align="center">Chapter II
THE WALKING DELEGATE
It was toward the latter part of the afternoon that a tall, angular man, in a black overcoat and a derby hat, stepped from the ladder on to the loose planking, glanced about and walked over to the gang of men about the south crane.
"Hello, Buck," they called out on sight of him.
"Hello, boys," he answered carelessly.
He stood, with hands in the pockets of his overcoat, smoking his cigar, watching the crane accurately swing a beam to its place, and a couple of men run along it and bolt it at each end to the columns. He had a face to hold one's look – lean and long: gray, quick eyes, set close together; high cheek bones, with the dull polish of bronze; a thin nose, with a vulturous droop; a wide tight mouth; a great bone of a chin; – a daring, incisive, masterful face.
When the beam had been bolted to its place, Barry, with a reluctance he tried to conceal, walked over to Foley.
"How's things?" asked the new-comer, rolling his cigar into the corner of his mouth and slipping his words out between barely parted lips.
Barry was the steward on the job, – the union's representative. "Two snakes come on the job this mornin'," he reported. "Them two over there, – that Squarehead an' that Guinea. I was goin' to write you a postal card about 'em to-night."
"Who put 'em to work?"
"They said Duffy, Driscoll's superintendent."
Foley grunted, and his eyes fastened thoughtfully on the two non-union men.
"When the boys seen they had no cards, o' course they said they wouldn't work with the scabs. But I said we'd stand 'em to-day, an' let you straighten it out to-morrow."
"We'll fix it now." The walking delegate, with deliberate steps, moved toward the two men, who were sitting astride an outside beam fitting in bolts.
He paused beside the Italian. "Clear out!" he ordered quietly. He did not take his hands from his pockets.
The Italian looked up, and without answer doggedly resumed twisting a nut.
Foley's eyes narrowed. His lips tightened upon his cigar. Suddenly his left hand gripped the head of a column and his right seized the shirt and coat collar of the Italian. He jerked the man outward, unseating him, though his legs clung about the beam, and held him over the street. The Italian let out a frightful yell, that the wind swept along under the clouds; and his wrench went flying from his hand. It struck close beside a mason on a scaffold seventeen stories below. The mason gave a jump, looked up and shook his fist.
"D'youse see the asphalt?" Foley demanded.
The man, whose down-hanging face was forced to see the pavement far below, with the little hats moving about over it, shrilled out his fear again.
"In about a minute youse'll be layin' there, as flat as a picture, if youse don't clear out!"
The man answered with a mixture of Italian, English, and yells; from which Foley gathered that he was willing to go, but preferred to gain the street by way of the ladders rather than by the direct route.
Foley jerked him back to his seat, and a pair of frantic arms gripped his legs. "Now chase yourself, youse scab! Or – " Foley knew how to swear.
The Italian rose tremblingly and stepped across to the flooring. He dropped limply to a seat on a prostrate column, and moaned into his hands.
Without glancing at him or at the workmen who had eyed this measure doubtfully, Foley moved over to the Swede and gripped him as he had the Italian. "Now youse, youse sneakin' Squarehead! Get out o' here, too!"
The Swede's right hand came up and laid hold of Foley's wrist with a grip that made the walking delegate start. The scab rose to his feet and stepped across to the planking. Foley was tall, but the Swede out-topped him by an inch.
"I hold ma yob, yes," growled the Swede, a sudden flame coming into his heavy eyes.
Foley had seen that look in a thousand scabs' eyes before. He knew its meaning. He drew back a pace, pulled his derby hat tightly down on his head and bit into his cigar, every lean muscle alert.
"Get off the job! Or I'll kick youse off!"
The Swede stepped forward, his shoulders hunched up. Foley crouched back; his narrowed gray eyes gleamed. The men in both gangs looked on from their places about the cranes and up on the beams in statued expectation. Barry and Pig Iron hurried up to Foley's support.
"Keep back!" he ordered sharply. They fell away from him.
A minute passed – the two men standing on the loosely-planked edge of a sheer precipice, watching each other with tense eyes. Suddenly a change began in the Swede; the spirit went out of him as the glow from a cooling rivet. His arms sank to his side, and he turned and fairly slunk over to where lay an old brown overcoat.
The men started with relief, then burst into a jeering laugh. Foley moved toward Barry, then paused and, with hands back in his pockets, watched the two scabs make their preparation to leave, trundling his cigar about with his thin prehensile lips. As they started down the ladder, the Swede sullen, the Italian still trembling, he walked over to them with sudden decision.
"Go on back to work," he ordered.
The two looked at him in surprised doubt.
"Go on!" He jerked his head toward the places they had left.
They hesitated; then the Swede lay off his old coat and started back to his place, and the Italian followed, his fearful eyes on the walking delegate.
Foley rejoined Barry. "I'm goin' to settle this thing with Driscoll," he said to the pusher, loudly, answering the amazed questioning he saw in the eyes of all the men. "I'm goin' to settle the scab question for good with him. Let them two snakes work till youse hear from me."
He paused, then asked abruptly: "Where's Keating?"
"Down with the riveters."
"So-long, boys," he called to Barry's gang; and at the head of the ladder he gestured a farewell to the gang about the other crane. Then his long body sank through the flooring.
At the bottom of the thirty-foot ladder he paused and looked around through the maze of beams and columns. This floor was not boarded, as was the one he had just left. Here and there were little platforms on which stood small portable forges, a man at each turning the fan and stirring the rivets among the red coals; and here and there were groups of three men, driving home the rivets. At regular intervals each heater would take a white rivet from his forge, toss it from his tongs sizzling through the air to a man twenty feet away, who would deftly catch it in a tin can. This man would seize the glowing bit of steel with a pair of pincers, strike it smartly against a beam, at which off would go a spray of sparks like an exploding rocket, and then thrust it through its hole. Immediately the terrific throbbing of a pneumatic hammer, held hard against the rivet by another man, would clinch it to its destiny of clinging with all its might. And then, flashing through the gray air like a meteor at twilight, would come another sparkling rivet.
And on all sides, beyond the workmen calmly playing at catch with white-hot steel, and beyond the black crosswork of beams and columns, Foley could see great stretches of housetops that in sullen
