“Well, what d’you want?”
Juan looked up at him sternly.
“I tell you—look out,” he said slowly. “Thees night you will be sorree.”
Smith scowled.
“What’s eatin’ you?” he demanded. “Didn’t you get enough?”
Juan stared at him silently.
“I tell you, look out,” he said evenly, and turned away.
Smith watched him go in silence. After a moment he broke it with an oath
and turned back to his work.
Swiftly Juan climbed to the top of the ladder. Moving carefully lest he
touch the live power wire, he crawled on the crane and stood up. He was
high above the pit lights, above everything, standing in pitch darkness.
Below stretched the world of the shops, a distant world it seemed. The
day-time cacophony was subdued. A deep, murky gloom, broken and slashed
by feeble lights and flickering torches, turned the shops into a vast
hive of the unknown.
There was movement on the ground, but of a sort that slipped silent and
unseen through the darkness. One moment nothing, the next the looming
shadow of a locomotive, or of a car. A swing around a corner and a
collision with a ghostly workman. A voice calling, the source drowned by
the all-pervading darkness. Winking pinpoints of light bobbing along
with no apparent support; a Stygian world in which all things were
possible—and probable.
Juan looked about him and drew a deep breath. Up there, high above
everything, he seemed infinitely removed from the earth, a part, almost,
of the sky overhead. There was something about it that had always
thrilled him, that had sent the blood racing through his veins in joy
and brought, many times during the night, songs caroling to his lips.
But there was no joy in Juan’s heart then, no song on his lips. A great
hurt filled him, a bitterness. And there was something more, something
the sight of the bucket had put into his mind. With a last look about,
he made his way over the motors and cable drums until he reached the
roof of the little control cage. He stooped, pushed back a small slide,
felt with his foot, found the top rung of a ladder inside, and
descended.
From the glassed windows of the little cage he could look out on all
sides. On his right was the ready lot filled with locomotives, repaired,
greased, coaled and watered, waiting for their runs. On his left, the
dark outlines of the shop buildings were etched indistinctly in vagrant
rays of light. Through the open trapdoor in the roof a lone star looked
down upon him.
Below him in the murky light that shrouded the pit stood the engine. At
its side—Smith. Juan eyed him rigidly. The muscles in his jaw set and
his hands slipped over to the controller handles. Then before he could
do anything, the locomotive below slipped off the pit with a soft purr
of exhausts. Smith, his work finished for the moment, walked off the
slatwork covering of the pit.
Juan relaxed with an impatient exclamation. But there were no more
locomotives below at the moment and, with a final bitter glance at the
back of Smith, he went to work. His hands moved swiftly between the
different controller handles. The cage swung out over the pit. At the
same moment other motors overhead whirred and the great clamshell bucket
dropped.
On the section of slatwork covering over which the cage hovered, a
five-foot length of I-shaped steel was bolted. Juan stopped the downward
rush of the bucket a few inches above the steel beam. Then, gently, he
set it down and closed the huge jaws tightly in the channel of the I.
He touched another control and the bucket arose without effort, lifting
the half-ton section of slatwork covering by its bite on the I-beam. As
the bucket lifted, the crane slipped down the pit a few feet. There,
clear of the gaping square of water which the section had uncovered, the
bucket settled. The section came to rest easily; the bucket jaws
unclasped; the crane swung back over the open water.
* * * * *
For the next hour Juan worked steadily. His hands moved constantly
between the controls. The bucket dropped down, down, disappeared beneath
the water, and still dropped. It touched the bottom; the cables
slackened. He moved another control. The cables tightened, one more taut
than the rest. Far below the surface the great jaws bit deep into the
piles of ashes and closed on a huge bite. The cables stilled a moment
and then began to slip smoothly up out of the water. The top of the
bucket broke the surface, then the main part, and then it rose into the
air, cascading water and ashes back on the black surface of the water.
With a sweep the bucket traveled over to the string of empty ash cars
which stood on the tracks at one side of the pit. Over the cars the
bucket jaws yawned, the wet ashes dropped and the bucket swooped back
for another bite.
Another locomotive slipped over the pit, and Smith again appeared on the
slatwork covering, farther away. The crane gradually shifted down the
pit, nearer and nearer to where he was working. His figure appeared
plain through the uncertain light. Finally he looked up. The bucket was
in mid-swoop, the jaws hanging open and loose. As Smith’s glance met
his, Juan snapped the jaws shut. And as they clanged together ominously
Juan scowled.
Smith turned back to his work. But when, on the next swoop from the ash
cars the jaws again snapped in mid-air, he started slightly. Juan, who
was watching closely, smiled grimly to himself.
The locomotive presently moved off, but another one took its place at
once. Juan finished the spot where he was working, replaced the
covering, and opened up a new one, almost beside where Smith was
working.
He carried the half-ton covering from the new opening over behind Smith,
stilled it at a foot in the air, then opened the bucket jaws and
released it. At the crash and tremor of the impact, Smith started and
cursed. He turned, his face twisted with rage, and shouted up—
“Watch out there, you fool, you’ll kill some one yet!”