Book: Calumet K

S >> Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster >> Calumet K



CALUMET "K"

by

MERWIN-WEBSTER

1904







CHAPTER I

The contract for the two million bushel grain elevator, Calumet K,
had been let to MacBride & Company, of Minneapolis, in January, but
the superstructure was not begun until late in May, and at the end of
October it was still far from completion. Ill luck had attended
Peterson, the constructor, especially since August. MacBride, the
head of the firm, disliked unlucky men, and at the end of three
months his patience gave out, and he telegraphed Charlie Bannon to
leave the job he was completing at Duluth and report at once at the
home office.

Rumors of the way things were going at Calumet under the hands of his
younger co-laborer had reached Bannon, and he was not greatly
surprised when MacBride told him to go to Chicago Sunday night and
supersede Peterson.

At ten o'clock Monday morning, Bannon, looking out through the dusty
window of the trolley car, caught sight of the elevator, the naked
cribbing of its huge bins looming high above the huddled shanties and
lumber piles about it. A few minutes later he was walking along a
rickety plank sidewalk which seemed to lead in a general direction
toward the elevator. The sidewalks at Calumet are at the theoretical
grade of the district, that is, about five feet above the actual
level of the ground. In winter and spring they are necessary
causeways above seas of mud, but in dry weather every one abandons
them, to walk straight to his destination over the uninterrupted
flats. Bannon set down his hand bag to button his ulster, for the
wind was driving clouds of smoke and stinging dust and an occasional
grimy snowflake out of the northwest. Then he sprang down from the
sidewalk and made his way through the intervening bogs and, heedless
of the shouts of the brakemen, over a freight train which was
creaking its endless length across his path, to the elevator site.

The elevator lay back from the river about sixty yards and parallel
to it. Between was the main line of the C. & S. C, four clear tracks
unbroken by switch or siding. On the wharf, along with a big pile of
timber, was the beginning of a small spouting house, to be connected
with the main elevator by a belt gallery above the C. & S. C. tracks.
A hundred yards to the westward, up the river, the Belt Line tracks
crossed the river and the C. & S. C. right of way at an oblique
angle, and sent two side tracks lengthwise through the middle of the
elevator and a third along the south side, that is, the side away
from the river.

Bannon glanced over the lay of the land, looked more particularly at
the long ranges of timber to be used for framing the cupola, and then
asked a passing workman the way to the office. He frowned at the
wretched shanty, evidently an abandoned Belt Line section house,
which Peterson used for headquarters. Then, setting down his bag just
outside the door, he went in.

"Where's the boss?" he asked.

The occupant of the office, a clerk, looked up impatiently, and spoke
in a tone reserved to discourage seekers for work.

"He ain't here. Out on the job somewhere."

"Palatial office you've got," Bannon commented. "It would help those
windows to have 'em ploughed." He brought his bag into the office and
kicked it under a desk, then began turning over a stack of blue prints
that lay, weighted down with a coupling pin, on the table.

"I guess I can find Peterson for you if you want to see him," said
the clerk.

"Don't worry about my finding him," came from Bannon, deep in his
study of the plans. A moment later he went out.

A gang of laborers was engaged in moving the timbers back from the
railroad siding. Superintending the work was a squat little man--
Bannon could not see until near by that he was not a boy--big-headed,
big-handed, big-footed. He stood there in his shirt-sleeves, his back
to Bannon, swearing good-humoredly at the men. When he turned toward
him Bannon saw that he had that morning played an unconscious joke
upon his bright red hair by putting on a crimson necktie.

Bannon asked for Peterson. "He's up on the framing of the spouting
house, over on the wharf there."

"What are you carrying that stuff around for?" asked Bannon.

"Moving it back to make room by the siding. We're expecting a big
bill of cribbing. You're Mr. Bannon, ain't you?" Bannon nodded.
"Peterson had a telegram from the office saying to expect you."

"You're still expecting that cribbing, eh?"

"Harder than ever. That's most all we've been doing for ten days.
There's Peterson, now; up there with the sledge."

Bannon looked in time to see the boss spring out on a timber that was
still balancing and swaying upon the hoisting rope. It was a good
forty feet above the dock. Clinging to the rope with one hand, with
the other Peterson drove his sledge against the side of the timber
which swung almost to its exact position in the framing.

