Calumet 'K'

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 to-morrow," 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 finger 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.

CHAPTER XVI

Bannon stood looking after her until she disappeared in the shadow of an arc lamp, and after that he continued a long time staring into the blot of darkness where the office was. At last the window became faintly luminous, as some one lighted the wall lamp; then, as if it were a signal he had been waiting for, Bannon turned away.

An hour before, when he had seen the last bolt of the belt gallery drawn taut, he had become aware that he was quite exhausted. The fact was so obvious that he had not tried to evade it, but had admitted to himself, in so many words, that he was at the end of his rope. But when he turned from gazing at the dimly lighted window, it was not toward his boarding-house, where he knew he ought to be, but back into the elevator, that his feet led him. For once, his presence accomplished nothing. He went about without thinking where; he passed men without seeing who they were or what they were doing. When he walked through the belt gallery, he saw the foreman of the big gang of men at work there was handling them clumsily, so that they interfered with each other, but it did not occur to him to give the orders that would set things right. Then, as if his wire-drawn muscles had not done work enough, he climbed laboriously to the very top of the marine tower.

He was leaning against a window-casing; not looking out, for he saw nothing, but with his face turned to the fleet of barges lying in the river; when some one spoke to him.

"I guess you're thinking about that Christmas dinner, ain't you, Mr. Bannon?"

"What's that?" he demanded, wheeling about. Then rallying his scattered faculties, he recognized one of the carpenters. "Oh, yes," he said, laughing tardily. "Yes, the postponed Christmas dinner. You think I'm in for it, do you? You know it's no go unless this house is full of wheat clear to the roof."

"I know it," said the man. "But I guess we're going to stick you for it. Don't you think we are?"

"I guess that's right."

"I come up here," said the carpenter, well pleased at the chance for a talk with the boss, "to have a look at this – marine leg, do you call it? I haven't been to work on it, and I never saw one before. I wanted to find out how it works."

"Just like any other leg over in the main house. Head pulley up here; another one down in the boot; endless belt running over 'em with steel cups rivetted on it to scoop up the grain. Only difference is that instead of being stationary and set up in a tank, this one's hung up. We let the whole business right down into the boat. Pull it up and down with that steam winch."

The man shook his head. "What if it got away from you?"

"That's happened," said Bannon. "I've seen a leg most as big as this smash through two decks. Thought it was going right on through the bottom of the boat. But that wasn't a leg that MacBride had hung up. This one won't fall."

Bannon answered one or two more questions rather at random, then suddenly came back to earth. "What are you doing here, anyway?" he demanded. "Seems to me this is a pretty easy way to earn thirty cents an hour."

"I – I was just going to see if there wasn't something I could do," the man answered, a good deal embarrassed. Then before Bannon could do more than echo, "Something to do?" added: "I don't get my time check till midnight. I ain't on this shift. I just come around to see how things was going. We're going to see you through, Mr. Bannon."

Bannon never had a finer tribute than that, not even what young Page said when the race was over; and it could not have come at a moment when he needed it more. He did not think much in set terms about what it meant, but when the man had gone and he had turned back to the window, he took a long breath of the night air and he saw what lay beneath his eyes. He saw the line of ships in the river; down nearer the lake another of Page's elevators was drinking up the red wheat out of the hold of a snub-nosed barge; across the river, in the dark, they were backing another string of wheat-laden cars over the Belt Line switches. As he looked out and listened, his imagination took fire again, as it had taken fire that day in the waiting-room at Blake City, when he had learned that the little, one-track G. & M. was trying to hinder the torrent of the Northern wheat.

Well, the wheat had come down. It had beaten a blizzard, it had churned and wedged and crushed its way through floating ice and in the trough of mauling seas; belated passenger trains had waited on lonely sidings while it thundered by, and big rotary ploughs had bitten a way for it across the drifted prairies. Now it was here, and Charlie Bannon was keeping it waiting.

He stood there, looking, only a moment; then before the carpenter's footsteps were well out of hearing, he followed him down the stairway to the belt gallery. Before he had passed half its length you could have seen the difference. In the next two hours every man on the elevator saw him, learned a quicker way to splice a rope or align a shaft, and heard, before the boss went away, some word of commendation that set his hands to working the faster, and made the work seem easy. The work had gone on without interruption for weeks, and never slowly, but there were times when it went with a lilt and a laugh; when laborers heaved at a hoisting tackle with a Yo-ho, like privateersmen who have just sighted a sail; when, with all they could do, results came too slowly, and the hours flew too fast. And so it was that Christmas night; Charlie Bannon was back on the job.

About ten o'clock he encountered Pete, bearing off to the shanty a quart bottle of cold coffee and a dozen big, thick sandwiches. "Come on, Charlie," he called. "Max is coming, too; but I guess we've got enough to spare you a little."

So the three of them sat down to supper around the draughting-table, and between bites Bannon talked, a little about everything, but principally, and with much corroborative detail – for the story seemed to strain even Pete's easy credulity – of how, up at Yawger, he had been run on the independent ticket for Superintendent of the Sunday School, and had been barely defeated by two votes.

When the sandwiches were put away, and all but three drinks of the coffee, Bannon held the bottle high in the air. "Here's to the house!" he said. "We'll have wheat in her to-morrow night!"

They drank the toast standing; then, as if ashamed of such a sentimental demonstration, they filed sheepishly out of the office. They walked fifty paces in silence. Then Pete checked suddenly and turned to Bannon.

"Hold on, Charlie, where are you going?"

