But though they seemed determined
to outdo him the old man kept ahead of them all, his hammer beating a
rattling tattoo upon the boards all day. At the noon hour he had given
each of the men one of the pamphlets from his pocket and on the way back
to his hotel in the evening he told Sam that the others had tried to show
him up.
"They wanted to see if I had juice in me," he explained, strutting beside
Sam with an amusing little swagger of his shoulders.
Sam was sick with fatigue. His hands were blistered, his legs felt weak,
and a terrible thirst burned in his throat. All day he had gone grimly
ahead, thankful for every physical discomfort, every throb of his
strained, tired muscles. In his weariness and in his efforts to keep pace
with the others he had forgotten Colonel Tom and Mary Underwood.
All during that month and into the next Sam stayed with the old man's
gang. He ceased thinking, and only worked desperately. An odd feeling of
loyalty and devotion to the old man came over him and he felt that he too
must prove that he had the juice in him. At the hotel he went to bed
immediately after the silent dinner, slept, awoke aching, and went to work
again.
One Sunday one of the men of his gang came to Sam's room and invited him
to go with a party of the workers into the country.
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