"This is the speakers' table," Pete went on, "where the boss and all will
+be"--he winked toward Bannon--"and the guest of honor. You show her how we
+sit, Max; you fixed that part of it."
+
+Max walked around the table, pointing out his own, Pete's, James', and
+Bannon's seats, and those of the committee. The middle seat, next to
+Bannon's he passed over.
+
+"Hold on," said Pete, "you forgot something."
+
+Max grinned and drew back the middle chair.
+
+"This is for the guest of honor," he said, and looked at Hilda. Pete was
+looking at her, too, and James--all but Bannon.
+
+The color, that had been leaving her face, began to come back.
+
+"Do you mean me?" she asked.
+
+"I guess that's pretty near," said Pete.
+
+ She shook her head. "Oh, no--thank you very much--I can't stay."
+
+Pete and Max looked at each other.
+
+"The boys'll be sorry," said Pete. "It's kind of got out that maybe you'd
+be here, and--I don't believe they'd let you off."
+
+Hilda was smiling, but her face was flushed. She shook her head. "Oh, no,"
+she replied; "I only came to help."
+
+Pete turned on Max, with a clumsy laugh that did not cover his
+disappointment.
+
+"How about this, Max? You ain't been tending to business. Ain't that so,
+James? Wasn't he going to see that she come and sat up with us where the
+boys could see her?" He turned to Hilda. "You see, most of the boys know
+you've had a good deal to do with things on the job, and they've kind of
+took a shine to you--" Pete suddenly awoke to the fact that he had never
+talked so boldly to a girl before. He hesitated, looked around at Max and
+James for support and at Bannon, and then, finding no help, he grinned,
+and the warm color surged over his face. The only one who saw it all was
+Hilda, and in spite of her embarrassment the sight of big, strong, bashful
+Pete was too much for her. A twinkle came into her eyes, and a faint smile
+hovered about her mouth. Pete saw it, misunderstood it, and, feeling
+relieved, went on, not knowing that by bringing that twinkle to Hilda's
+eyes, he had saved the situation.
+
+"It's only that they've talked about it some, and yesterday a couple of
+'em spoke to me, and I said I'd ask Max, and--"
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Peterson," Hilda replied. "Max should have told me." She
+turned toward Max, her face sober now except for the eyes, which would not
+come under control. Max had been dividing his glances between her and
+Bannon, feeling the situation heavily, and wondering if he ought not to
+come to her relief, but unable to dig up the right word. Pete spoke up
+again:--
+
+"Say, honest now, ain't you coming?"
+
+"I can't really. I'm sorry. I know you'll have a good time."
+
+Bannon had been standing aside, unwilling to speak for fear of making it
+harder for her.
+
+But now she turned to him and said, with a lightness that puzzled him:--
+
+"Aren't we going to do some decorating, Mr. Bannon? I'm afraid it will be
+dinner time before Mr. Peterson knows it."
+
+Pete flushed again at this, but she gave him a quick smile.
+
+"Yes," said Bannon, "there's only a little over half an hour." He paused,
+and looked about the group, holding his watch in his hand and fingering
+the stem. The lines about his mouth were settling. Hilda glanced again at
+him, and from the determined look in his eyes, she knew that his week of
+waiting was over; that he meant to speak to her before she left the hall.
+It was all in the moment's silence that followed his remark; then he went
+on, as easily as if he were talking to a gang on the marine tower--but the
+time was long enough for Hilda to feel her brief courage slipping away.
+She could not look at him now.
+
+"Take a look at that door, James," he was saying. "I guess you'll have to
+tend to business if you want any dinner."
+
+They all turned and saw the grinning heads of some of the carpenters
+peering into the room. There was the shuffling of many feet behind them on
+the stairs, and the sound of cat calls and whistling. A shove was passed
+on from somewhere back in the hallway, and one of the carpenters came
+sprawling through the door. The others yelled good-naturedly.
+
+"I'll fix 'em," said James, with a laugh, starting toward them.
+
+"Give him a lift, Pete," said Bannon. "He'll need it. You two'd better
+keep the stairs clear for a while, or they'll stampede us."
