Tom Grogan Part 2

"Can you sign the pay-roll?"

"You bet"--with an eye still out for Lathers.

"Where did you learn to write--at school?" asked Babc.o.c.k, noting the boy's independence with undisguised pleasure.

"Naw. Patsy an' me studies nights. Pop Mullins teaches us--he's de ole woman's farder what she brung out from Ireland. He's a-livin' up ter de shebang; dey're all a-livin' dere--Jinnie an' de ole woman an'

Patsy--all 'cept me an' Carl. I bunks in wid de Big Gray. Say, mister, ye'd oughter git onter Patsy--he's de little kid wid de crutch. He's a corker, he is; reads po'try an' everythin'. Where'll I sign? Oh, I see; in dis'ere square hole right along-side de ole woman's name"--spreading his elbows, pen in hand, and affixing "James Finnegan" to the collection of autographs. The next moment he was running along the dock, the money envelope tight in his hand, sticking out his tongue at McGaw, and calling to Lathers as he disappeared through the door in the fence, "Somp'n wid a mustache, somp'n wid a mustache," like a news-boy calling an extra. Then a stone grazed Lathers's ear.

Lathers sprang through the gate, but the boy was half way through the yard. It was this flea-like alertness that always saved Mr. Finnegan's scalp.

Once out of Lathers's reach, Cully bounded up the road like a careering letter X, with arms and legs in air. If there was any one thing that delighted the boy's soul, it was, to quote from his own picturesque vocabulary, "to set up a job on de ole woman." Here was his chance.

Before he reached the stable he had planned the whole scene, even to the exact intonation of Lathers's voice when he referred to the dearth of mustaches in the Grogan household. Within a few minutes of his arrival the details of the whole occurrence, word for word, with such picturesque additions as his own fertile imagination could invent, were common talk about the yard.

Lathers meanwhile had been called upon to direct a gang of laborers who were moving an enormous iron buoy-float down the cinder-covered path to the dock. Two of the men walked beside the buoy, steadying it with their hands. Lathers was leaning against the board fence of the shop whittling a stick, while the others worked.

Suddenly there was an angry cry for Lathers, and every man stood still.

So did the buoy and the moving truck.

With head up, eyes blazing, her silk hood pushed back from her face, as if to give her air, her gray ulster open to her waist, her right hand bare of a glove, came Tom Grogan, brushing the men out of her way.

"I knew I'd find you, Pete Lathers," she said, facing him squarely; "why do ye want to be takin' the bread out of me children's mouths?"

The stick dropped from Lathers's hand: "Well, who said I did? What have I got to do with your"--

"You've got enough to do with 'em, you and your friend McGaw, to want 'em to starve. Have I ever hurt ye that ye should try an' sneak me business away from me? Ye know very well the fight I've made, standin'

out on this dock, many a day an' night, in the cold an' wet, with nothin' between Tom's children an' the street but these two hands--an'

yet ye'd slink in like a dog to get me"--

"Here, now, I ain't a-goin' to have no row," said Lathers, twitching his shoulders. "It's against orders, an' I'll call the yard-watch, and throw you out if you make any fuss."

"The yard-watch!" said Tom, with a look of supreme contempt. "I can handle any two of 'em, an' ye too, an' ye know it." Her cheeks were aflame. She crowded Lathers so closely his slinking figure hugged the fence.

By this time the gang had abandoned the buoy, and were standing aghast, watching the fury of the Amazon.

"Now, see here, don't make a muss; the commandant'll be down here in a minute."

"Let him come; he's the one I want to see. If he knew he had a man in his pay that would do as dirty a trick to a woman as ye've done to me, his name would be Dinnis. I'll see him meself this very day, and"--

Here Lathers interrupted with an angry gesture.

"Don't ye lift yer arm at me," she blazes out, "or I'll break it at the wrist!"

Lathers's hand dropped. All the color was out of his face, his lip quivering.

"Whoever said I said a word against you, Mrs. Grogan, is a--liar." It was the last resort of a cowardly nature.

"Stop lyin' to me, Pete Lathers! If there's anythin' in this world I hate, it's a liar. Ye said it, and ye know ye said it. Ye want that drunken loafer Dan McGaw to get me work. Ye've been at it all summer, an' ye think I haven't watched ye; but I have. And ye say I don't pay full wages, and have got a lot of boys to do men's work, an' oughter be over me tubs. Now let me tell ye"--Lathers shrank back, cowering before her--"if ever I hear ye openin' yer head about me, or me teams, or me work, I'll make ye swallow every tooth in yer head. Send down somethin'

with a mustache, will I? There's not a man in the yard that's a match for me, an' ye know it. Let one of 'em try that."

Her uplifted fist, tight-clenched, shot past Lathers's ear. A quick blow, a plank knocked clear of its fastenings, and a flood of daylight broke in behind Lathers's head!

"Now, the next time I come, Pete Lathers," she said firmly, "I'll miss the plank and take yer face."

Then she turned, and stalked out of the yard.

III. SERGEANT DUFFY'S LITTLE GAME

The bad weather so long expected finally arrived. An afternoon of soft, warm autumn skies, aglow with the radiance of the setting sun, and brilliant in violet and gold, had been followed by a cold, gray morning.

