Calumet 'K'

CHAPTER XIII

It was the night of the tenth of December. Three of the four stories of the cupola were building, and the upright posts were reaching toward the fourth. It still appeared to be a confused network of timbers, with only the beginnings of walls, but as the cupola walls are nothing but a shell of light boards to withstand the wind, the work was further along than might have been supposed. Down on the working story the machinery was nearly all in, and up here in the cupola the scales and garners were going into place as rapidly as the completing of the supporting framework permitted. The cupola floors were not all laid. If you had stood on the distributing floor, over the tops of the bins, you might have looked not only down through a score of openings between plank areas and piles of timbers, into black pits, sixteen feet square by seventy deep, but upward through a grill of girders and joists to the clear sky. Everywhere men swarmed over the work, and the buzz of the electric lights and the sounds of hundreds of hammers blended into a confused hum.

If you had walked to the east end of the building, here and there balancing along a plank or dodging through gangs of laborers and around moving timbers, you would have seen stretching from off a point not halfway through to the ground, the annex bins, rising so steadily that it was a matter only of a few weeks before they would be ready to receive grain. Now another walk, this time across the building to the north side, would show you the river house, out there on the wharf, and the marine tower rising up through the middle with a single arc lamp on the topmost girder throwing a mottled, checkered shadow on the wharf and the water below.

At a little after eight o'clock, Peterson, who had been looking at the stairway, now nearly completed, came out on the distributing floor. He was in good spirits, for everything was going well, and Bannon had frankly credited him, of late, with the improvement in the work of the night shifts. He stood looking up through the upper floors of the cupola, and he did not see Max until the timekeeper stood beside him.

"Hello, Max," he said. "We'll have the roof on here in another ten days."

Max followed Peterson's glance upward.

"I guess that's right. It begins to look as if things was coming 'round all right. I just come up from the office. Mr. Bannon's there. He'll be up before long, he says. I was a-wondering if maybe I hadn't ought to go back and tell him about Grady. He's around, you know."

"Who? Grady?"

"Yes. Him and another fellow was standing down by one of the cribbin' piles. I was around there on the way up."

"What was they doing?"

"Nothing. Just looking on."

Peterson turned to shout at some laborers, then he pushed back his hat and scratched his head.

"I don't know but what you'd ought to 'a' told Charlie right off. That man Grady don't mean us no good."

"I know it, but I wasn't just sure."

"Well, I'll tell you – "

Before Peterson could finish, Max broke in: —

"That's him."

"Where?"

"That fellow over there, walking along slow. He's the one that was with Grady."

"I'd like to know what he thinks he's doing here." Peterson started forward, adding, "I guess I know what to say to him."

"Hold on, Pete," said Max, catching his arm. "Maybe we'd better speak to Mr. Bannon. I'll go down and tell him, and you keep an eye on this fellow."

Peterson reluctantly assented, and Max walked slowly away, now and then pausing to look around at the men. But when he had nearly reached the stairway, where he could slip behind the scaffolding about the only scale hopper that had reached a man's height above the floor, he moved more rapidly. He met Bannon on the stairway, and told him what he had seen. Bannon leaned against the wall of the stairway bin, and looked thoughtful.

"So he's come, has he?" was his only comment. "You might speak to Pete, Max, and bring him here. I'll wait."

Max and Peterson found him looking over the work of the carpenters.

"I may not be around much to-night," he said, with a wink, "but I'd like to see both of you to-morrow afternoon some time. Can you get around about four o'clock, Pete?"

"Sure," the night boss replied.

"We've got some thinking to do about the work, if we're going to put it through. I'll look for you at four o'clock then, in the office." He started down the stairs. "I'm going home now."

"Why," said Peterson, "you only just come."

Bannon paused and looked back over his shoulder. The light came from directly overhead, and the upper part of his face was in the shadow of his hat brim, but Max, looking closely at him, thought that he winked again.

"I wanted to tell you," the foreman went on; "Grady's come around, you know – and another fellow – "

"Yes, Max told me. I guess they won't hurt you. Good night."

As he went on down he passed a group of laborers who were bringing stairway material to the carpenters.

"I don't know but what you was talking pretty loud," said Max to Peterson, in a low voice. "Here's some of 'em now."

"They didn't hear nothing," Peterson replied, and the two went back to the distributing floor. They stood in a shadow, by the scale hopper, waiting for the reappearance of Grady's companion. He had evidently gone on to the upper floors, where he could not be distinguished from the many other moving figures; but in a few minutes he came back, walking deliberately toward the stairs. He looked at Peterson and Max, but passed by without a second glance, and descended. Peterson stood looking after him.

"Now, I'd like to know what Charlie meant by going home," he said.

Max had been thinking hard. Finally he said: —

"Say, Pete, we're blind."

"Why?"

"Did you think he was going home?"

Peterson looked at him, but did not reply.

"Because he ain't."

"Well, you heard what he said."

"What does that go for? He was winking when he said it. He wasn't going to stand there and tell the laborers all about it, like we was trying to do. I'll bet he ain't very far off."

