Calumet "K"
Webster, Henry Kitchell, 1875-1932;Merwin, Samuel, 1874-1936
English
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Below is a summary of Calumet "K"
E-text prepared by Robert Petty
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.
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