"Going to look over those 'cross-the-house conveyor drives down cellar."

"No, you ain't either. You're going to bed."

Bannon only laughed and started on toward the elevator.

"How long is it since you had any sleep?" Pete demanded.

"I don't know. Guess I must have slept part of the time while we was putting up that gallery. I don't remember much about it."

"Don't be in such a hurry," said Pete, and as he said it he reached out his left hand and caught him by the shoulder. It was more by way of gesture than otherwise, but Bannon had to step back a pace to keep his feet. "I mean business," Pete went on, though laughing a little. "When we begin to turn over the machinery you won't want to go away, so this is your last chance to get any sleep. I can't make things jump like you can, but I can keep 'em going to-night somehow."

"Hadn't you better wrap me up in cotton flannel and feed me warm milk with a spoon? Let go of me and quit your fooling. You delay the game."

"I ain't fooling. I'm boss here at night, and I fire you till morning. That goes if I have to carry you all the way to your boarding house and tie you down to the bed." Pete meant it. As if, again, for illustration, he picked Bannon up in his arms. The boss was ready for the move this time, and he resisted with all his strength, but he would have had as much chance against the hug of a grizzly bear; he was crumpled up. Pete started off with him across the flat.

"All right," said Bannon. "I'll go."

At seven o'clock next morning Pete began expecting his return. At eight he began inquiring of various foremen if they had seen anything of Charlie Bannon. By nine he was avowedly worried lest something had gone wrong with him, and a little after ten Max set out for the boarding house.

Encountering the landlady in the hall, he made the mistake of asking her if she had seen anything of Mr. Bannon that morning. She had some elementary notions of strategy, derived, doubtless, from experience, and before beginning her reply, she blocked the narrow stairway with her broad person. Then, beginning with a discussion of Mr. Bannon's excellent moral character and his most imprudent habits, and illustrating by anecdotes of various other boarders she had had at one time and another, she led up to the statement that she had seen nothing of him since the night before, and that she had twice knocked at his door without getting any reply.

Max, who had laughed a little at Pete's alarm, was now pretty well frightened himself, but at that instant they heard the thud of bare feet on the floor just above them. "That's him now," said the landlady, thoughtlessly turning sideways, and Max bolted past her and up the stairs.

He knocked at the door and called out to know if he could come in. The growl he heard in reply meant invitation as much as it meant anything, so he went in. Bannon, already in his shirt and trousers, stood with his back to the door, his face in the washbowl. As he scoured he sputtered. Max could make little out of it, for Bannon's face was under water half the time, but he caught such phrases as "Pete's darned foolishness," "College boy trick," "Lie abed all the morning," and "Better get an alarm clock" – which thing and the need for it Bannon greatly despised – and he reached the conclusion that the matter was nothing more serious than that Bannon had overslept.

But the boss took it seriously enough. Indeed, he seemed deeply humiliated, and he marched back to the elevator beside Max without saying a word until just as they were crossing the Belt Line tracks, when the explanation of the phenomenon came to him.

"I know where I get it from," he exclaimed, as if in some measure relieved by the discovery. "I must take after my uncle. He was the greatest fellow to sleep you ever saw."

So far as pace was concerned that day was like the others; while the men were human it could be no faster; with Bannon on the job it could not flag; but there was this difference, that to-day the stupidest sweepers knew that they had almost reached the end, and there was a rally like that which a runner makes at the beginning of the last hundred yards.

Late in the afternoon they had a broad hint of how near the end was. The sweepers dropped their brooms and began carrying fire buckets full of water. They placed one or more near every bearing all over the elevator. The men who were quickest to understand explained to the slower ones what the precaution meant, and every man had his eye on the nearest pulley to see when it would begin to turn.

But Bannon was not going to begin till he was ready. He had inspected the whole job four times since noon, but just after six he went all over it again, more carefully than before. At the end he stepped out of the door at the bottom of the stairway bin, and pulled it shut after him. It was not yet painted, and its blank surface suggested something. He drew out his blue pencil and wrote on the upper panel: —

O.K.

C. H. Bannon.

Then he walked over to the power house. It was a one-story brick building, with whose construction Bannon had had no concern, as Page & Company had placed the contract for it elsewhere. Every night for the past week lights had been streaming from its windows, and day and night men had waited, ready at any time for the word to go ahead. A dozen of them were lounging about the brick-paved space in front of the battery of boilers when Bannon opened the door, and they sprang to their feet as they read his errand in his face.

"Steam up," he said. "We'll be ready as soon as you are."

There was the accumulated tension of a week of inactivity behind these men, and the effect of Bannon's words was galvanic. Already low fires were burning under the boilers, and now the coal was piled on, the draughts roared, the smoke, thick enough to cut, came billowing out of the tall chimney. Every man in the room, even the wretchedest of the dripping stokers, had his eyes on the steam gauges, but for all that the water boiled, and the indicator needles crept slowly round the dials, and at last the engineer walked over and pulled the whistle cord.

Hitherto they had marked the divisions of time on the job by the shrill note of the little whistle on the hoisting engine boiler, and there was not a man but started at the screaming crescendo of the big siren on top of the power house. Men in the streets, in the straggling boarding houses over across the flats, on the wharves along the river, men who had been forbidden to come to the elevator till they were needed lest they should be in the way, had been waiting days for that signal, and they came streaming into the elevator almost before the blast had died away.

Page's superintendent was standing beside Bannon and Pete by the foot of the main drive. "Well," he said, "we're ready. Are you?"