The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 27, 1926, Page 11

A A Story in Two Parts. PART TWO.” NTIL the day of his death, two pictures re- mained in Ted Rusten’s memory; and one of them was of a bandaged hand. He was thinking of this picture one day in the spring as he slowly paced back and forth on guard duty, with a heavy rifle on his shoulder. The blue water of Lake Michigan lay calm and smooth in the gray light of early dawn; only the faint splash of the waves against the foundation of the Municipal Pier indicated to the lonely man the existence of motion and sound in all the uni- verse. In the west a few stars shone dimly J’ “above the jagged skyline of Chicago’s loop. From * the-enst Camea fitful breath of air, to remind } rim of theriimor he had heard the day before—., “that before many hours they would be on their. way to the rocking, thundering battlefields of France. ‘ Well, over there—yes, OVER THERE —te could forget the bandaged hand. For him, at least, war would have its benefits: An excit- ing battle would be a good place to lose this ever-present, torturing recollection. }... The, eastern sky was suffused with rose and ,, saffron, as the sleepy sentinel turned to walk up the pier toward the shore. Soon he could expect to see a few early risers coming to view the sun as it slowly emerged out of the lake; and only an hour or so later he would be relieved and allowed to quiet his memory in the sleep of weariness. When he arrived at the end of the promenade, he saw a woman and a little girl approaching the pier. It was unusual for young children to come so early in the morning, Ted thought, as he turned to retrace his steps toward the lake; but this was an unusually fine morning, and perhaps the child was about to see her first spring sun- rise. He shifted the heavy rifle slightly on his narrow shoulder, and again allowed his thought to dwell upon the bandaged hand. “J wonder,” he said to himself, “If Slingerland got any stokers at Aden. Well, I sure turned down:a good job once in my life, and I’ve never ‘ewtokédha daysince. What is war—?” ; te “Help! Help!” he heard a woman scream be- hind him. Turning quickly; he raced toward the frantic figure. She was alone on the pier—hurrying back and forth along the edge, wringing her hands in anguish, and peering down into the green water. She was about to leap after her loved one when Ted reached her side and pulled her back. He slipped the gun from hig shoulder, and had reached for his cartridge belt, when his eyes caught a glimpse of the face which was turned toward him. The woman’s face had wid- ened in terror. She shrank’ back ds if she ex- pected a blow, and stumbled on the rough planks, yet kept her blue eyes fastened on the face of the man. _.. A horrible lassitude overwhelmed the sentry, _} ..and infront of his eyes appeared the image of “a bandaged hand. All the pent feelings of his |. bitter life swept across his soul, and left him shaking and bent. He was brought to conscious- ness by the piercing cry of the woman, “My baby! Save my baby! Oh, in God’s name, save her, save her!” Ted Rusten held her eyes with his gaze. “Madam, I can’t swim.” — Her hand clutched at her breast, and her blanched face confronted his incomprehensibly. “Her lips tried to speak, but there was no’ sdund. .|...Her eyes opened wider and wider, as she slowly, ‘|. tensely retréated a step; then suddenly with a heart-rending ery she ran to the edge and threw herself into the water. Eh As Ted poised on the platform before plunging to save her, the last sight that met his eye was a bare little white hand, where the baby girl was sinking for the last time. poe . ©4660: 2 i x hh AND 89, until the day of his death, two picture; remained in Ted Rusten’s memory, one was of | a bandaged band, the other of a baby’s out- stretched finge Wherever he found himself— on the deck of a ship, in a phonograph factory, deep down in a coal mine, or in any of the dozen different kinds of construction camps—there, also, he found the two pictures. No one ever knew what — Ted Rusten’s memory; he snever* divulged these indelible mental imageé to even his most intimate acquaintances, They wer too intertwined with the very fabric of his to be wrenched and jerked in conscious discus- 5 sion. Besides, he was always trying to blot them “HANDS!” - hardt, Who hiadescaped death in the war by