Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 5, 1921 — page 99: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A NIGHT’S WORK. Billy left the office and started on his rounds. His two weeks as night superin- tendent in the shop had left him more discouraged than he cared to own. His eager friendliness had been met on all sides by an antagonism which he found harder to bear than the physical strain of the work, Try as he would, he could make no headway in winning the men, and he was beginning to doubt his ability to find any open door in the wall with which they had surrounded him. His own resentment was settled in Big Tim, whose whole appear- ance was so brutal and forbidding that he dreaded to speak ‘to him. Within the shop the mouths of the riv- eting furnaces glowed white hot and sent out shimmering waves of warmth to add to the heavy air. The men were rushing the work, with the sweat running down their shoulders and dripping from their arms. Their faces were smeared and streaked and the skin showed dead white in spots. The figure of Big Tim, the rivet boss, towered over them all, and Billy could hear him roaring his orders above the noise of the clanging chains and grinding cranes. The men listened to him with sidelong glances and sullen faces—but they worked. He was a giant of a man, with bristling black hair and eyes that glowed like pol- ished coals. He had hairy arms and chest, and great swelling muscles. He never smiled and seldom spoke, except to issue orders and curse at the men. As he strode in and out among the furnaces he looked the demon of the place and as hard as the iron he worked with. Early in the evening a young and very scared-looking foreigner presented himself at the big gate with his two Engiish words, ‘“ Me—job.” He had on clean overalls, the sure sign of the,newly ar- rived emigrant. Billy noted the big, muscular hands and broad shoulders, and took him :o Tim. ‘“ Where do you need him?” he asked. Tim answered without looking up. “Put him in Sullivan’s gang.* He’s the best heater we got, and he’ll soon teach him to stick rivets.”’ TA 385 They approached Sullivan, who looked up with a lowering face. ‘Don’t want any damn foreigner in this gang!” he growled. ‘ Too rushed to-night to start any one new.” ‘You put him to work at once,” Billy began, but before he had time to finish Big Tim came striding toward them. ‘Put that fellow to work, and be quick about it,” he yelled at Sullivan. Then followed a volley of oaths, Sullivan gave one glance at Tim, and hurriedly thrust a pair of rivet tongs into the boy’s hands and shoved him to his place by the girder. Billy thought he saw a-seer on Tim’s face as he turned away. ‘Wants to show that the men won’t obey me without him,” he thought bitter- ly, “ How I wish I could fire dim!” Half an hour later- Billyg wae “passing an open door about twenty feet away from Sullivan’s furnace, when a red-hot rivet came whizzing through the air and struck him glancingly on the shoulder. He turned quickly. Sullivan was bending over his furnace, intent on his tongs. Appar- ently he had not seen Billy; but the latter noticed that several of his men were smiling. Billy’s impulse was to discharge him on the spot, but on second thought he hesi- tated. If he did there would be no one to take his furnace, and it would interfere seriously with the work. Besides there was Big Tim to reckon with. Billy knew that he would ‘brook no interference, and to get into a fuss with him might mean the loss of his own job. He finally decided to forget the insult and ignore Sullivan’s ill-temper for the time being at least. He put on his coat to hide the hole in his shirt and the burn on his arm, and went to direct the fixing of some machin- ery. He worked for half an hour, and was just walking away when he heard one of the men say to another: ‘ Sullivan’s after the new boy. Watch out for some fun.” He looked toward the furnace, but it was several minutes before he realized just what was happening. Evidently Sullivan’s ugly mood had not COMmiclbooks.€O