The Doctor : a Tale of the Rockies | Page 8

swarm av bees on a cowld day! Shift over there, will ye!"
In obedience to the word two pike-poles were withdrawn at the same moment, leaving only a single pike with Big Angus and two others to sustain the full weight of the heavy timbers. Immediately the bent swayed backward as if to fall upon the throng below. Some of the men sprang back from under the huge bent. It was a moment of supreme peril.
"Howld there, fer yer lives, ye divils!" howled Tom, "or the hull of ye'll be in hell in two howly minutes."
At the cry Barney and Rory sprang to Angus's side and threw themselves upon the pike. Immediately they were followed by others, and the calamity was averted.
"Up wid her now thin, me lads, God bliss ye!" cried Tom. But there was a new note in Tom's voice, the note that is heard when men stand in the presence of serious danger. There was no more pause. The bent was walked up to its place, pinned and made secure. Tom sprang down from the building, his face white, his voice shaking. "Give me yer hand, Barney Boyle, an' yours, Rory Ross, for be all the saints an' the Blessid Virgin, ye saved min's lives this day!"
Around the two crowded the men, shaking their hands and clapping them on the back with varied exclamations. "You're the lads!" "Good boys!" "You're the stuff!" "Put it there!"
"What are ye doin' to us?" cried Rory at last; "I didn't see anything happen. Did you, Barney?"
"We did, though," answered the crowd.
For once Tom Magee was silent. He walked about among the crowd chewing hard upon his quid of tobacco, fighting to recover his nerve. He had seen as no other of the men the terrible catastrophe from which the men had been saved. It was Charley Boyle that again relieved the strain.
"Did any of you hear the cowbell?" he said. "It strikes me it's not quitting time yet. Better get your captains, hadn't you?"
"Rory and Tom for captains!" cried a voice.
"Not me, by the powers!" said Tom.
"Oh, come on, Tom. You'll be all right. Get your men."
"All right, am I? Be jabbers, I couldn't hit a pin onct in the same place, let alone twice. By me sowl, min, it's a splash of blood an' brains I've jist been lookin' at, an' that's true fer ye. Take Barney there. He's the man, I kin tell ye."
This suggestion caught the crowd's fancy.
"Barney it is!" "Rory and Barney!" they yelled.
"Me!" cried Barney, seeking to escape through the crowd. "I have never done anything but carry pins and braces at a raising all my life."
There was a loud laugh of scorn, for no man in all the crowd had Barney's reputation for agility, nerve and quickness.
"Carry pins, is it?" said Tom. "Ye can carry yer head level, me boy. So at it ye go, an' ye'll bate Rory fer me, so ye will."
"Well then," cried Barney, "I will, if you give me first choice, and I'll take Tom here."
"Hooray!" yelled Tom, "I'm wid ye." So it was agreed, and in a few minutes the sides were chosen, little Ben Fallows falling to Rory as last choice.
"We'll give ye Ben," said Tom, whose nerve was coming back to him. "We don't want to hog on ye too much."
"Never you mind, Ben," said Rory, as the little Englishman strutted to his place among Rory's men. "You'll earn your supper to-day with the best of them."
"If I cawn't hearn it I can heat it, by Jove!" cried Ben, to the huge delight of the crowd.
And now the thrilling moment had arrived, for from this point out there was to be a life-and-death contest as to which side should complete each its part of the structure first. The main plates, the "purline" plates, posts and braces, the rafters and collar beams, must all be set securely in position. The side whose last man was first down from the building after its work was done claimed the victory. In two opposing lines a hundred men stood, hats, coats, vests and, in case of those told off to "ride" the plates, boots discarded. A brawny, sinewy lot they were, quick of eye and steady of nerve, strong of hand and sure of foot, men to be depended upon whether to raise a barn or to build an empire. The choice of sides fell to Rory, who took the north, or bank, side.
"Niver fret, Barney," cried Tom Magee, who in the near approach of battle was his own man again. "Niver ye fret. It's birrds we are, an' the more air for us the better."
Between the sides stood the framer ready to give the word.
"Aren't they splendid!" said Margaret in a low tone to Mrs. Boyle, her cheek pale and her blue