Once more settled into the routine of college work the time passed rapidly. Scott began to wonder what he would do with himself during the Christmas vacation which was now close at hand. He had for some time imagined that some of the fellows who lived near there would take pity on him, a stranger from a distant land, and invite him to spend the holidays with them. He knew he could rely on that at home. But the time was now close at hand and no such invitation had materialized. The reason for it, when he found it out, astonished him more than ever. He found that none of them had any idea of spending that time loafing at home. The senior class was going to the lumber woods the day after Christmas, and all the others, rich and poor alike, were going to work at some job or other.

The thought seemed ridiculous at first, but as he noticed the self-reliance and independence of the men around him and recognized their ability to care for themselves anywhere, at any time, it began to look more reasonable; instead of looking down on them for their eagerness to earn money he began to admire them for their dignity. It occurred to him that it would be a novel experience to try a job for a while himself. He was ashamed to think how ignorant he was of such things and how helpless he should be if he were really suddenly thrown on his own resources where he would have to find a job for himself. Any of his classmates could find a dozen jobs while he was trying to think where to look for one. He was about decided to try his ability to support himself, when this problem, like most of the practical problems which had confronted him since he left home, was settled for him by his roommate.

That young gentleman sauntered into the room one afternoon about three days before the holidays began and seemed to be in a particularly cheerful mood. With considerable show he pulled a strip of paper from his pocket, stretched himself luxuriously in his chair with his feet protruding from under the opposite edge of the table and cleared his throat loudly. “Now, young man,” he began, in as deep a voice as he could command, “what do you intend to do this Christmas vacation? Are you going to work for an honest living or loaf and grow fat ignominiously?”

“Well,” Scott responded, falling in with his humor, “I was going to ask your advice about that, sir.”

“Very good. Then my advice to you is that you work. If you loaf you will have to loaf alone, which will soon become more tiresome than working, unless you want to fall back on your old friends, the millionaires, which would be degrading. Work during the holidays and buy a canoe for Itasca with the earnings. How’s that?”

“Fine,” Scott exclaimed. “Do you think I could earn enough for that? I am pretty green, you know.”

“Never mind about your color,” Greenleaf assured him; “most of the men who work extra for the holidays are more or less of that shade. You won’t be noticed. That point settled, now let’s see what kind of a job I can give you. I have been looking into the matter a little, and have a list of vacancies here from which we can choose something agreeable.”

Scott was very curious to see what the nature of the jobs would be. In his own mind he had pictured such positions as temporary clerkships in a bookstore, a bank, or wholesale house; private secretary to a railroad president, or some kind of investigational work for some ambitious professor. There his imagination had failed him.

“First,” Greenleaf continued, eying his list, “there is an extra salesman wanted at the Palladium.”

Scott gasped audibly.

“That,” Greenleaf said critically, doing the choosing for both of them, “we’ll not consider, because they pay only a dollar and a half per day and keep you standing up half the night.

“Next there is the job of carrying extras for the postman. That is no good because they do not pay any more than the other and it is likely to run out before the holidays are over. Cold job, too.

“Then there is a billing job in the express office. That is some fun and they pay two-fifty, but there is only one opening there and it is inside work.

“Next, writing tracers in the freight office, two-fifty, but a dog’s life and too much brain work.

“Next. Working on the sewer gang. Two dollars but too many ‘hunyacks’ to work with. Too hard work any way when you are not in training for it.

“Next. Work here at the Station at fifteen cents per hour. See too much of the place now. I want a change of view for my holiday.

“Last. Trucking in the transfer shed at twenty cents. That looks to me like the best shot. Outside work, plenty of exercise, a chance to work extra if you want to, and we can both work together. How does that strike you?”

Between the character of the jobs, so different from what he had imagined, and the marvel of wondering how Greenleaf ever got in touch with so many different lines of work, Scott was too astonished to give an immediate answer.

“Not much variety in the winter time,” Greenleaf apologized. “Oh, here’s another one. Driving an extra delivery wagon for the Kings’ Palace. Two-fifty, but that’s probably gone by this time. Mean job, anyway, especially in the winter, and too long hours. No, I’ll go down and telephone the transfer shed to hold two jobs. Are you game?”

“Sure,” Scott answered faintly, and Greenleaf popped out on his errand. While he was gone Scott spent his time in wondering what kind of a job he had gotten into, for he had never heard anything about a transfer shed, and had no idea what Greenleaf had meant. Before he had been able to figure out any satisfactory solution Greenleaf returned.

