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."