"Slack away!" he called to the engineers, and he cast off the rope
sling. Then cautiously he stepped out to the end of the timber. It
tottered, but the lithe figure moved on to within striking distance.
He swung the twenty-four pound sledge in a circle against the butt of
the timber. Every muscle in his body from the ankles up had helped to
deal the blow, and the big stick bucked. The boss sprang erect,
flinging his arms wide and using the sledge to recover his balance. He
struck hard once more and again lightly. Then he hammered the timber
down on the iron dowel pins. "All right," he shouted to the engineer;
"send up the next one."

A few minutes later Bannon climbed out on the framing beside him.

"Hello, Charlie!" said the boss, "I've been looking for you. They
wired me you was coming."

"Well, I'm here," said Bannon, "though I 'most met my death climbing
up just now. Where do you keep your ladders?"

"What do I want of a ladder? I've no use for a man who can't get up on
the timbers. If a man needs a ladder, he'd better stay abed."

"That's where I get fired first thing," said Bannon.

"Why, you come up all right, with your overcoat on, too."

"I had to wear it or scratch up the timbers with my bones. I lost
thirty-two pounds up at Duluth."

Another big timber came swinging up to them at the end of the
hoisting rope. Peterson sprang out upon it. "I'm going down before I
get brushed off," said Bannon.

"I'll be back at the office as soon as I get this corbel laid."

"No hurry. I want to look over the drawings. Go easy there," he called
to the engineer at the hoist; "I'm coming down on the elevator."
Peterson had already cast off the rope, but Bannon jumped for it and
thrust his foot into the hook, and the engineer, not knowing who he
was, let him down none too gently.

On his way to the office he spoke to two carpenters at work on a stick
of timber. "You'd better leave that, I guess, and get some four-inch
cribbing and some inch stuff and make some ladders; I guess there's
enough lying 'round for that. About four'll do."

It was no wonder that the Calumet K job had proved too much for
Peterson. It was difficult from the beginning. There was not enough
ground space to work in comfortably, and the proper bestowal of the
millions of feet of lumber until time for it to be used in the
construction was no mean problem. The elevator was to be a typical
"Chicago" house, built to receive grain from cars and to deliver it
either to cars or to ships. As has been said, it stood back from the
river, and grain for ships was to be carried on belt conveyors
running in an inclosed bridge above the railroad tracks to the small
spouting house on the wharf. It had originally been designed to have
a capacity for twelve hundred thousand bushels, but the grain men who
were building it, Page & Company, had decided after it was fairly
started that it must be larger; so, in the midst of his work,
Peterson had received instructions and drawings for a million bushel
annex. He had done excellent work--work satisfactory even to MacBride
& Company--on a smaller scale, and so he had been given the
opportunity, the responsibility, the hundreds of employees, the
liberal authority, to make what he could of it all.

There could be no doubt that he had made a tangle; that the big job
as a whole was not under his hand, but was just running itself as
best it could. Bannon, who, since the days when he was chief of the
wrecking gang on a division of the Grand Trunk, had made a business of
rising to emergencies, was obviously the man for the situation. He was
worn thin as an old knife-blade, he was just at the end of a piece of
work that would have entitled any other man to a vacation; but
MacBride made no apologies when he assigned him the new task--"Go
down and stop this fiddling around and get the house built. See that
it's handling grain before you come away. If you can't do it, I'll
come down and do it myself."

Bannon shook his head dubiously. "Well, I'm not sure--" he began. But
MacBride laughed, whereupon Bannon grinned in spite of himself. "All
right," he said.

It was no laughing matter, though, here on the job this Monday
morning, and, once alone in the little section house, he shook his
head again gravely. He liked Peterson too well, for one thing, to
supersede him without a qualm. But there was nothing else for it, and
he took off his overcoat, laid aside the coupling pin, and attacked
the stack of blue prints.

He worked rapidly, turning now and then from the plans for a
reference to the building book or the specifications, whistling softly,
except when he stopped to growl, from force of habit, at the office,
or, with more reasonable disapproval, at the man who made the
drawings for the annex. "Regular damn bird cage," he called it.

It was half an hour before Peterson came in. He was wiping the
sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, and drawing
long breaths with the mere enjoyment of living. "I feel good," he
said. "That's where I'd like to work all day. You ought to go up
and sledge them timbers for a while. That'd warm you through, I
bet."

"You ought to make your timekeeper give you one of those brass
checks there and pay you eighteen cents an hour for that work.
That's what I'd do."

Peterson laughed. It took more than a hint to reach him. "I have
to do it. Those laborers are no good. Honest, I can lift as much
as any three men on the job."

"That's all right if those same three don't stop to swap lies
while you're lifting."

"Well, I guess they don't come any of that on me," said Peterson,
laughing again. "How long are you going to stay with us?"

