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 look at Pete’s arms!  He could lift a house.”

Some of the men were laughing, others growling, but all had their eyes fixed on Peterson and Donnelly as they came across the tracks, slowly picking their way, and shifting the weight a little, at every few seconds, on their shoulders.  Bannon was glancing swiftly about, taking in the situation.  He would not imperil his discipline by reproving Peterson before the men, so he stood for a moment, thinking, until the task should be accomplished.

“It’s Briggs that did the whole business,” Max was saying.  “He brought the delegate around—­he was blowing about it among the men when I found him.”

“Is he on the job now?” Bannon asked.

“No, and I don’t think he’ll be around again very soon.  There were some loafers with him, and they took him away.”

Peterson and Donnelly had disappeared through the fence, and a few of the crowd were following, to see them get the timber clear around the building to the pile.

“Have you sent out flagmen, Max?” Bannon asked.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Get at it quick—­send a man each way with a lantern—­put something red over them, their shirts if necessary.”

“None of the men will dare do it while the delegate’s here.”