"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