“It’s all right,” he cried; “they said they’d save us two trucks, and said we could come down Friday morning at 7 A. M. I tell you we’ll get some lively work there.”

Scott, who was ashamed to confess his ignorance, kept a discreet silence except to confirm any of Greenleaf’s statements which seemed to need confirmation. He turned the matter over continually in his own mind, but having nothing to work on never came to any conclusion.

At last the vacation began and the two boys presented themselves, or rather Greenleaf presented them both to the foreman at the shed. They were assigned to a westbound gang and directed to study the signs on the platform till it was time to begin work.

The transfer shed was located in an enormous freight yard amidst a network of forty or fifty tracks. The shed itself consisted of a large warehouse with offices on the second floor and, extending from either end of it, a covered platform some twenty feet wide and about a hundred yards long. Its floor was of heavy planking, the splintered condition of which seemed to indicate heavy traffic of some kind. It was on a level with the floors of the box cars which were standing four rows deep on either side of it. Iron skids were laid from the platform to the car-sills, forming a gang plank.

Stuck in the posts nearest the gang planks on one side of the platform were four tin signs bearing the names of the cities in the West, or such mystic signs as “1st Div. Way,” “Valley Way,” “East Local,” etc. Scott noticed that all the cars on that side were empty, while those on the opposite side of the platform seemed to be loaded to the roof with every conceivable kind of freight. He had not yet figured out the significance of all this but he studied hard and soon had a pretty good idea of their general location on the platform. He had also mastered the fact that when he found there were four signs connected with each skid, that the top sign referred to the car on the first track, the lowest one to the fourth, etc.

Just then there was a great rumbling noise in the direction of the warehouse and a swarm of men, each pushing a two-wheel truck, burst out onto the platform and assembled in little knots around the doorways of the loaded cars. One man with a tally board in his hand stepped out of a car some distance down the platform and beckoned to them.

“You belong to five,” he shouted. They nodded assent.

“Get two trucks out of the warehouse, and get a move on you,” he growled, as he turned again to the gang of men who were loosening the tangle of freight in the doorway of the car. The tone of voice rather galled Scott, but he had chosen his job and knew that he must accept its conditions. Some of the trucks in the warehouse were pretty badly battered up, but the boys soon found two with smooth handles and easy running wheels. When they came out the work had started in earnest, and men were dodging in and out of the cars, some with loads, some with empty trucks. All seemed to be in a tremendous hurry.

As they approached the car where gang five was working the man with the board asked them if they were old hands. They said that they were not and asked what they should do.

“Take things where I tell you and keep on the jump. Hang the ticket I give you on the nail to the left of the door where you leave the stuff, and be sure it’s the right car. Those tickets are collected from time to time—Fargo [he yelled at a passing truckman, and handed him a small slip of paper]—and if you’ve left anything wrong you’ll be stuck for the freight. You’re six,” he said to Greenleaf, “and you’re seven,” to Scott.

Scott took his place in the line and soon found his truck loaded with small boxes piled mountain high.

“Fifteen for Moorehead,” the loader called.

“Right,” came the echo from the check clerk, the man with the board. He was seated beside the car door, and as Scott passed him screamed “Moorehead car,” and shoved a slip into his outstretched hand.

Scott found that the management of a two-wheeled truck was a good deal more difficult problem than he had ever imagined it to be. If he let the handles get an inch too low the burden became almost beyond his strength and twice he raised them so high that he was lifted bodily from the ground in spite of his violent efforts to stay down. It was a question of balance, and some of the men around him seemed to have mastered it perfectly. Some walked steadily and easily along with a load that would have filled a horse-cart, others tore past with a barrel or large box not only perfectly balanced but carrying them along with one foot on the axle of the truck and their bodies suspended from the truck handles by the armpits. The trucks seemed to shoot here and there, even almost at right angles into a car door, without any effort on the part of the truckman or without his so much as touching his foot to the floor. Every time Scott’s truck ran over a chip or struck the edge of a skid, his handles showed an almost uncontrollable tendency to throw him in the air, and several times he narrowly escaped spilling his load in that way. When he finally reached the Moorehead car safely a storeman met him and showed him where to dump his load. He stuck his slip on the nail with the others and ran back to the car. He found that by continually running with his empty truck he could just about make up for his slowness on the outbound trip, and maintain his turn in the gang. It was a disgrace to lose a turn.