Of a sudden a cloud the size of a hand had mounted clear of the horizon, and called together its fellows. An unseen herald in the east blew a blast, and winds and sea awoke.

By nine o'clock a gale was blowing. By ten Babc.o.c.k's men were bracing the outer sheathing of the coffer-dam, strengthening the derrick-guys, tightening the anchor-lines, and clearing the working-platforms of sand, cement, and other damageable property. The course-masonry, fortunately, was above the water-line, but the coping was still unset and the rubble backing of much of the wall unfinished. Two weeks of constant work were necessary before that part of the structure contained in the first section of the contract would be entirely safe for the coming winter.

Babc.o.c.k doubled his gangs, and utilized every hour of low water to the utmost, even when the men stood waist-deep. It was his only hope for completing the first section that season. After that would come the cold, freezing the mortar, and ending everything.

Tom Grogan performed wonders. Not only did she work her teams far into the night, but during all this bad weather she stood throughout the day on the unprotected dock, a man's sou'wester covering her head, a rubber waterproof reaching to her feet. She directed every boat-load herself, and rushed the materials to the shovelers, who stood soaking wet in the driving rain.

Lathers avoided her; so did McGaw. Everybody else watched her in admiration. Even the commandant, a bluff, gray-bearded naval officer,--a hero of Hampton Roads and Memphis,--pa.s.sed her on his morning inspection with a kindly look in his face and an aside to Babc.o.c.k: "Hire some more like her. She is worth a dozen men."

Not until the final cargo required for the completion of the wall had been dumped on the platforms did she relax her vigilance. Then she shook the water from her oilskins and started for home. During all these hours of constant strain there was no outbreak of bravado, no spell of ill humor. She made no boasts or promises. With a certain buoyant pluck she stood by the derricks day after day, firing volleys of criticism or encouragement, as best suited the exigencies of the moment, now she sprang forward to catch a sagging bucket, now tended a guy to relieve a man, or handled the teams herself when the line of carts was blocked or stalled.

Every hour she worked increased Babc.o.c.k's confidence and admiration. He began to feel a certain pride in her, and to a certain extent to rely upon her. Such capacity, endurance, and loyalty were new in his experience. If she owed him anything for her delay on that first cargo, the debt had been amply paid. Yet he saw that no such sense of obligation had influenced her. To her this extra work had been a duty: he was behind-hand with the wall, and anxious; she would help him out.

As to the weather, she reveled in it. The dash of the spray and the driving rain only added to her enjoyment. The clatter of rattling buckets and the rhythmic movement of the shovelers keeping time to her orders made a music as dear to her as that of the steady tramp of men and the sound of arms to a division commander.

Owing to the continued bad weather and the difficulty of shipping small quant.i.ties of fuel, the pumping-engines ran out of coal, and a complaint from Babc.o.c.k's office brought the agent of the coal company to the sea-wall. In times like these Babc.o.c.k rarely left his work. Once let the Old Man of the Sea, as he knew, get his finger in between the cracks of a coffer-dam, and he would smash the whole into wreckage.

"I was on my way to see Tom Grogan," said the agent. "I heard you were here, so I stopped to tell you about the coal. There will be a load down in the morning. I am Mr. Crane, of Crane & Co., coal-dealers."

"You know Mrs. Grogan, then?" asked Babc.o.c.k, after the delay in the delivery of the coal had been explained. He had been waiting for some such opportunity to discover more about his stevedore. He never discussed personalities with his men.

"Well, I should say so--known her for years. Best woman on top of Staten Island. Does she work for you?"

"Yes, and has for some years; but I must confess I never knew Grogan was a woman until I found her on the dock a few weeks ago, handling a cargo.

She works like a machine. How long has she been a widow?"

"Well, come to think of it, I don't know that she is a widow. There's some mystery about the old man, but I never knew what. But that don't count; she's good enough as she is, and a hustler, too."

Crane was something of a hustler himself--one of those busy Americans who opens his daily life with an office-key and closes it with a letter for the late mail. He was a restless, wiry, black-eyed little man, never still for a moment, and perpetually in chase of another eluding dollar,--which half the time he caught.

Then, laying his hand on Babc.o.c.k's arm: "And she's square as a brick, too. Sometimes when a chunker captain, waiting to unload, shoves a few tons aboard a sneak-boat at night, Tom will spot him every time. They try to fool her into indorsing their bills of lading in full, but it don't work for a cent."

"You call her Tom Grogan?" Babc.o.c.k asked, with a certain tone in his voice. He resented, somehow, Crane's familiarity.

"Certainly. Everybody calls her Tom Grogan. It's her husband's name.

Call her anything else, and she don't answer. She seems to glory in it, and after you know her a while you don't want to call her anything else yourself. It comes kind of natural--like your calling a man 'colonel' or 'judge."

Babc.o.c.k could not but admit that Crane might be right. All the names which could apply to a woman who had been sweetheart, wife, and mother seemed out of place when he thought of this undaunted spirit who had defied Lathers, and with one blow of her fist sent the splinters of a fence flying about his head.