CALUMET "K"
BY MERWIN-WEBSTER
AUTHORS OF "THE SHORT LINE WAR," ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1904
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1901,
By THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.
Copyright, 1901,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up, electrotyped, and published October, 1901. Reprinted
August, 1902; March, 1903.
Special edition May, June, 1904.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
HE ... CURSED THE WHOLE G. & M. SYSTEM, FROM THE TIES UP
HE WAS DRAWING LINES ACROSS THE TIMBER
"WELL, THAT'S THE WHOLE TRICK"
CALUMET "K"
CHAPTER I
The contract for the two million bushel grain elevator, Calumet K, hadbeen let to MacBride & Company, of Minneapolis, in January, but thesuperstructure was not begun until late in May, and at the end ofOctober it was still far from completion. Ill luck had attendedPeterson, the constructor, especially since August. MacBride, the headof the firm, disliked unlucky men, and at the end of three months hispatience gave out, and he telegraphed Charlie Bannon to leave the job hewas completing at Duluth and report at once at the home office.
Rumors of the way things were going at Calumet under the hands of hisyounger co-laborer had reached Bannon, and he was not greatly surprisedwhen MacBride told him to go to Chicago Sunday night and supersedePeterson.
At ten o'clock Monday morning, Bannon, looking out through the dustywindow of the trolley car, caught sight of the elevator, the nakedcribbing of its huge bins looming high above the huddled shanties andlumber piles about it. A few minutes later he was walking along arickety plank sidewalk which seemed to lead in a general directiontoward the elevator. The sidewalks at Calumet