defiance of companies' orders, they ran
where they used to walk, they slung their lunch pails on their arms and
ate when and where they could, gazing over their cold tea at some portrait
of Page, or of a member of the Clique, or of Bannon, in the morning's
paper.

Elevator men at Minneapolis knew that Page was in a hurry, and they worked
day and night at shovel and scale. Steamboat masters up at Duluth knew it,
and mates and deck hands and stevedores and dockwallopers--more than one
steamer scraped her paint in the haste to get under the long spouts that
waited to pour out grain by the hundred thousand bushels. Trains came down
from Minneapolis, boats came down from Duluth, warehouse after warehouse
at Chicago was filled; and overstrained nerves neared the breaking point
as the short December days flew by. Some said the Clique would win, some
said Page would win; in the wheat pit men were fighting like tigers; every
one who knew the facts was watching Charlie Bannon.

The storm came on the eighteenth of the month. It was predicted two days
ahead, and ship masters were warned at all the lake ports. It was a
Northwest blizzard, driven down from the Canadian Rockies at sixty miles
an hour, leaving two feet of snow behind it over a belt hundreds of miles
wide. But Page's steamers were not stopping for blizzards; they headed out
of Duluth regardless of what was to come. And there were a bad few days,
with tales of wreck on lake and railroad, days of wind and snow and bitter
cold, and of risks run that supplied round-house and tug-office yarn
spinners with stories that were not yet worn out. Down on the job the snow
brought the work to a pause, but Bannon, within a half-hour, was out of
bed and on the ground, and there was no question of changing shifts until,
after twenty-four hours, the storm had passed, and elevator, annex and
marine tower were cleared of snow. Men worked until they could not
stagger, then snatched a few hours' sleep where they could. Word was
passed that those who wished might observe the regular hours, but not a
dozen men took the opportunity. For now they were in the public eye, and
they felt as soldiers feel, when, after long months of drill and
discipline, they are led to the charge.

Then came two days of biting weather--when ears were nipped and fingers
stiffened, and carpenters who earned three dollars a day envied the
laborers, whose work kept their blood moving--and after this a thaw, with
sle