The office, then, had not told him. Bannon was for a moment at a
loss what to say. Luckily there was an interruption. The red-headed
young man he had spoken to an hour before came in, tossed a tally
board on the desk, and said that another carload of timber had come
in.

"Mr. Bannon," said Peterson, "shake hands with Mr. Max Vogel, our
lumber checker." That formality attended to, he turned to Bannon
and repeated his question. By that time the other had his answer
ready.

"Oh, it all depends on the office," he said. "They're bound to
keep me busy at something. I'll just stay until they tell me to go
somewhere else. They ain't happy except when they've just put me
in a hole and told me to climb out. Generally before I'm out they
pick me up and chuck me down another one. Old MacBride wouldn't
think the Company was prosperous if I wasn't working nights and
Sundays."

"You won't be doing that down here."

"I don't know about that. Why, when I first went to work for 'em, they
hired me by the day. My time cards for the first years figured up four
hundred and thirty-six days." Peterson laughed. "Oh, that's straight,"
said Bannon. "Next time you're at the office, ask Brown about it. Since
then they've paid me a salary. They seem to think they'd have to go out of
business if I ever took a vacation. I've been with 'em twelve years and
they've never given me one yet. They made a bluff at it once. I was down
at Newport News, been doing a job for the C.&O., and Fred Brown was down
that way on business. He--"

"What does Brown look like?" interrupted Peterson. "I never saw him."

"You didn't! Oh, he's a good-looking young chap. Dresses kind of sporty.
He's a great jollier. You have to know him a while to find out that he
means business. Well, he came 'round and saw I was feeling pretty tired,
so he asked me to knock off for a week and go fishing with him. I did, and
it was the hardest work I ever tackled."

"Did you get any fish?"

"Fish? Whales! You'd no sooner threw your line over than another one'd
grab it--great, big, heavy fish, and they never gave us a minute's rest. I
worked like a horse for about half a day and then I gave up. Told Brown
I'd take a duplex car-puller along next time I tackled that kind of a job,
and I went back to the elevator."

"I'd like to see Brown. I get letters from him right along, of course.
He's been jollying me about that cribbing for the last two weeks. I can't
make it grow, and I've written him right along that we was expecting it,
but that don't seem to satisfy him."

"I suppose not," said Bannon. "They're mostly out for results up at the
office. Let's see the bill for it." Vogel handed him a thin typewritten
sheet and Bannon looked it over thoughtfully. "Big lot of stuff, ain't it?
Have you tried to get any of it here in Chicago?"

"Course not. It's all ordered and cut out up to Ledyard."

"Cut out? Then why don't they send it?"

"They can't get the cars."

"That'll do to tell. 'Can't get the cars!' What sort of a railroad have
they got up there?"

"Max, here, can tell you about that, I guess," said Peterson.

"It's the G.&M.," said the lumber checker. "That's enough for any one
who's lived in Michigan. It ain't much good."

"How long have they kept 'em waiting for the cars?"

"How long is it, Max?" asked Peterson.

"Let's see. It was two weeks ago come Tuesday."

"Sure?"

"Yes. We got the letter the same day the red-headed man came here. His
hair was good and red." Max laughed broadly at the recollection. "He came
into the office just as we was reading it."

"Oh, yes. My friend, the walking delegate."

"What's that?" Bannon snapped the words out so sharply that Peterson
looked at him in slow surprise.

"Oh, nothing," he said. "A darn little rat of a red-headed walking
delegate came out here--had a printed card with Business Agent on it--and
poked his long nose into other people's business for a while, and asked
the men questions, and at last he came to me. I told him that we treated
our men all right and didn't need no help from him, and if I ever caught
him out here again I'd carry him up to the top of the jim pole and leave
him there. He went fast enough."

"I wish he'd knocked you down first, to even things up," said Bannon.

"Him! Oh, I could have handled him with three fingers."

"I'm going out for a look around," said Bannon, abruptly.

He left Peterson still smiling good-humoredly over the incident.

It was not so much to look over the job as to get where he could work out
his wrath that Bannon left the office. There was no use in trying to
explain to Peterson what he had done, for even if he could be made to
understand, he could undo nothing. Bannon had known a good many walking
delegates, and he had found them, so far, square. But it would be a
large-minded man who could overlook what Peterson had done. However,
there was no help for it. All that remained was to wait till the business
agent should make the next move.