"I ain't got a word to say," said Peterson. "If he wants to leave Grady to me, I guess I can take care of him."

Max had come to the elevator for a short visit – he liked to watch the work at night – but now he settled down to stay, keeping about the hopper where he could see Grady if his head should appear at the top of the stairs. Something told him that Bannon saw deeper into Grady's man[oe]uvres than either Peterson or himself, and while he could not understand, yet he was beginning to think that Grady would appear before long, and that Bannon knew it.

Sure enough, only a few minutes had gone when Max turned back from a glance at the marine tower and saw the little delegate standing on the top step, looking about the distributing floor and up through the girders overhead, with quick, keen eyes. Then Max understood what it all meant: Grady had chosen a time when Bannon was least likely to be on the job; and had sent the other man ahead to reconnoitre. It meant mischief – Max could see that; and he felt a boy's nervousness at the prospect of excitement. He stepped farther back into the shadow.

Grady was looking about for Peterson; when he saw his burly figure outlined against a light at the farther end of the building, he walked directly toward him, not pausing this time to talk to the laborers or to look at them. Max, moving off a little to one side, followed, and reached Peterson's side just as Grady, his hat pushed back on his head and his feet apart, was beginning to talk.

"I had a little conversation with you the other day, Mr. Peterson. I called to see you in the interests of the men, the men that are working for you – working like galley slaves they are, every man of them. It's shameful to a man that's seen how they've been treated by the nigger drivers that stands over them day and night." He was speaking in a loud voice, with the fluency of a man who is carefully prepared. There was none of the bitterness or the ugliness in his manner that had slipped out in his last talk with Bannon, for he knew that a score of laborers were within hearing, and that his words would travel, as if by wire, from mouth to mouth about the building and the grounds below. "I stand here, Mr. Peterson, the man chosen by these slaves of yours, to look after their rights. I do not ask you to treat them with kindness, I do not ask that you treat them as gentlemen. What do I ask? I demand what's accorded to them by the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence, that says even a nigger has more rights than you've given to these men, the men that are putting money into your pocket, and Mr. Bannon's pocket, and the corporation's pocket, by the sweat of their brows. Look at them; will you look at them?" He waved his arm toward the nearest group, who had stopped working and were listening; and then, placing a cigar in his mouth and tilting it upward, he struck a match and sheltered it in his hands, looking over it for a moment at Peterson.

The night boss saw by this time that Grady meant business, that his speech was preliminary to something more emphatic, and he knew that he ought to stop it before the laborers should be demoralized.

"You can't do that here, Mister," said Max, over Peterson's shoulder, indicating the cigar.

Grady still held the match, and looked impudently across the tip of his cigar. Peterson took it up at once.

"You'll have to drop that," he said. "There's no smoking on this job."

The match had gone out, and Grady lighted another.

"So that's one of your rules, too?" he said, in the same loud voice. "It's a wonder you let a man eat."

Peterson was growing angry. His voice rose as he talked.

"I ain't got time to talk to you," he said. "The insurance company says there can't be no smoking here. If you want to know why, you'd better ask them."

Grady blew out the match and returned the cigar to his pocket, with an air of satisfaction that Peterson could not make out.

"That's all right, Mr. Peterson. I didn't come here to make trouble. I come here as a representative of these men" – he waved again toward the laborers – "and I say right here, that if you'd treated them right in the first place, I wouldn't be here at all. I've wanted you to have a fair show. I've put up with your mean tricks and threats and insults ever since you begun – and why? Because I wouldn't delay you and hurt the work. It's the industries of to-day, the elevators and railroads, and the work of strong men like these that's the bulwark of America's greatness. But what do I get in return, Mister Peterson? I come up here as a gentleman and talk to you. I treat you as a gentleman. I overlook what you've showed yourself to be. And how do you return it? By talking like the blackguard you are – you knock an innocent cigar – "

"Your time's up!" said Pete, drawing a step nearer. "Come to business, or clear out. That's all I've got to say to you."

"All right, Mister Peterson —all right. I'll put up with your insults. I can afford to forget myself when I look about me at the heavier burdens these men have to bear, day and night. Look at that – look at it, and then try to talk to me."

He pointed back toward the stairs where a gang of eight laborers were carrying a heavy timber across the shadowy floor.

"Well, what about it?" said Pete, with half-controlled rage.

"What about it! But never mind. I'm a busy man myself. I've got no more time to waste on the likes of you. Take a good look at that, and then listen to me. That's the last stick of timber that goes across this floor until you put a runway from the hoist to the end of the building. And every stick that leaves the runway has got to go on a dolly. Mark my words now – I'm talking plain. My men don't lift another pound of timber on this house – everything goes on rollers. I've tried to be a patient man, but you've run against the limit. You've broke the last back you'll have a chance at." He put his hand to his mouth as if to shout at the gang, but dropped it and faced around. "No, I won't stop them. I'll be fair to the last." He pulled out his watch. "I'll give you one hour from now. At ten o'clock, if your runway and the dollies ain't working, the men go out. And the next time I see you, I won't be so easy."