+
+So Pete followed, and for a few moments the uproar from the stairs drowned
+all attempts at conversation. Only Max was left with them now. He stood
+back by the wall, still looking helplessly from one to the other. The
+restaurant men were bustling about the floor; and Hilda was glad they were
+there, for she knew that Bannon meant to send Max away, too. She was too
+nervous to stand still; and she walked around the table, resetting the
+knives and forks and spoons. The paper napkins on this table were the only
+ones in the room. She wondered at this, and when the noise of the men had
+died away into a few jeering cries from the street, and Max had gone to
+get the flags (for she had said that they should be hung at this end of
+the room), and the waiters were bustling about, it gave her a chance to
+break the silence.
+
+"Aren't the other"--she had to stop to clear her throat--"aren't the other
+men going to have napkins?"
+
+"They wouldn't know what they were for."
+
+His easy tone gave her a momentary sense of relief.
+
+"They'd tie them on their hats, or make balls to throw around." He paused,
+but added: "It wouldn't look bad, though, would it?--to stand them up this
+way on all the tables."
+
+She made no reply.
+
+"What do you say?" He was looking at her. "Shall we do it?"
+
+She nodded, and then dropped her eyes, angry with herself that she could
+not overcome her nervousness. There was another silence, and she broke it.
+
+"It would look a good deal better," she said, "if you have time to do it.
+Max and I will put up the flags."
+
+She had meant to say something that would give her a better control of the
+situation, but it sounded very flat and disagreeable--and she had not
+meant it to sound disagreeable. Indeed, as soon as the words were out, and
+she felt his eyes on her, and she knew that she was blushing, she was not
+sure that she had meant it at all. Perhaps that was why, when Bannon
+asked, in a low voice, "Would you rather Max would help you?" she turned
+away and answered in a cool tone that did not come from any one of her
+rushing, struggling thoughts, "If you don't mind."
+
+She did not see the change that came over his face, the weary look that
+meant that the strain of a week had suddenly broken, but she did not need
+to see it, for she knew it was there. She heard him step down from the
+platform, and then she watched him as he walked down the aisle to meet
+Max, who was bringing up the flags. She wondered impatiently why Bannon
+did not call to him. Then he raised his head, but before a word had left
+his lips she was speaking, in a clear tone that Max could plainly hear.
+She was surprised at herself. She had not meant to say a word, but out it
+came; and she was conscious of a tightening of her nerves and a defiant
+gladness that at last her real thoughts had found an outlet.
+
+"Max," she said, "won't you go out and get enough napkins to put at all
+the places? You'll have to hurry."
+
+Bannon was slow in turning; when he did there was a peculiar expression on
+his face.
+
+"Hold on, there," called a waiter. "There ain't time to fold them."
+
+"Yes, there is," said Bannon, shortly. "The boys can wait."
+
+"But dinner's most ready now."
+
+"Then I guess dinner's got to wait, too." The waiter looked disgusted, and
+Max hurried out. Bannon gathered up the flags and came to the platform.
+Hilda could not face him. For an instant she had a wild impulse to follow
+Max. She finally turned her back on Bannon and leaned her elbows on a
+chair, looking over the wall for a good place to hang the flags. She was
+going to begin talking about it as soon as he should reach the platform.
+The words were all ready, but now he was opposite her, looking across the
+table with the red and white bundle in his arms, and she had not said it.
+Her eyes were fixed on a napkin, studying out the curious Japanese design.
+She could hear his breathing and her own. She let her eyes rise as high as
+the flags, then slowly, higher and higher, until they met his, fluttered,
+and dropped. But the glance was enough. She could not have resisted the
+look in his eyes.
+
+"Did you mean it?" he asked, almost breathlessly. "Did you mean the whole
+thing?"
+
+She could not reply. She glanced around to see if the waiters could hear.
+
+"Can't you tell me?" he was saying. "It's been a week."
+
+She gazed at the napkin until it grew misty and indistinct. Then she
+slowly nodded.
+
+A waiter was almost within hearing. Bannon stood looking at her, heedless
+of everything but that she was there before him, that her eyes were trying
+to peep up at him through the locks of red gold hair that had strayed over
+her forehead.
+
+"Please"--she whispered--"please put them up."
+
+And so they set to work. He got the ladder and she told him what to do.
+Her directions were not always clear, but that mattered little, for he
+could not have followed them. Somehow the flags went up, and if the effect
+was little better than Max's attempt had been, no one spoke of it.
