Around the two crowded the men, shaking their hands and clapping them on the back with varied exclamations. “You're the lads!” “Good boys!” “You're the stuff!” “Put it there!”
“What are ye doin' to us?” cried Rory at last; “I didn't see anything happen. Did you, Barney?”
“We did, though,” answered the crowd.
For once Tom Magee was silent. He walked about among the crowd chewing hard upon his quid of tobacco, fighting to recover his nerve. He had seen as no other of the men the terrible catastrophe from which the men had been saved. It was Charley Boyle that again relieved the strain.
“Did any of you hear the cowbell?” he said. “It strikes me it's not quitting time yet. Better get your captains, hadn't you?”
“Rory and Tom for captains!” cried a voice.
“Not me, by the powers!” said Tom.
“Oh, come on, Tom. You'll be all right. Get your men.”
“All right, am I? Be jabbers, I couldn't hit a pin onct in the same place, let alone twice. By me sowl, min, it's a splash of blood an' brains I've jist been lookin' at, an' that's true fer ye. Take Barney there. He's the man, I kin tell ye.”
This suggestion caught the crowd's fancy.
“Barney it is!” “Rory and Barney!” they yelled.
“Me!” cried Barney, seeking to escape through the crowd. “I have never done anything but carry pins and braces at a raising all my life.”
There was a loud laugh of scorn, for no man in all the crowd had Barney's reputation for agility, nerve and quickness.
“Carry pins, is it?” said Tom. “Ye can carry yer head level, me boy. So at it ye go, an' ye'll bate Rory fer me, so ye will.”
“Well then,” cried Barney, “I will, if you give me first choice, and I'll take Tom here.”
“Hooray!” yelled Tom, “I'm wid ye.” So it was agreed, and in a few minutes the sides were chosen, little Ben Fallows falling to Rory as last choice.
“We'll give ye Ben,” said Tom, whose nerve was coming back to him. “We don't want to hog on ye too much.”
“Never you mind, Ben,” said Rory, as the little Englishman strutted to his place among Rory's men. “You'll earn your supper to-day with the best of them.”
“If I cawn't hearn it I can heat it, by Jove!” cried Ben, to the huge delight of the crowd.
And now the thrilling moment had arrived, for from this point out there was to be a life-and-death contest as to which side should complete each its part of the structure first. The main plates, the “purline” plates, posts and braces, the rafters and collar beams, must all be set securely in position. The side whose last man was first down from the building after its work was done claimed the victory. In two opposing lines a hundred men stood, hats, coats, vests and, in case of those told off to “ride” the plates, boots discarded. A brawny, sinewy lot they were, quick of eye and steady of nerve, strong of hand and sure of foot, men to be depended upon whether to raise a barn or to build an empire. The choice of sides fell to Rory, who took the north, or bank, side.
“Niver fret, Barney,” cried Tom Magee, who in the near approach of battle was his own man again. “Niver ye fret. It's birrds we are, an' the more air for us the better.”
Between the sides stood the framer ready to give the word.
“Aren't they splendid!” said Margaret in a low tone to Mrs. Boyle, her cheek pale and her blue eyes blazing with excitement. “Oh, if I were only a boy!”
“Ay,” said Mrs. Boyle, “ye'd be riding the plate, I doubt.”
“Wouldn't I, though! My! they're fine!” answered the girl, with her eyes upon Barney. And more eyes than hers were upon the young captain, whose rugged face showed pale even at that distance.
“Now then, men,” cried the framer. “Mind your pins. Are you ready?” holding his hat high in the air.
“Ready,” answered Rory.
Barney nodded.
“Git then!” he cried, flinging his hat hard on the ground. Like hounds after a hare in full sight, like racers springing from the tape, they leaped at the timbers, every man to his place, yelling like men possessed. At once the admiring female friends broke into rival camps, wildly enthusiastic, fiercely partisan.
“Well done, Rory! He's up first!” cried a girl whose brilliant complexion and still more brilliant locks proclaimed her relationship to the captain of the north side.
“Huh! Barney'll soon catch him, you'll see,” cried Margaret. “Oh, Barney, hurry! hurry!”
“Indeed, he will need to hurry,” cried Rory's sister, mercilessly exultant. “He's up! He's up!”
Sure enough, Rory, riding the first half of his plate over the bent, had just “broken it down,” and in half a minute, seized by the men detailed for this duty, it was in its place upon the posts. Like cats, three men with mauls were upon it driving the pins home just as the second half was making its appearance over the bent, to be seized and placed and pinned as its mate had been.
“He's won! He's won!” shrieked Rory's admiring faction.
“Barney! Barney!” screamed his contingent reproachfully.
“Well done, Rory! Keep at it! You've got them beaten!”
“Beaten, indeed!” was the scornful reply. “Just wait a minute.”
“They're at the 'purlines'!” shrieked Rory's sister, and her friends, proceeding to scream wildly after the female method of expressing emotion under such circumstances.
“My!” sniffed a contemptuous member of Barney's faction, suffering unutterable pangs of humiliation. “Some people don't mind making a show of themselves.”
“Oh, Barney! why don't you hurry?” cried Margaret, to whose eager spirit Barney's movements seemed painfully and almost wilfully slow.
But Barney had laid his plans. Dividing his men into squads, he had been carrying out the policy of simultaneous preparation, and while part of his men had been getting the plates to their places, others had been making ready the “purlines” and laying the rafters in order so that, although beaten by Rory in the initial stages of the struggle, when once his plates were in position, while Rory's men were rushing about in more or less confusion after their rafters, Barney's purlins and rafters moved to their positions as if by magic. Consequently, though when they arrived at the rafters Barney was half a dozen behind, the rest of his rafters were lifted almost as one into their places.
At once the ranks of Barney's faction, which up to this point had been enduring the poignant pangs of what looked like humiliating defeat, rose in a tumult of triumph to heights of bliss inexpressible, save by a series of ear-piercing but altogether rapturous shrieks.
“They're down! They're down!” screamed Margaret, dancing in an ecstasy of joy, while hand over hand down posts, catching at braces, slipping, sliding, springing, the men of both sides kept dropping from incredible distances to the ground. Suddenly through all the tumultuous shouts of victory a heart-rending scream rang out, followed by a shuddering groan and dead silence. One-half of Rory's purlin plate slipped from its splicing, the pin having been neglected in the furious haste, and swinging free, fell crashing through the timbers upon the scurrying, scrambling men below. On its way it swept off the middle bent Rory, who was madly entreating a laggard to drop to the earth, but who, flung by good fortune against a brace, clung there. On the plate went in its path of destruction, missing several men by hairs' breadths, but striking at last with smashing cruel force across the ankle