Calumet 'K' Part 14

"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 k.n.o.b, 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 b.u.t.toned 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?"

"To-morrow."

"To-morrow!" 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed the elevator and measured with his eyes the s.p.a.ce 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 embarra.s.sment:--