Greenleaf had done a little trucking in the warehouses around Duluth and in half an hour was racing with the best of them, and was on joking terms with every man in the gang, except the gruff check clerk, who had been raised to that position temporarily, and was afraid to joke for fear of losing his dignity.

It was marvelous to see the way these men could handle loads of any weight and any shape on those little two-wheeled trucks. Nothing seemed to be too heavy, nothing too cumbersome to be balanced on a truck and wheeled away by one insignificant man. Hogsheads of tobacco weighing twenty-six hundred pounds were wrestled onto a truck by five or six husky men, and, once on securely, were trotted out unassisted by one consumptive looking Austrian.

At last Scott thought they were stuck on a crate of glass some ten feet long, four feet high and six inches thick which stood on edge against the wall and seemed too heavy to be moved by human force, but, he soon found, to his own humiliation, that he was mistaken. The loader, or caller, broke up with his steel freight-hook the cleats which held it, sized up the situation and called to Scott: “Break that out of there.”

Scott knew what that meant from watching the others. He stepped forward and with his foot on the axle of the truck drove the sharp blade deep under the edge of the crate. He then threw all his weight on the handles in an attempt to raise the load on the blade. The crate bobbed up a little but dropped back with a bump and jerked Scott violently up in the air like a cork. He tried three times with all his might but never got the box more than an inch from the floor.

At this point the caller interfered in a most humiliating manner.

“Better put some bricks in your pocket, boy,” he jeered. “Get out of the way and let a man get hold of that truck.”

That was a pretty hard thing to bear quietly from a man twenty pounds his inferior in weight, but Scott thought he would soon be vindicated because he did not believe that any man could budge that crate.

The caller drove his hook into the side of the car by way of hanging it up, grasped the handles of the truck and with a few quick jerks moved the crate out a foot or more from the wall. He then blocked the wheels with a chip of wood, placed his foot carefully on the axle, and grasping the handles tightly threw himself far forward over the crate. For one second he poised there and then threw himself violently backward with every ounce of impetus his muscles could summon to his aid. The handles went down within two feet of the floor and there seemed to hang in the balance. It was against the ethics of the shed to help him and all the men watched him struggle slowly and laboriously up between the handles at the same time keeping them down. With one final wriggle he gained the ascendancy and forced the handles to the floor.

“Here, Ole,” he called, “run your truck under there and get her balanced.”

Ole placed his truck, two men helped the caller let his handles slowly up and the great crate balanced serenely on the other truck.

“Here’s your truck, kid.” Then seeing the chagrined look on Scott’s face, “You’ll get on to it some day; it takes practice.”

Scott’s boxing training and endurance stood him in good stead. He was able to put in three hours of extra work even the first night. Later on as he learned the tricks of the trade the work became easier, and he began to enjoy it. There were all classes of men and all nationalities represented in the ten gangs at the shed, Swedes, Norwegians, Austrians, Finns, Poles and one gang of real Southern negroes. It was a problem worth while to study the characters of these different races; to compare the slow sullen plod of the Scandinavian with the carefree cheerfulness of the negroes, to see the contempt of the Irish foreman for all the races of slower wit. It was a liberal education in itself.

He soon learned the workings of the shed and became interested in its methods. The cars rolled in there from the Eastern cities loaded with all kinds of merchandise for all the points of the northwest. The waybills for these cars were sent to the office in the second story of the warehouse where the clerks abstracted them, and wrote out on large sheets of paper the names of consignor, and consignee, and descriptions of the consignments. These abstract sheets were then taken by the foreman as fast as the cars came in and placed on the clips on the platform. Here the check clerks took them in charge.

A gang usually consisted of a check clerk, a caller and five truckmen. The caller read the directions on the freight and loaded it on the trucks, always selecting for any one load boxes which went into the same car. The check clerk checked them off on his abstract and told the truckman where to take it. It was the duty of the check clerk to know every point in the territory and how to reach it.

Scott had started the work with the idea that any educated man had an advantage over any other man not similarly educated, and could excel him at his own work. One day’s experience on the truck handles had very effectually shown him his mistake. He began to realize that a man who had spent several years rolling a truck was quite as much of an expert in his line as a doctor was in his, and that no man could tell him much about it. It was depressing at first, but as he became more expert himself he began to find that he could outdo these men in many ways on account of his better head work. He soon began to enjoy the work in the capacity of a master workman.