steal- out—to remove them—so that once more he could assert his independence and cease the life of an underdog. It was fifty miles from Casper to this construc- tion camp, as the crow flies; but it was eighty, ag the wagons and automobiles crawl. Two days it had taken Ted Rusten to make the trip, on an antiquated truck loaded with five tons of iron plates; and when the forlorn vehicle gave a last sputter in front of the cook shack, he gave a sigh of relief that discounted his aches and his hunger. For two months in the terrific heat of a Wyoming summer he had workéd every day, Sundays in- cluded—shoyeling dust that burned his’ eyeballs, out, of engine pits, out of water-main ditches, and finally out, of. two huge rectangular holes where ‘the heaviest. machinery would be installed. Some days, would: be deathly still, without a trace of a breeze and with .a baking head. But those days were the fewer, and the best; for if on certain days a.slight wind blew, those in the hole’ re- ‘ceived no benefit from it, and, indeed, had to tie a rag about their eyes in order to work at all. Every evening, at the close of the day’s toil, he walked from the plateau where he had been working, down a steel hill to the narrow, stony wash where the camp was pitched. Here were six sleeping tents, and the commissary and eating tent combined. For two months—sixty-one days —he had grabbed a washpan and endeavored to wash.a portion of the dirt from his arms and head. Then, waited for the supper gong. Then, along with sixty other voracious men, gulped his supper in ten or fifteen minutes. Then, talked, or played cards, or read by the light of a smoky lantern until bedtime. Sixty-one times he had answered the breakfast gong, and a few minutes later trudged up the long hill to,work. Sixty-one times he had eaten his dinner in that stifling tent where all the heat of sun and stove was pre- served as though it were priceless. And again, in the evening, returned to an hour or tyo of masculine recreation, without one gleam of beauty, or carefree laughter, or feminine sym- pathy. Sonat €itiraived: “Pheccowboy:qho: cared for the horses*said at bedtime that it was about time for an electrical storm, and soon after mid- night it arrived. The tent-flaps cracked like canifen, the canvas roofs sagged beneath the weight of wind and water; all the bunks and the floors of the tents were soaked, as well.as the clothes and suitcases of the men. And in the morning, when they arrived at the big rectangu- lar hole that had taken three weeks to dig, they found a new job. The huge holes had been so planned that they were about six feet wider and longer at the bottom than at the top. Many extra hours had been spent in shaving off the sides so that they slanted out at the bottom. Then the concrete forms had been set perpendicularly, almost touching the dirt at the tip, but three feet from it at the bottom. But, now, most of the dirt had been loosened by the rain, and had fallen against the wooden supports. A double crew of men worked on their stomachs and backs until late in the afternoon, removing scores of tons of dirt through little openings three inches high at the bottom of the forms. Twice Ted had had his head close to the aperture, when two or three tong of dirt had sud- denly rolled down, filling his mouth and’ nostrils arid ‘threaténing to push ‘the wooden forms on ce, ‘that afternoon; Heinrich Ger- ing out of Geritiany oh @ boatload of fish in July, 1914, and who now worked beside Ted, “safe at last !”—oncee, that afternoon, he nearly lost his life. Hé thought he would craw! down behind the form and push the dirt out of Ted, thus relieving them’ both of lying on their stomachs. But he ‘had no more than set foot on the-bottom of the concrete form, when the whole wall éaved in be- side ‘him, leaving “him, ‘unharmed, in ‘a space barely large enough to allow his body to pass upward when three men pulled him out. They finished shoveling the dirt out to the cen- ter of the wide floor, where horse-drawn scrap- ers took it up to the surface. Then the foreman ordered them to come with him to the other hole, where the concrete had already been poured. Here, also, the dirt walls had caved, but not so much. Here there was even more soil still re- ‘maining to be loosened by some slight tremor and sent heavily against the forms, And yet, in spite of the danger