Samuel Merwin - Calumet K

Elevator men at Minneapolis knew that Page was in a hurry, and they worked day and night at shovel and scale. Steamboat masters up at Duluth knew it, and mates and deck hands and stevedores and dockwallopers—more than one steamer scraped her paint in the haste to get under the long spouts that waited to pour out grain by the hundred thousand bushels. Trains came down from Minneapolis, boats came down from Duluth, warehouse after warehouse at Chicago was filled; and overstrained nerves neared the breaking point as the short December days flew by. Some said the Clique would win, some said Page would win; in the wheat pit men were fighting like tigers; every one who knew the facts was watching Charlie Bannon.

The storm came on the eighteenth of the month. It was predicted two days ahead, and ship masters were warned at all the lake ports. It was a Northwest blizzard, driven down from the Canadian Rockies at sixty miles an hour, leaving two feet of snow behind it over a belt hundreds of miles wide. But Page's steamers were not stopping for blizzards; they headed out of Duluth regardless of what was to come. And there were a bad few days, with tales of wreck on lake and railroad, days of wind and snow and bitter cold, and of risks run that supplied round-house and tug-office yarn spinners with stories that were not yet worn out. Down on the job the snow brought the work to a pause, but Bannon, within a half-hour, was out of bed and on the ground, and there was no question of changing shifts until, after twenty-four hours, the storm had passed, and elevator, annex and marine tower were cleared of snow. Men worked until they could not stagger, then snatched a few hours' sleep where they could. Word was passed that those who wished might observe the regular hours, but not a dozen men took the opportunity. For now they were in the public eye, and they felt as soldiers feel, when, after long months of drill and discipline, they are led to the charge.

Then came two days of biting weather—when ears were nipped and fingers stiffened, and carpenters who earned three dollars a day envied the laborers, whose work kept their blood moving—and after this a thaw, with sleet and rain. James, the new delegate, came to Bannon and pointed out that men who are continually drenched to the skin are not the best workmen. The boss met the delegate fairly; he ordered an oilskin coat for every man on the job, and in another day they swarmed over the building, looking, at a distance, like glistening yellow beetles.

But if Chicago was thawing, Duluth was not. The harbor at the western end of Lake Superior was ice-bound, and it finally reached a point that the tugs could not break open the channel. This was on the twenty-third and twenty-fourth. The wires were hot, but Page's agents succeeded in covering the facts until Christmas Day. It was just at dusk, after leaving the men to take down the cable, that Bannon went to the office.

A newsboy had been on the grounds with a special edition of a cheap afternoon paper. Hilda had taken one, and when Bannon entered the office he found her reading, leaning forward on the desk, her chin on her hands, the paper spread out over the ledger.

"Hello," he said, throwing off his dripping oilskin, and coming into the enclosure; "I'm pretty near ready to sit down and think about the Christmas tree that we ain't going to have."

She looked up, and he saw that she was a little excited; her eyes always told him. During this last week she had been carrying the whole responsibility of the work on her shoulders.

"Have you seen this?" she asked.

"Haven't read a paper this week." He leaned over the desk beside her and read the article. In Duluth harbor, and at St. Mary's straits, a channel through the ice had been blasted out with dynamite, and the last laden steamer was now ploughing down Lake Michigan. Already one steamer was lying at the wharf by the marine tower, waiting for the machinery to start, and others lay behind her, farther down the river. Long strings of box cars filled the Belt Line sidings, ready to roll into the elevator at the word.

Bannon seated himself on the railing, and caught his toes between the supports.

"I'll tell you one thing," he said, "those fellows have got to get up pretty early in the morning if they're going to beat old Page."

She looked at him, and then slowly folded the paper and turned toward the window. It was nearly dark outside. The rain, driving down from the northeast, tapped steadily on the glass. The arc lamp, on the pole near the tool house, was a blurred circle of light. She was thinking that they would have to get up pretty early to beat Charlie Bannon.

They were silent for a time—silences were not so hard as they had been, a few weeks before—both looking out at the storm, and both thinking that this was Christmas night. On the afternoon before he had asked her to take a holiday, and she had shaken her head. "I couldn't—I'd be here before noon," was what she had said; and she had laughed a little at her own confession, and hurried away with Max.

She turned and said, "Is it done—the belt gallery?"

He nodded. "All done."

"Well—" she smiled; and he nodded again.

"The C. & S. C. man—the fellow that was around the other day and measured to see if it was high enough—he's out there looking up with his mouth open. He hasn't got much to say."

"You didn't have to touch the tracks at all?"

"Not once. Ran her out and bolted her together, and there she was. I'm about ready for my month off. We'll have the wheat coming in tomorrow, and then it's just walking down hill."

"Tomorrow?" she asked. "Can you do it?"

"Got to. Five or six days aren't any too much. If it was an old house and the machinery was working well, I'd undertake to do it in two or three, but if we get through without ripping up the gallery, or pounding the leg through the bottom of a steamer, it'll be the kind of luck I don't have." He paused and looked at the window, where the rain was streaking the glass. "I've been thinking about my vacation. I've about decided to go to the St. Lawrence. Maybe there are places I'd like better, but when a fellow hasn't had a month off in five years, he doesn't feel like experiments."

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."