“That’s all right,” he said, with an air of easy authority.  “We’ve got to be working over your tracks for the next two months.  It’s as much to our interest as it is to yours to be careful, and I guess we can pull together.  We’ve got an agreement with your general manager, and that’s what goes.”  He turned away, but paused and added, “I’ll see that you don’t have any reason to complain.”

The section boss looked about with an uncertain air at the crowd of waiting men.

“Don’t go too fast there—­” he began.

“Look here,” said Bannon, abruptly.  “We’ll sit right down here and send a message to the general manager.  That’s the quickest way to settle it—­tell him that we’re carrying out timber across the tracks and you’ve stopped us.”

It was a bluff, but Bannon knew his man.

“Now, how about this?” was the reply.  “How long will it take you?”

“Till some time before daylight.”  Bannon was feeling for his pencil.

“You see that the fence goes back, will you?  We ain’t taking any chances, you understand.”

Bannon nodded.

“All right, Max,” he shouted.  “Get to work there.  And look here, Max,” in a stern voice, “I expect you to see that the road is not blocked or delayed in any way.  That’s your business now, mind.”  He turned to the boss as the men hurried past to the wharf.  “I used to be a railroad man myself—­chief wrecker on the Grand Trunk—­and I guess we won’t have any trouble understanding each other.”

Again the six long lines of men were creeping from the brightly lighted wharf across the shadowy tracks and around the end of the elevator.  Bannon had held the electric light man within call, and now set him at work moving two other arc lamps to a position where they made the ground about the growing piles of timber nearly as light as day.  Through the night air he could hear the thumping of the planks on the wharf.  Faintly over this sound came the shouting of men and the tramp and shuffle of feet.  And at intervals a train would rumble in the distance, slowly coming nearer, until with a roar that swallowed all the other noises it was past.  The arc lamps glowed and buzzed over the heads of the sweating, grunting men, as they came along the path, gang after gang, lifting an end of a heavy stick to the level of the steadily rising pile, and sliding it home.

Bannon knew from long experience how to pile the different sizes so that each would be ready at the hands of the carpenters when the morning whistle should blow.  He was all about the work, giving a hand here, an order there, always good-humored, though brusque, and always inspiring the men with the sight of his own activity.

Toward the middle of the evening Vogel came up from the wharf with a question.  As he was about to return, Bannon, who had been turning over in his mind the incident of the section boss, said:—­

“Wait a minute, Max.  What about this railroad business—­have they bothered you much before now?”