we was reading it."

"Oh, yes. My friend, the walking delegate."

"What's that?" Bannon snapped the words out so sharply that Peterson
looked at him in slow surprise.

"Oh, nothing," he said. "A darn little rat of a red-headed walking
delegate came out here--had a printed card with Business Agent on it--and
poked his long nose into other people's business for a while, and asked
the men questions, and at last he came to me. I told him that we treated
our men all right and didn't need no help from him, and if I ever caught
him out here again I'd carry him up to the top of the jim pole and leave
him there. He went fast enough."

"I wish he'd knocked you down first, to even things up," said Bannon.

"Him! Oh, I could have handled him with three fingers."

"I'm going out for a look around," said Bannon, abruptly.

He left Peterson still smiling good-humoredly over the incident.

It was not so much to look over the job as to get where he could work out
his wrath that Bannon left the office. There was no use in trying to
explain to Peterson what he had done, for even if he could be made to
understand, he could undo nothing. Bannon had known a good many walking
delegates, and he had found them, so far, square. But it would be a
large-minded man who could overlook what Peterson had done. However,
there was no help for it. All that remained was to wait till the business
agent should make the next move.

So Bannon put the whole incident out of his mind, and until noon inspected
the job in earnest. By the time the whistle blew, every one of the
hundreds of men on the job, save Peterson himself, knew that there was a
new boss. There was no formal assumption of authority; Bannon's supremacy
was established simply by the obvious fact that he was the man who knew
how. Systematizing the confusion in one corner, showing another gang how
to save handling a big stick twice, finally putting a runway across the
drillage of the annex, and doing a hundred little things between times, he
made himself master.

The afternoon he spent in the little office, and by four o'clock had seen
everything there was in it, plans, specifications, building book, bill
file, and even the pay roll, the cash account, and the correspondence. The
clerk, who was also timekeeper, exhibited the latter rather grudgingly.

"What's all this stuff?" Bannon asked, holding up a stack of unfiled
letters.

"Letters we ain't answered yet."

"Well, we'll answer t