“Pete,” he said, coming upon him in the marine tower a little later, “I’ve got over my stomach-ache.  Is it all right?”

“Sure,” said Pete; “I didn’t know you was feeling bad.  I was thinking about that belt gallery, Charlie.  Ain’t it time we was putting it up?  I’m getting sort of nervous about it.”

“There ain’t three days’ work in it, the way we’re going,” said Bannon, thoughtfully, his eyes on the C. & S. C. right-of-way that lay between him and the main house, “but I guess you’re right.  We’ll get at it now.  There’s no telling what sort of a surprise party those railroad fellows may have for us.  The plans call for three trestles between the tracks.  We’ll get those up today.”

To Pete, building the gallery was a more serious business.  He had not Bannon’s years of experience at bridge repairing; it had happened that he had never been called upon to put up a belt gallery before, and this idea of building a wooden box one hundred and fifty feet long and holding it up, thirty feet in air, on three trestles, was formidable.  Bannon’s nonchalant air of setting about it seemed almost an affectation.

Each trestle was to consist of a rank of four posts, planted in a line at right angles to the direction of the gallery; they were to be held together at the top by a corbel.  No one gave rush orders any more on Calumet K, for the reason that no one ever thought of doing anything else.  If Bannon sent for a man, he came on the run.  So in an incredibly short time the fences were down and a swarm of men with spades, post augers, picks, and shovels had invaded the C. & S. C. right-of-way.  Up and down the track a hundred yards each way from the line of the gallery Bannon had stationed men to give warning of the approach of trains.  “Now,” said Bannon, “we’ll get this part of the job done before any one has time to kick.  And they won’t be very likely to try to pull ’em up by the roots once we get ’em planted.”

But the section boss had received instructions that caused him to be wide-awake, day or night, to what was going on in the neighborhood of Calumet K. Half an hour after the work was begun, the picket line up the track signalled that something was coming.  There was no sound of bell or whistle, but presently Bannon saw a hand car spinning down the track as fast as six big, sweating men could pump the levers.  The section boss had little to say; simply that they were to get out of there and put up that fence again, and the quicker the better.  Bannon tried to tell him that the railroad had consented to their putting in the gallery, that they were well within their rights, that he, the section boss, had better be careful not to exceed his instructions.  But the section boss had spoken his whole mind already.  He was not of the sort that talk just for the pleasure of hearing their own voices, and he had categorical instructions that made parley unnecessary.  He would not even tell from whom he had the orders.  So the posts were lugged out of the way and the fence was put up and the men scattered out to their former work again, grinning a little over Bannon’s discomfiture.