So Bannon put the whole incident out of his mind, and until noon inspected
the job in earnest. By the time the whistle blew, every one of the
hundreds of men on the job, save Peterson himself, knew that there was a
new boss. There was no formal assumption of authority; Bannon's supremacy
was established simply by the obvious fact that he was the man who knew
how. Systematizing the confusion in one corner, showing another gang how
to save handling a big stick twice, finally putting a runway across the
drillage of the annex, and doing a hundred little things between times, he
made himself master.

The afternoon he spent in the little office, and by four o'clock had seen
everything there was in it, plans, specifications, building book, bill
file, and even the pay roll, the cash account, and the correspondence. The
clerk, who was also timekeeper, exhibited the latter rather grudgingly.

"What's all this stuff?" Bannon asked, holding up a stack of unfiled
letters.

"Letters we ain't answered yet."

"Well, we'll answer them now," and Bannon commenced dictating his reply to
the one on top of the stack.

"Hold on," said the clerk, "I ain't a stenographer."

"So?" said Bannon. He scribbled a brief memorandum on each sheet. "There's
enough to go by," he said. "Answer 'em according to instructions."

"I won't have time to do it till tomorrow some time."

"I'd do it tonight, if I were you," said Bannon, significantly. Then he
began writing letters himself.

Peterson and Vogel came into the office a few minutes later.

"Writing a letter to your girl?" said Peterson, jocularly.

"We ought to have a stenographer out here, Pete."

"Stenographer! I didn't know you was such a dude. You'll be wanting a
solid silver electric bell connecting with the sody fountain next."

"That's straight," said Bannon. "We ought to have a stenographer for a
fact."

He said nothing until he had finished and sealed the two letters he was
writing. They were as follows:--

DEAR MR. BROWN: It's a mess and no mistake. I'm glad Mr. MacBride didn't
come to see it. He'd have fits. The whole job is tied up in a hard knot.
Peterson is wearing out chair bottoms waiting for the cribbing from
Ledyard. I expect we will have a strike before long. I mean it.

The main house is most up to the distributing floor. The spouting house is
framed. The annex is up as far as the bottom, waiting for cribbing.

Yours,
BANNON.

P.S. I hope this letter makes you sweat to pay you for last Saturday
night. I am about dead. Can't get any sleep. And I lost thirty-two pounds
up to Duluth. I expect to die down here. C. B.

P.S. I guess we'd better set fire to the whole damn thing and collect the
insurance and skip. C.

The other was shorter.

MACBRIDE & COMPANY, Minneapolis:

Gentlemen: I came on the Calumet job today. Found it held up by failure of
cribbing from Ledyard. Will have at least enough to work with by end of
the week. We will get the house done according to specifications.

Yours truly,
MACBRIDE & COMPANY. CHARLES BANNON.



CHAPTER II

The five o'clock whistle had sounded, and Peterson sat on the bench inside
the office door, while Bannon washed his hands in the tin basin. The
twilight was already settling; within the shanty, whose dirty, small-paned
windows served only to indicate the lesser darkness without, a wall lamp,
set in a dull reflector, threw shadows into the corners.

"You're, coming up with me, ain't you?" said Peterson. "I don't believe
you'll get much to eat. Supper's just the pickings from dinner."

"Well, the dinner was all right. But I wish you had a bigger bed. I ain't
slept for two nights."

"What was the matter?"

"I was on the sleeper last night; and I didn't get in from the Duluth job
till seven o'clock Saturday night, and Brown was after me before I'd got
my supper. Those fellows at the office wouldn't let a man sleep at all if
they could help it. Here I'd been working like a nigger 'most five months
on the Duluth house--and the last three weeks running night shifts and
Sundays; didn't stop to eat, half the time--and what does Brown do but--
'Well,' he says, 'how're you feeling, Charlie?' 'Middling,' said I. 'Are
you up to a little job tomorrow?' 'What's that?' I said. 'Seems to me if
I've got to go down to the Calumet job Sunday night I might have an hour
or so at home.' 'Well, Charlie,' he says, 'I'm mighty sorry, but you see
we've been putting in a big rope drive on a water-power plant over at
Stillwater. We got the job on the high bid,' he says, 'and we agreed to
have it running on Monday morning. It'll play the devil with us if we
can't make good.' 'What's the matter?' said I. 'Well,' he says, 'Murphy's
had the job and has balled himself up.'"

By this time the two men had their coats on, and were outside the
building.

"Let's see," said Bannon, "we go this way, don't we?"

"Yes."

There was still the light, flying flakes of snow, and the biting wind that
came sweeping down from the northwest. The two men crossed the siding,
and, picking their way between the freight cars on the Belt Line tracks,
followed the path that wound across the stretch of dusty meadow.

