The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-03-27
"H.ANDSy
By Milford Flood

underdog
1t was fifty miles from Casper to this construc-
ton camp, as the crow flies; but it was eighty,
as 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 last
sputter in front of the cook shack, he gave sigh
of relief that discounted his aches and his hunger.
For two months in the terrific heat Of a Wyoming
summer he had worked every day, Sundays in
misunderstanding dust that burned his eyebalis,
out Of engine pits, out of Waterman bitches, and
finally out of two huge rectangular holes where
the heaviest machinery would be installed. Some
daysswould be deathly still, without a trace of
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 days toll,
he walked from the plateau where he had been
working, down 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 few minutes
later trudged up the long hill to work Sixty-one
times he had eaten his dinner in that sitting
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 two of
masculine recreation, without one CLEAN of
beauty or carefree laughter, or feminine SYM
patty. aa
&
for the horses said at bedtime that it was about
time for an electrical storm, and soon after mid
night it arrived. The tent-faps cracked like
canren, the canvas roofs sagged beneath the
weight of wind and water; all the hunks and the
floors of the tents were soaked, well 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
SIOmachS ana DdcKS until laUe 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 tons of dirt had sud-
denly rolled down, filing his mouth and nostrils
and threatening to push the wooden forms on
top of him. Once, that afternoon, Heinrich Ger
hardt, who had escaped death in the war by steal
ing out Of Germany on a boatload of fish in July,
1914, and who now worked beside Ted "safe at
last ponce that afternoon, he nearly lost his
life. He thought he would crawl down behind the
form and push the dirt out of Ted, thus relieving
them both of lying on their stomaehs. But he
had no more than set foot on the bottom of the
concrete form, when the whole wall caved in be-
side him, leaving him, unframed, in 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