All this was extremely interesting to Scott and he felt that he was acquiring invaluable experience. Christmas passed almost unnoticed save that Scott’s box from home furnished them many a grateful lunch when they returned to their rooms at night tired but happy in thrashing over the day’s doings.

But that was not all. There was plenty of fun and humor at the shed as well as elsewhere. One afternoon Scott thought he noticed some freight in the Willmar car which did not belong there. It was the mistake of the check clerk or the caller. No one liked the check clerk, but the caller was popular, and Scott decided to tell him about it.

“Charlie,” he said when he returned to the car, “I think you called some of that stuff wrong. I saw some of your stuff up there in the Willmar that I did not think belonged there.”

Charlie was master of a rough-edged sarcasm and he spared no one. Work was a little slack and he settled down to rub it into Scott.

“You think I made a mistake. You think it don’t belong there. What right have you got to think? Don’t you know that there is a man upstairs who is paid eighteen hundred dollars a year just to sit at his desk and think? He does all the thinking for this place. You just flap your ears like a little jack-ass and push that truck.”

The sally was met by howls of laughter and Scott was obliged to join in them. All the rest of that day whenever he looked at all pensive Charlie broke into his meditations with, “Say, boy, you been thinking any more lately?”

Another source of amusement which originated with the darky crew, but soon spread to the whole shed, was the popular method of settling all disputes and rough houses. No sooner did two men start to tussle than some enthusiast in the crowd, sometimes one of the combatants if he felt sure of victory, would yell, “Get a board.” That was the invariable war cry. There were always plenty of people to carry it out and as if by magic a husky man would appear with a bed slat. The presence of that bed slat reversed the ordinary methods of wrestling completely. It was no longer the object to come out on top, for the top man got the full benefit of the bed slat laid on with no gentle hand. The agonized expression and bodily writhing of the victim who saw that descending bed slat out of the corner of his eye were the delight of the crowd. The man who could stay underneath with the seat of his trousers glued fast to the platform was the successful combatant in the eyes of all concerned. It was not a position easily maintained, for the exertions of the other man under the stimulus of the bed slat became almost superhuman.

Scott had been anxious to try his strength at this game with some of these strong laborers, but he had been slow to make their acquaintance. The day before he left the shed he had his opportunity thrust upon him. There was a big Swede there, the bully of the shed, who was acknowledged to be the “best man” at the bed slat game. He was consequently always looking for trouble and had gotten the better of nearly everyone there at some time or other. Scott had often wondered what his skill could do against this man’s strength.

The clash came unexpectedly. Scott shot out of a car door with his empty truck just in time to crash into a truck loaded high with small boxes. The impact dumped the top-heavy load, and fifty cobbler outfits were scattered the width of the platform. Almost before he knew what had happened he felt himself raised bodily from the ground and the big Swede was bellowing the war cry in his very ear. He felt absolutely helpless in that iron grasp. Hardly had the echo of the war cry died away when there was a swish and the inevitable bed slat landed with a crack like a rifle.

The tears sprang to Scott’s eyes, but all the feeling of helplessness was gone. With one frantic wrench he freed himself from the big Swede’s arms. He dodged the next blow of the menacing slat, grappled his opponent around the knees and brought him to the ground with a crash. He had downed his man, but with the wrestler’s instinct, and unmindful of the rules of this new game, he had fallen on top of his opponent. Crack came the relentless slat. There was no time to lose. He was free and could have ended the scrap by leaving his opponent but that would have been to acknowledge defeat, which he was not willing to do without a fair trial. With one wild dive he secured a crotch and body hold on his untrained opponent; but the man was too big—he could not turn him over. Just then the bed slat descended again with a vicious spat. That gave him the needed strength. One agonized heave toppled the big fellow heels over head and Scott fell neatly under him. Flat on his back with the big Swede pinned helplessly above him he listened to the cracks of the slat mingling with the yells of the crowd and smiled as he foiled the heavings of the mighty frame with his skill.

A half dozen cracks were enough. The big fellow howled for mercy, and Scott arose the hero of the shed. The forty-five dollars he earned that vacation was the pride of his life, but if he had been given his choice he would have preferred to repeat that triumphant moment when he lay on his back on the platform and listened to the tune of that slat.