Bannon stopped the engine and drew the fire; Peterson and his crew clambered to the ground, and Max put on his coat and waited for the two foremen to come across the tracks. When they joined him, Bannon looked sharply at him in the growing light.

"h.e.l.lo, Max," he said; "where did you get that black eye?"

"That ain't much," Max replied. "You ought to see Briggs."

CHAPTER VI

When Bannon came on the job on Friday morning at seven o'clock, a group of heavy-eyed men were falling into line at the timekeeper's window. Max was in the office, pa.s.sing out the checks. His sister was continuing her work of the night before, going over what books and papers were to be found in the desk. Bannon hung up his overcoat and looked through the doorway at the square ma.s.s of the elevator that stood out against the sky like some gigantic, unroofed barn. The walls rose nearly eighty feet from the ground--though the length and breadth of the structure made them appear lower--so close to the tops of the posts that were to support the cupola frame that Bannon's eyes spoke of satisfaction. He meant to hide those posts behind the rising walls of cribbing before the day should be gone. He glanced about at the piles of two-inch plank that hid the annex foundation work. There it lay, two hundred thousand feet of it--not very much, to be sure, but enough to keep the men busy for the present, and enough, too, to give a start to the annex bins and walls.

Peterson was approaching from the tool house, and Bannon called.

"How many laborers have you got, Pete?"

"Hardly any. Max, there, can tell."

Max, who had just pa.s.sed out his last check, now joined them at the doorstep.

"There's just sixty-two that came for checks," he said, "not counting the carpenters."

"About what I expected," Bannon replied. "This night business lays them out." He put his head in at the door. "You'd better give checks to any new men that we send to the window, Miss Vogel; but keep the names of the old men, and if they show up in the morning, take them back on the job. Now, boys"--to Peterson and Max--"pick up the men you see hanging around and send them over. I'll be at the office for a while. We'll push the cribbing on the main house and start right in on the annex bins.

There ain't much time to throw around if we're going to eat our Christmas dinner."

The two went at once. The hoisting engines were impatiently blowing off steam. New men were appearing every moment, delaying only to answer a few brisk questions and to give their names to Miss Vogel, and then hurrying away to the tool house, each with his bra.s.s check fastened to his coat. When Bannon was at last ready to enter the office, he paused again to look over the ground. The engines were now puffing steadily, and the rapping of many hammers came through the crisp air. Gangs of laborers were swarming over the lumber piles, pitching down the planks, and other gangs were carrying them away and piling them on "dollies," to be pushed along the plank runways to the hoist. There was a black fringe of heads between the posts on the top of the elevator, where the carpenters were spiking down the last planks of the walls and bins.

Miss Vogel was at work on the ledger when Bannon entered the office. He pushed his hat back on his head and came up beside her.

"How's it coming out?" he asked. "Do we know how much we're good for?"

She looked up, smiling.

"I think so. I'm nearly through. It's a little mixed in some places, but I think everything has been entered."

"Can you drop it long enough to take a letter or so?"

"Oh, yes." She reached for her notebook, saying, with a nod toward the table: "The mail is here."

Bannon went rapidly through the heap of letters and bills.

"There's nothing much," he said. "You needn't wait for me to open it after this. You'll want to read everything to keep posted. These bills for cribbing go to your brother, you know." There was one chair within the enclosure; he brought it forward and sat down, tipping back against the railing. "Well, I guess we may as well go ahead and tell the firm that we're still moving around and drawing our salaries. To MacBride & Company, Minneapolis, Gentlemen: Cribbing is now going up on elevator and annex. A little over two feet remains to be done on the elevator beneath the distributing floor. The timber is ready for framing the cupola. Two hundred thousand feet of the Ledyard cribbing reached here by steamer last night, and the balance will be down in a few days. Very truly yours, MacBride & Company. That will do for them. Now, we'll write to Mr. Brown--no, you needn't bother, though; I'll do that one myself.

You might run off the other and I'll sign it." He got up and moved his chair to the table. "I don't generally seem able to say just what I want to Brown unless I write it out." His letter ran:--

DEAR MR. BROWN: We've finally got things going. Had to stir them up a little at Ledyard. Can you tell me who it is that's got hold of our coat tails on this job? There's somebody trying to hold us back, all right. Had a little fuss with a red-headed walking delegate last night, but fixed him. That hat hasn't come yet. Shall I call up the express company and see what's the matter? 7-1/4 is my size.

Yours, BANNON.

He had folded the letter and addressed the envelope, when he paused and looked around. The typewritten letter to MacBride & Company lay at his elbow. He signed it before he spoke.

"Miss Vogel, have you come across any letters or papers about an agreement with the C. & S. C.?"

"No," she replied, "there is nothing here about the railroad."

Bannon drummed on the table; then he went to the door and called to a laborer who was leaving the tool house:--

"Find Mr. Peterson and ask him if he will please come to the office for a moment."

He came slowly back and sat on the corner of the table, watching Miss Vogel as her pencil moved rapidly up column after column.

"Had quite a time up there in Michigan," he said. "Those G. & M. people were after us in earnest. If they'd had their way, we'd never have got the cribbing."

She looked up.

"You see, they had told Sloan--he's the man that owns the lumber company and the city of Ledyard and pretty much all of the Lower Peninsula--that they hadn't any cars; and he'd just swallowed it down and folded up his napkin. I hadn't got to Ledyard before I saw a string of empties on a siding that weren't doing a thing but waiting for our cribbing, so I caught a train to Blake City and gave the Division Superintendent some points on running railroads. He was a nice, friendly man"--Bannon clasped his hands about one knee and smiled reminiscently--"I had him pretty busy there for a while thinking up lies. He was wondering how he could get ready for the next caller, when I came at him and made him wire the General Manager of the line. The operator was sitting right outside the door, and when the answer came I just took it in--it gave the whole snap away, clear as you want."

Miss Vogel turned on her stool.

"You took his message?"

"I should say I did. It takes a pretty lively man to crowd me off the end of a wire. He told the superintendent not to give us cars. That was all I wanted to know. So I told him how sorry I was that I couldn't stay to lunch, caught the next train back to Ledyard, and built a fire under Sloan."

Miss Vogel was looking out of the window.

"He said he could not give us cars?" she repeated.

Bannon smiled.

"But we didn't need them," he said. "I got a barge to come over from Milwaukee, and we loaded her up and started her down."

"I don't understand, Mr. Bannon. Ledyard isn't on the lake--and you couldn't get cars."

"That wasn't very hard." He paused, for a step sounded outside the door and in a moment Peterson had come in.

"I guess you wanted to talk to me, didn't you, Charlie?"

"Yes, I'm writing to the office. It's about this C. & S. C. business.

You said you'd had trouble with them before."

"Oh, no," said Peterson, sitting on the railing and removing his hat, with a side glance at Miss Vogel, "not to speak of. There wasn't nothing so bad as last night."

"What was it?"

"Why, just a little talk when we opened the fence first time. That section boss was around, but I told him how things was, and he didn't seem to have no kick coming as long as we was careful."

Bannon had taken up his letter to Brown, and was slowly unfolding it and looking it over. When Peterson got to his feet, he laid it on the table.