"Where do you want it?" he called to Bannon.
"Right here, where I'm standing. You can swing your bow in just below the bridge there."
The captain pulled the bell, and the snub-nosed craft, stirring up a whirl of mud from the bottom of the river, was brought alongside the wharf.
"Where are you going to put it?" the captain called.
"Here. We'll clean this up as fast as we can. I want that cribbing all unloaded tonight, sure."
"That suits me," said the captain. "I don't want to be held up here—ought to pull out the first thing in the morning."
"All right, you can do it." Bannon turned to Peterson and Vogel (who had just reached the wharf). "You want to rush this, boys. I'll go over and see to the piling."
He hurried away, pausing at the office long enough to find the man sent by the electric light company, and to set him at work. The arc lamps had been placed, for the most part, where they would best illuminate the annex and the cupola of the elevator, and there was none too much light on the tracks, where the men were stumbling along, hindered rather than helped by the bright light before them. On the wharf it was less dark, for the lights of the steamer were aided by two on the spouting house. Before seven o'clock Bannon had succeeded in getting two more lights up on poles, one on each side of the track.
It was just at seven that the timbers suddenly stopped coming in. Bannon looked around impatiently. The six men that had brought in the last stick were disappearing around the corner of the great, shadowy structure that shut off Bannon's view of the wharf. He waited for a moment, but no more gangs appeared, and then he ran around the elevator over the path the men had already trampled. Within the circle of light between him and the C. & S. C. tracks stood scattered groups of the laborers, and others wandered about with their hooks over their shoulders. There was a larger, less distinct crowd out on the tracks. Bannon ran through an opening in the fence, and pushed into the largest group. Here Peterson and Vogel were talking to a stupid-looking man with a sandy mustache.
"What does this mean, Pete?" he said shortly. "We can't be held up this way. Get your men back on the work."
"No, he won't," said the third man. "You can't go on with this work."
Bannon sharply looked the man over. There was in his manner a dogged authority.
"Who are you?" Bannon asked. "Who do you represent?"
"I represent the C. & S. C. railroad, and I tell you this work stops right here."
"Why?"
The man waved his arm toward the fence.
"You can't do that sort of business."
"What sort?"
"You look at that fence and then talk to me about what sort."
"What's the matter with the fence?"
"What's the matter with it! There ain't more'n a rod of it left, that's what."
Bannon's scowl relaxed.
"Oh," he said, "I see. You're the section boss, ain't you?"
"Yes."
"That's all right then. Come over here and I'll show you how we've got things fixed."
He walked across the track, followed by the section boss and Pete, and pointed out the displaced sections of the fence, each of which had been carefully placed at one side.
"We'll have it all up all right before morning," he said.
The man was running his fingers up under his cap.
"I don't know anything about that," he replied sullenly. "I've got my orders. We didn't make any kick when you opened up in one place, but we can't stand for all this."
He was not speaking firmly, and Bannon, watching him closely, jumped at the conclusion that his orders were not very definite. Probably his superintendent had instructed him to keep a close eye on the work, and perhaps to grant no privileges. Bannon wished he knew more about the understanding between the railroad and MacBride & Company. He felt sure, however, that an understanding did exist or he would not have been told to go ahead.
"That's all right," he said, with an air of easy authority. "We've got to be working over your tracks for the next two months. It's as much to our interest as it is to yours to be careful, and I guess we can pull together. We've got an agreement with your general manager, and that's what goes." He turned away, but paused and added, "I'll see that you don't have any reason to complain."
The section boss looked about with an uncertain air at the crowd of waiting men.
"Don't go too fast there—" he began.
"Look here," said Bannon, abruptly. "We'll sit right down here and send a message to the general manager. That's the quickest way to settle it—tell him that we're carrying out timber across the tracks and you've stopped us."
It was a bluff, but Bannon knew his man.
"Now, how about this?" was the reply. "How long will it take you?"
"Till some time before daylight." Bannon was feeling for his pencil.
"You see that the fence goes back, will you? We ain't taking any chances, you understand."
Bannon nodded.
"All right, Max," he shouted. "Get to work there. And look here, Max," in a stern voice, "I expect you to see that the road is not blocked or delayed in any way. That's your business now, mind." He turned to the boss as the men hurried past to the wharf. "I used to be a railroad man myself—chief wrecker on the Grand Trunk—and I guess we won't have any trouble understanding each other."
Again the six long lines of men were creeping from the brightly lighted wharf across the shadowy tracks and around the end of the elevator. Bannon had held the electric light man within call, and now set him at work moving two other arc lamps to a position where they made the ground about the growing piles of timber nearly as light as day. Through the night air he could hear the thumping of the planks on the wharf. Faintly over this sound came the shouting of men and the tramp and shuffle of feet. And at intervals a train would rumble in the distance, slowly coming nearer, until with a roar that swallowed all the other noises it was past. The arc lamps glowed and buzzed over the heads of the sweating, grunting men, as they came along the path, gang after gang, lifting an end of a heavy stick to the level of the steadily rising pile, and sliding it home.
Bannon knew from long experience how to pile the different sizes so that each would be ready at the hands of the carpenters when the morning whistle should blow. He was all about the work, giving a hand here, an order there, always good-humored, though brusque, and always inspiring the men with the sight of his own activity.
Toward the middle of the evening Vogel came up from the wharf with a question. As he was about to return, Bannon, who had been turning over in his mind the incident of the section boss, said:—
"Wait a minute, Max. What about this railroad business—have they bothered you much before now?"
"Not very much, only in little ways. I guess it's just this section boss that does it on his own hook. He's a sort of a fool, you know, and he's got it into his head that we're trying to do him some way."
Bannon put his hands into his pockets, and studied the checkered pattern in the ground shadow of the nearest arc lamp. Then he slowly shook his head.
"No," he said, "that ain't it. He's too big a fool to do much on his own hook. He's acting on orders of some sort, and that's just what I don't understand. As a general thing a railroad's mighty white to an elevator. Come to think of it, they said something about it up at the office,"—he was apparently speaking to himself, and Max quietly waited,—"Brown said something about the C. & S. C. having got in the way a little down here, but I didn't think much about it at the time."