"Go ahead," said Peterson; "you was telling about Murphy."

"Well, that was the situation. I could see that Brown was up on his hind
legs about it, but it made me tired, all the same. Of course the job had
to be done, but I wasn't letting him have any satisfaction. I told him he
ought to give it to somebody else, and he handed me a lot of stuff about
my experience. Finally I said: 'You come around in the morning, Mr. Brown.
I ain't had any sleep to speak of for three weeks. I lost thirty-two
pounds,' I said, 'and I ain't going to be bothered tonight.' Well, sir, he
kind of shook his head, but he went away, and I got to thinking about it.
Long about half-past seven I went down and got a time-table. There was a
train to Stillwater at eight-forty-two."

"That night?"

"Sure. I went over to the shops with an express wagon and got a thousand
feet of rope--had it in two coils so I could handle it--and just made the
train. It was a mean night. There was some rain when I started, but you
ought to have seen it when I got to Stillwater--it was coming down in
layers, and mud that sucked your feet down halfway to your knees. There
wasn't a wagon anywhere around the station, and the agent wouldn't lift a
finger. It was blind dark. I walked off the end of the platform, and went
plump into a mudhole. I waded up as far as the street crossing, where
there was an electric light, and ran across a big lumber yard, and hung
around until I found the night watchman. He was pretty near as mean as the
station agent, but he finally let me have a wheelbarrow for half a dollar,
and told me how to get to the job.

"He called it fifty rods, but it was a clean mile if it was a step, and
most of the way down the track, I wheeled her back to the station, got the
rope, and started out. Did you ever try to shove two five hundred foot
coils over a mile of crossties? Well, that's what I did. I scraped off as
much mud as I could, so I could lift my feet, and bumped over those ties
till I thought the teeth were going to be jarred clean out of me. After I
got off the track there was a stretch of mud that left the road by the
station up on dry land.

"There was a fool of a night watchman at the power plant--I reckon he
thought I was going to steal the turbines, but he finally let me in, and I
set him to starting up the power while I cleaned up Murphy's job and put
in the new rope."

"All by yourself?" asked Peterson.

"Sure thing. Then I got her going and she worked smooth as grease. When we
shut down and I came up to wash my hands, it was five minutes of three. I
said, 'Is there a train back to Minneapolis before very long?' 'Yes,' says
the watchman, 'the fast freight goes through a little after three.' 'How
much after?' I said. 'Oh,' he says, 'I couldn't say exactly. Five or eight
minutes, I guess.' I asked when the next train went, and he said there
wasn't a regular passenger till six-fifty-five. Well, sir, maybe you think
I was going to wait four hours in that hole! I went out of that building
to beat the limited--never thought of the wheelbarrow till I was halfway
to the station. And there was some of the liveliest stepping you ever saw.
Couldn't see a thing except the light on the rails from the arc lamp up by
the station. I got about halfway there--running along between the rails--
and banged into a switch--knocked me seven ways for Sunday. Lost my hat
picking myself up, and couldn't stop to find it."

Peterson turned in toward one of a long row of square frame houses.

"Here we are," he said. As they went up the stairs he asked: "Did you make
the train?"

"Caught the caboose just as she was swinging out. They dumped me out in
the freight yards, and I didn't get home till 'most five o'clock. I went
right to bed, and along about eight o'clock Brown came in and woke me up.
He was feeling pretty nervous. 'Say, Charlie,' he said, 'ain't it time for
you to be starting?' 'Where to?' said I. 'Over to Stillwater,' he said.
'There ain't any getting out of it. That drive's got to be running
tomorrow.' 'That's all right,' said I, 'but I'd like to know if I can't
have one day's rest between jobs--Sunday, too. And I lost thirty-two
pounds.' Well, sir, he didn't know whether to get hot or not. I guess he
thought himself they were kind of rubbing it in. 'Look here,' he said,
'are you going to Stillwater, or ain't you?' 'No,' said I, 'I ain't. Not
for a hundred rope drives.' Well, he just got up and took his hat and
started out. 'Mr. Brown,' I said, when he was opening the door, 'I lost my
hat down at Stillwater last night. I reckon the office ought to stand for
it.' He turned around and looked queer, and then he grinned. 'So you went
over?' he said. 'I reckon I did,' said I. 'What kind of a hat did you
lose?' he asked, and he grinned again. 'I guess it was a silk one, wasn't
it?' 'Yes,' said I, 'a silk hat--something about eight dollars.'"

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