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.