"You don't dare fire me," the man said, coming nearer. "You'll have to take me back tomorrow."
"I'm through talking with you," said Bannon, still quietly. "The faster you can light out of here the better."
"We'll see about that. You can't come it on the union that way—"
Then, without any preparatory gesture whatever, Bannon knocked him down. The man seemed to fairly rebound from the floor. He rushed at the boss, but before he could come within striking distance, Bannon whipped out a revolver and dropped it level with Reilly's face.
"I've talked to you," he said slowly, his eye blazing along the barrel, "and I've knocked you down. But—"
The man staggered back, then walked away very pale, but muttering. Bannon shoved back the revolver into his hip pocket. "It's all right, boys," he said, "nothing to get excited about."
He walked to the edge and looked over. "We can't wait to pick it up a stick at a time," he said. "I'll tell 'em to load four or five on each larry. Then you can lift the whole bunch."
"We run some chances of a spill or a break that way," said the foreman.
"I know it," answered Bannon, dryly. "That's the kind of chances we'll have to run for the next two months."
Descending to the ground, he gave the same order to the men below; then he sent word to Peterson and Vogel that he wished to see them in the office. He wiped his feet on the mat, glancing at Hilda as he did so, but she was hard at work and did not look up. He took the one unoccupied chair and placed it where he could watch the burnished light in her red hair. Presently she turned toward him.
"Did you want something?" she asked.
"Excuse me. I guess—I—"
In the midst of his embarrassment, Max and Pete came in. "I've got a couple of letters I want to talk over with you boys," he said. "That's why I sent for you."
Pete laughed and vaulted to a seat on the draughting-table. "I was most afraid to come," he said. "I heard you drawed a gun on that fellow, Reilly. What was he doing to make you mad?"
"Nothing much."
"Well, I'm glad you fired him. He's made trouble right along. How'd it happen you had a gun with you? Do you always carry one?"
"Haven't been without one on a job since I've worked for the old man."
"Well," said Pete, straightening up, "I've never so much as owned one, and I never want to. I don't like 'em. If my fists ain't good enough to take care of me against any fellow that comes along, why, he's welcome to lick me, that's all."
Hilda glanced at him, and for a moment her eyes rested on his figure. There was not a line of it but showed grace and strength and a magnificent confidence. Then, as if for the contrast, she looked at Bannon. He had been watching her all the while, and he seemed to guess her thought.
"That's all right," he said in answer to Peterson, "when it's just you and him and a fellow to hold your coats. But it don't always begin that way. I've been in places where things got pretty miscellaneous sometimes, but I never had a man come up and say: 'Mr. Bannon, I'm going to lick you. Any time when you're ready.' There's generally from three to thirty, and they all try to get on your back."
Peterson laughed reminiscently. "I was an attendant in the insane ward of the Massachusetts General Hospital for a while, and one time when I wasn't looking for it, twenty four of those lunatics all jumped on me at once. They got me on the floor and 'most killed me." He paused, as though there was nothing more to tell.
"Don't stop there," said Max.
"Why," he went on, "I crawled along the floor till I got to a chair, and I just knocked 'em around with that till they was quiet."
Bannon looked at his watch; then he took Brown's letter from his pocket.
"It's from the office," he said. "We've got to have the bins full before New Year's Day."
"Got to!" exclaimed Pete. "I don't see it that way. We can't do it."
"Can or can't, that don't interest MacBride a bit. He says it's got to be done and it has."
"Why, he can't expect us to do it. He didn't say anything about January first to me. I didn't know it was a rush job. And then we played in hard luck, too, before you came. That cribbing being tied up, for instance. He certainly can't blame us if—"
"That's got nothing to do with it," Bannon cut in shortly. "He don't pay us to make excuses; he pays us to do as we're told. When I have to begin explaining to MacBride why it can't be done, I'll send my resignation along in a separate envelope and go to peddling a cure for corns. What we want to talk about is how we're going to do it."
Peterson flushed, but said nothing, and Bannon went on: "Now, here's what we've got to do. We've got to frame the cupola and put on the roof and sheathe the entire house with galvanized iron; we've got to finish the spouting house and sheathe that; we've got to build the belt gallery—and we'll have no end of a time doing it if the C. & S. C. is still looking for trouble. Then there's all the machinery to erect and the millwright work to do. And we've got to build the annex."
"I thought you was going to forget that," said Pete. "That's the worst job of all."
"No, it ain't. It's the easiest. It'll build itself. It's just a case of two and two makes four. All you've got to do is spike down two-inch planks till it's done, and then clap on some sort of a roof. There's no machinery, no details, just straight work. It's just a question of having the lumber to do it with, and we've got it now. It's the little work that can raise Ned with you. There is more than a million little things that any man ought to do in half an hour, but if one of 'em goes wrong, it may hold you up for all day. Now, I figure the business this way."
He took a memorandum from his pocket and began reading. There was very little guesswork about it; he had set down as nearly as possible the amount of labor involved in each separate piece of construction, and the number of men who could work on it at once. Allowing for the different kinds of work that could be done simultaneously, he made out a total of one hundred and twenty days.
"Well, that's all right, I guess," said Pete, "but you see that takes us way along into next year sometime."
"About March first," said Max.
"You haven't divided by three yet," said Bannon. "We'll get three eight-hour days into every twenty-four hours, and twenty-one of 'em into every week."
"Why, that's better than we need to do," said Pete, after a moment. "That gets us about two weeks ahead of time."
"Did you ever get through when you thought you would?" Bannon demanded. "I never did. Don't you know that you always get hit by something you ain't looking for? I'm figuring in our hard-luck margin, that's all. There are some things I am looking for, too. We'll have a strike here before we get through."
"Oh, I guess not," said Pete, easily. "You're still thinking of Reilly, aren't you."
"And for another thing, Page & Company are likely to spring something on us at the last moment."
"What sort of thing?"
"If I knew I'd go ahead and build it now, but I don't."
"How are you going to work three gangs? Who'll look after'em?"
"One of us has got to stay up nights, I guess," said Bannon. "We'll have to get a couple of boys to help Max keep time. It may take us a day or two to get the good men divided up and the thing to running properly, but we ought to be going full blast by the first of the week."
He arose and buttoned his coat. "You two know the men better than I do. I wish you'd go through the pay roll and pick out the best men and find out, if you can, who'll work nights at regular night wages."
Peterson came out of the office with him.
"I suppose you'll put me in the night gang," he said.
"I haven't decided yet what I'll do."
"When I came by the main hoist," Pete went on, "they was picking up four and five sticks at once. I stopped 'em, and they said it was your orders. You'll come to smash that way, sure as a gun."