FullReads

“‘Grab that wheel! Grab it quick–we’ll hit the bridge,’ but it was like deef and dumb talk in a boiler shop, while a wilder howl went up from the water front as they seen what they’d done and smelled victory. There’s an awfulness about the voice of a blood-maddened club-swingin’ mob; it lifts your scalp like a fright wig, particularly if you are the clubee.

“‘We’ve got one chance,’ thinks I, ‘but if she strikes we’re gone. They’ll swamp us sure, and all the police in Cook County won’t save enough for to hold services on.’ Then I throwed a look at the opening ahead and the pessimisms froze in me.

“I forgot all about the resiliency of brickbats and the table manners of riots, for there, on top of a bunch of spiles, ca’m, masterful and bloated with perjuries, was Oily Heegan dictatin’ the disposition of his forces, the light of victory in his shifty, little eyes.

“‘Ten dollars and costs,’ I shrieks, seein’ red. ‘Lemme crawl up them spiles to you.’

“Then inspiration seized me. My soul riz up and grappled with the crisis, for right under my mit, coiled, suggestive and pleadin’, was one of the tug’s heavin’ lines, ’bout a three-eighths size. I slips a runnin’ knot in the end and divides the coils, crouchin’ behind the deck-house till we come abeam of him, then I straightened, give it a swinging heave, and the noose sailed up and settled over him fine and daisy.

“I jerked back, and Oily Heegan did a high dive from Rush Street that was a geometrical joy. He hit kind of amateurish, doin’ what we used to call a ‘belly-buster’ back home, but quite satisfyin’ for a maiden effort, and I reeled him in astern.

“Your Chicago man ain’t a gamey fish. He come up tame and squirting sewage like a dissolute porpoise, while I played him out where he’d get the thrash of the propeller.

“‘Help,’ he yells, ‘I’m a drownding.’

“‘Ten dollars and costs,” says I, lettin’ him under again. ‘Do you know who you’re drinkin’ with this time, hey?’

“I reckon the astonishment of the mob was equal to Heegan’s; anyhow I’m told that we was favoured with such quietness that my voice sounded four blocks, simply achin’ with satisfactions. Then pandemonium tore loose, but I was so engrosed in sweet converse I never heard it or noticed that the ‘Detroit’ had slid through the draw by a hair, and we was bound for the blue and smilin’ lake.

“‘For God’s sake, lemme up,’ says Heegan, splashin’ along and look-in’ strangly. I hauls him in where he wouldn’t miss any of my ironies, and says:–

“‘I just can’t do it, Oily–it’s wash day. You’re plumb nasty with boycotts and picketin’s and compulsory arbitrations. I’m goin’ to clean you up,’ and I sozzled him under like a wet shirt.

“I drug him out again and continues:–

“‘This is Chinamen’s work, Oily, but I lost my pride in the Bridewell, thanks to you. It’s tough on St. Louis to laundry you up stream this way, but maybe the worst of your heresies ‘ll be purified when they get that far.’ You know the Chicago River runs up hill out of Lake Michigan through the drainage canal and into the St. Louis waterworks. Sure it does–most unnatural stream I ever see about direction and smells.

“I was gettin’ a good deal of enjoyment and infections out of him when old man Badrich ran back enamelled with blood and passe tomato juice, the red in his white hair makin’ his top look like one of these fancy ice-cream drinks you get at a soda fountain.

“‘Here! here! you’ll kill him,’ says he, so I hauled him aboard, drippin’ and clingy, wringin’ him out good and thorough–by the neck. He made a fine mop.

“These clippings,” continued “Bitter Root,” fishing into his pocket, “tell in beautiful figgers how the last seen of Oily Heegan he was holystoning the deck of a sooty little tugboat under the admonishments and feet of ‘Bitter Root’ Billings of Montana, and they state how the strikers tried to get tugs for pursuit and couldn’t, and how, all day long, from the housetops was visible a tugboat madly cruisin’ about inside the outer cribs, bustin’ the silence with joyful blasts of victory, and they’ll further state that about dark she steamed up the river, tired and draggled, with a bony-lookin’ cowboy inhalin’ cigareets on the stern-bits, holding a three-foot knotted rope in his lap. When a delegation of strikers met her, inquirin’ about one D. O’Hara Heegan, it says like this,” and Billings read laboriously as follows:–

“‘Then the bronzed and lanky man arose with a smile of rare contentment, threw overboard his cigarette, and approaching the boiler-room hatch, called loudly: “Come out of that,” and the President of the Federation of Fresh Water Firemen dragged himself wearily out into the flickering lights. He was black and drenched and streaked with sweat; also, he shone with the grease and oils of the engines, while the palms of his hands were covered with painful blisters from unwonted, intimate contact with shovels and drawbars. It was seen that he winced fearfully as the cowboy twirled the rope end.

“‘”He’s got the makin’s of a fair fireman,'” said the stranger, “‘all he wants is practice.'”

“Then, as the delegation murmured angrily, he held up his hand and, in the ensuing silence, said:–

“‘”Boys, the strike’s over. Mr. Heegan has arbitrated.”‘”