Calumet 'K' Part 11

"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 to-night. 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 to-morrow."

"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 pa.s.sed gangs of men lounging on the ground, waiting for the order to move on. As he pa.s.sed 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."