+
+Pete and Max came in together soon with the napkins, and a little time
+slipped by before Bannon could draw Max aside and grip his hand. Then they
+went at the napkins, and as they sat around the table, Hilda and Bannon,
+Pete and the waiters, folding them with rapid fingers, Bannon found
+opportunity to talk to her in a low voice, during the times when Pete was
+whistling, or was chaffing with the waiters. He told her, a few words at a
+time, of the new work Mr. MacBride had assigned to him, and in his
+enthusiasm he gave her a little idea of what it would mean to him, this
+opportunity to build an elevator the like of which had never been seen in
+the country before, and which would be watched by engineers from New York
+to San Francisco. He told her, too, something about the work, how it had
+been discovered that piles could be made of concrete and driven into the
+ground with a pile driver, and that neither beams nor girders--none of the
+timbers, in fact--were needed in this new construction. He was nearly
+through with it, and still he did not notice the uncertain expression in
+her eyes.
+
+It was not until she asked in a faltering undertone, "When are you going
+to begin?" that it came to him. And then he looked at her so long that
+Pete began to notice, and she had to touch his foot with hers under the
+table to get him to turn away. He had forgotten all about the vacation and
+the St. Lawrence trip.
+
+Hilda saw, in her side glances, the gloomy expression that had settled
+upon his face; and she recovered her spirits first.
+
+"It's all right," she whispered; "I don't care."
+
+Max came up then, from a talk with James out on the stairway, and for a
+few moments there was no chance to reply. But after Bannon had caught
+Max's signals to step out of hearing of the others, and before he had
+risen, there was a moment when Pete's attention was drawn by one of the
+waiters, and he said:--
+
+"Can you go with me--Monday?"
+
+She looked frightened, and the blood rose in her cheeks so that she had to
+bend low over her pile of napkins.
+
+"Will you?" He was pushing back his chair.
+
+She did not look up, but her head nodded once with a little jerk.
+
+"And you'll stay for the dinner, won't you--now?"
+
+She nodded once more, and Bannon went to join Max.
+
+Max made two false starts before he could get his words out in the proper
+order.
+
+"Say," he finally said; "I thought maybe you wouldn't care if I told
+James. He thinks you're all right, you know. And he says, if you don't
+care, he'd like to say a little something about it when he makes his
+speech. Not much, you know--nothing you wouldn't like--he says it would
+tickle the boys right down to their corns."
+
+Bannon looked around toward Hilda, and slowly shook his head.
+
+"Max," he replied, "if anybody says a word about it at this dinner I'll
+break his head."
+
+That should have been enough, but when James' turn came to speak, after
+nearly two hours of eating and singing and laughing and riotous good
+cheer, he began in a way that brought Bannon's eyes quickly upon him.
+
+"Boys," he said, "we've worked hard together on this job, and one way and
+another we've come to understand what sort of a man our boss is. Ain't
+that right?"
+
+A roar went up from hundreds of throats, and Hilda, sitting next to
+Bannon, blushed.
+
+"We've thought we understood him pretty well, but I've just found out that
+we didn't know so much as we thought we did. He's been a pretty square
+friend to all of us, and I'm going to tell you something that'll give you
+a chance to show you're square friends of his, too."
+
+He paused, and then was about to go on, leaning forward with both hands on
+the table, and looking straight down on the long rows of bearded faces,
+when he heard a slight noise behind him. A sudden laugh broke out, and
+before he could turn his head, a strong hand fell on each shoulder and he
+went back into his chair with a bump. Then he looked up, and saw Bannon
+standing over him. The boss was trying to speak, but he had to wait a full
+minute before he could make himself heard. He glanced around and saw the
+look of appeal in Hilda's eyes.
+
+"Look here, boys," he said, when the room had grown quiet; "we aren't
+handing out any soft soap at this dinner. I won't let this man up till he
+promises to quit talking about me."
+
+There was another burst of laughter, and James shouted something that
+nobody understood. Bannon looked down at him, and said quietly, and with a
+twinkle in his eye, but very firmly:--
+
+"If you try that again, I'll throw you out of the window."
+
+James protested, and was allowed to get up. Bannon slipped into his seat
+by Hilda.
+
+"It's all right," he said in a low tone. "They won't know it now until we
+get out of here." His hand groped for hers under the table.
+
+James was irrepressible. He was shouting quickly now, in order to get the
+words out before Bannon could reach him again.
+
+"How about this, boys? Shall we stand it?"
+
+"No!" was the reply in chorus.
+
+"All right, then. Three cheers for Mr. Bannon. Now--Hip, hip--"
+
+There was no stopping that response.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALUMET "K"***
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