apparent to even the most foolhardy, the foreman ordered all army nee 5 By Milford Flood |: idea had evolved out of. the.fertile brain of, Hein. -tich, the German;, he suggested that, a, heavy j : the men to lower themselves behind the concr and cut the wires. It would be a task to R the remaining hour of the afternoon, if done j hurry and with all the fifteen men clipping Wi¥ out a*pause. The company was under a “rush” contract. Tomorrow the steel workers would je. gin at day-break and the forms must be out of the way. The rain had held them back nearly a day i the men ‘must make up for the time the elements had stolen from the work; the job had to be cum. pleted by sundown. The wires were to be cut. _ For two days the men had been looking for. ward to that part of the work, and had already solved the problem of doing it safely, It would -take one or two hours longer, but it might pre. vent the loss of one or, more human lives, The rod-be.wired to each pinch. bar. Ten.of theselex: tended bars would be. sufficient, and the men #h used them could gtand safely above the forms. | Of course, the men had not broached the ideq to the foreman; that ‘would be presumptuous, Besides, they were not sure but that he himself had some such plan in mind, and they woul wait until the wires had to be cut before talking further thought about it. But now the time for the work had arrived, and the men had been or dered down into the passage, with no attempt on the part of the foreman to devise a safer method HE international group stood tense, theif glances passing back and forth to the fore man, and to this Swede who somehow had become } t their spokesman. They liked this uneducated | 2! workman with the narrow shoulders. No matte how recently a laborer had arrived, he had a kind | t! of involuntaty respect for this silent, shuffling | © ben figure who minded his own business and at | P’ the same time was able to divine the thoughts of | 4 others. ci “Get your pinch bars, all of you, and cut those | & wires!” the foreman roared, and spat out all the | ™ tobacco in his mouth. He clenched his fists and | ® thrust his huge body toward the group of me “Pll be damned if I don’t. fire anyone who isn th down that hole in three” niinutes! “Take you 2 choice, damn you! Cut those wires or walk ‘ town!” , P i “ Rusten stood gazing into his angry face. The | 4 other men remained with Rusten. The foreman u was holding his watch. ae “Two minutes left!” He let fly a string of | p, curses. “I'll fire the bunch of you! I'll havé | gj men here who’ll take orders if I have to hold | wy the whole job up! I'll call out all the stiffs in 01 Casper, and you can hoof | ¢] it eighty miles if you’re able! 0) Once for all! Are you goin’ to cut them wires!” : “Boss,” Ted slowly responded, “somebody will. get hurt down there. If we wire—.” y “Wire Hell! Why should I wire anythfig Who’s goin’ to get hurt at that baby play! fo damned, low-down Swede, the sun is goin’ d and you stand there talkin’ about wiring! Once for all! Get your pinch bars!!” “Boss, I been thinkin’ things over for about twenty-five years, an’ I kinda got a couple of pic- tures—” The foreman’s face became purple with rage. He lifted his huge fist and held it as though ready to crush the head of the bowed workman. - “Pictures!” he roared. through lips twisted by fury. “Pictures! What the hell has pictures got: to do with cuttin’ —!? gyfe iio oss wt . me raised hishands oo.) °. ~ gotta couple of pict; boss, and I kinda} - | thought It” . — “Well? Spit it out! Get done with it!” “T could cut dem wires tonight alone, "re easy to find in the dark, an’ I can work sti}ight: through till daylight.” piece ees The eyes of the foreman stood out in his amaze ment, and his mouth sagged half open. The |a- borers turned their astonished gaze upon their companion, and Heinrich Gerhardt pushed his way to his side and exclaimed: “No! No! Vot do you mean! Dose walls, dey’ fall on you! You get killt, sure!” ° By this time the foreman had recovered :his’ composure. _ OLE the “Aw, you're afraid of nothin,’ you! Those Walls are through fallin’, They’ve been fallin’ all day, and there ain’t any left to fall. What’s the idea of this, Rusten? You've no call to work alone. Get your pinch bars, you fellows, and eet to work! We can finish it by supper time. Again all eyes turned to the man 1200 0 ree a2 + ame coe c 78