The middle tracks were clear, excepting a group of three or four men, who
stood a little to one side. Bannon could not make them out. Another crowd
of laborers was pressed back against the opposite fence. These had moved
apart at one of the fence openings, and as Bannon looked, two men came
through, stumbling and staggering under a long ten-by-twelve timber, which
they were carrying on their shoulders. Bannon looked sharply; the first, a
big, deep-chested man, bare-headed and in his shirt sleeves, was Peterson.

Bannon started forward, when Max, who had been hurrying over to him,
touched his arm.

"What's all this, Max?"

"I'm glad you've come. It's Grady, the walking delegate--that's him over
there where those men are standing, the little fellow with his hat on one
side--he's been here for ten minutes."

"Speak quick. What's the trouble?"

"First he wanted to know how much we were paying the men for night work,
and I told him. Thought I might as well be civil to him. Then he said we'd
got to take Briggs back, and I told him Briggs wasn't a union man, and he
hadn't anything to say about it. He and Briggs seemed to know each other.
Finally he came out here on the job and said we were working the men too
hard--said we'd have to put ten men on the heavy sticks and eight on the
others. I was going to do it, but Peterson came up and said he wouldn't do
it, and Grady called the men off, just where they were. He wouldn't let
'em lift a finger. You see there's timber all over the tracks. Then Pete
got mad, and said him and Donnelly could bring a twenty-foot stick over
alone, and it was all rot about putting on more men. Here they come--just