.
In a moment the track was clear, and the train was moving slowly onward
between the long lines of men.

Bannon started the gangs at work. When the timbers were again coming
across from the wharf in six slowly moving streams that converged at the
end of the elevator, he stood looking after the triangle of red lights
on the last car of the train until they had grown small and close
together in the distance. Then he went over to the wharf to see how much
timber remained, and to tell Peterson to hurry the work; for he did not
look for any further accommodation on the part of the C. & S. C.
railroad, now that a train had been stopped. The steamer lay quietly at
the dock, the long pile of cribbing on her deck shadowed by the high bow
deckhouse from the lights on the spouting house. Her crew were bustling
about, rigging the two hoisting engines, and making all ready for
unloading when the order should be given.

Peterson had been working through the timber pile from the shore side,
so that now only a thin wall remained at the outer edge of the wharf.
Bannon found him standing on the pile, rolling down the sticks with a
peavey to where the carrying gangs could pick them up.

"Better bring all your men up here, Pete, and clean it all away by the
steamer. She may as well begin unloading now."

Bannon walked back to the tracks, in time to see a handcar and trailer,
packed with men, come up the track and stop near at hand. The men at
once scattered, and brushing aside Bannon's laborers, they began
replacing the sections of fence. Bannon crossed to the section boss, who
recognized him and without comment handed him a telegraphed order.

"There's no getting around that," he said, when Bannon had read it.
"That's straight from the old man."

Bannon returned it, called Peterson, and hurried with him around the
elevator to find Max, who was overseeing the piling.

"What'll we do?" Peterson asked, as they ran; but Bannon made no reply
until the three were together. Then he said, speaking shortly:--

"Get the wire cable off one of your hoisting engines, Pete, and make one
end fast as high as you can on the spouting house. We'll run it across
the tracks, on a slope, down to this side. Max, you get a light rope and
a running block, and hang a hook on it."

"I see," said Max, eagerly. "You're going to run it over on a trolley."

"Yes. The engineers have gone, haven't they?"

"Went at five," said Peterson.

"That's all right.