some freight
cars that were standing on the C. & S. C tracks at some distance to the
east. He ran across the tracks and out on the wharf, climbing on the
timber pile, where Peterson and his gang were rolling down the big
sticks with cant-hooks. Not a quarter of a mile away was a big steamer,
ploughing slowly up the river; the cough of her engines and the swash of
the churning water at her bow and stern could be plainly heard. Peterson
stopped work for a moment, and joined him.

"Well," Bannon said, "we're in for it now. I never thought they'd make
such time as this."

"She can lay up here all night till morning, I guess."

Bannon was thinking hard.

"No," he finally said, "she can't. There ain't any use of wasting all
day to-morrow unloading that cribbing and getting it across."

Peterson, too, was thinking; and his eye-brows were coming together in a
puzzled scowl.

"Oh," he said, "you mean to do it to-night?"

"Yes, sir. We don't get any sleep till every piece of that cribbing is
over at the annex, ready for business in the morning. Your sills are
laid--there's nothing in the way of starting those bins right up. This
ain't an all-night job if we hustle it."

The steamer was a big lake barge, with high bow and stern, and a long,
low, cargo deck amidships that was piled squarely and high with yellow
two-inch plank. Her crew had clearly been impressed with the need of
hurry, for long before she could be worked into the wharf they had
rigged the two hoists and got the donkey engines into running order. The
captain stood by the rail on the bridge, smoking a cigar, his hand on
the bell-pull.

"Where do you want it?" he called to Bannon.

"Right here, where I'm standing. You can swing your bow in just below
the bridge there."

The captain pulled the bell, and the snub-nosed craft, stirring up a
whirl of mud from the bottom of the river, was brought alongside the
wharf.

"Where are you going to put it?" the captain called.

"Here. We'll clean this up as fast as we can. I want that cribbing all
unloaded to-night, sure."

"That suits me," said the captain. "I don't want to be held up
here--ought to pull out the first thing in the morning."

"All right, you can do it." Bannon turned to Peterson and Vogel (who had
just reached the wharf). "You want to rush this, boys. I'll go over and
see to the piling."

He hurried away, pausing at the office long enough to find the man sent
by the electric light company,