Junkman

“ At Hiram's command, the off pointer, Molly, had stepped daintily over the heavy chain that ran between her and her mate, and now both of them were pulling the heavy tongue at right angles to the left, the wheelers helping. As neatly as most men might have made the corner with a single buggy, the string of ten and the heavy wagon swung into the intersecting street, as narrow as the other, and not a hub touched.
Jerkline Jo's dark eyes were sparkling. "You've got a job, Hiram," she said. "A jerkline driver who can make that corner without scraping a hub is a real jerkline driver." ”

“ From the kitchen came sounds of hammering, then a loud "Ooh!" from Miss Gunnill, followed by a burst of laughter and a clapping of hands. Mr. Jenkins shifted in his seat and exchanged glances with Mr. Gunnill.
"He's a clever fellow," said that gentleman, hopefully. "You should hear him imitate a canary; life-like it is."
Mr. Jenkins was about to make a hasty and obvious rejoinder, when the kitchen door opened and Selina emerged, followed by Drill. The snarl which the constable had prepared died away in a murmur of astonishment as he took the helmet. It looked as good as ever. ”

“ No damage was done, but it was all very mysterious to the junk man. He could not understand what had happened to the horse. The animal did not seem to be sick and had never been inclined to be balky. At last he concluded to take an inventory of the load. Lifting a pile of ancient burlap bags in the rear of the wagon, he discovered eight or ten large boulders, each being about as large as two men could lift. It seemed very amusing to the men working on the highway a short distance away when the junk man by herculean efforts succeeded in dumping the rocks out of the end of the wagon. ”

“ Then if you'll put in a good part of tonight riding, tomorrow you can do your best to pick up the men. Get the kind, Jim, who don't balk at bullets when they have to face 'em, for we've a hornets' nest over yonder. Get sober, level-headed fellows who know how to fight—-men of good judgment and nerve. Pay 'em what's right. You know the state of wages around here. While you're at Dugout, Jim, pick out a two-mule team and a good, dependable wagon for carting supplies. ”

“ Hiram smiled and spoke to Jerkline Jo.
"That's a fine wagon, ma'am," he said. "I never saw any as good as that."
"We've six more just like it," she told him, "and some lighter trailers. The man who made them is dead. I doubt if the world will ever again see such wagons when these are gone. Now, I want you to hook up, Mr. Hooker, and show me what you can do."
"Hook up, Hooker!" laughed Tweet, always ready to embrace the slightest opportunity for a joke. ”

“ Jenkins drank it and smacked his lips feebly.
“Sims needn't know anything about that helmet being repaired,” he said at last.
“Certainly not,” said everybody.
Mr. Jenkins sighed and turned to Drill.
“It's no good spoiling the ship for a ha'porth o' tar,” he said, with a faint suspicion of a wink. “No,” said Drill, looking puzzled.
“Anything that's worth doing at all is worth doing well,” continued the constable, “and while I'm drinking another glass with Mr. Gunnill here, suppose you go into the kitchen with that useful bag o' yours and finish repairing my truncheon?” ”

“ No one in the country has such dark unsightly hair as the junker. But, as I say, we let him go, and budged not from the spot.--The king himself will know how to chastise him, thought I."
"Good!" exclaimed the Drost; "thou hast behaved as was thy duty--as to the rest, what is between the king and his brother concerns not us, and still less whether the junker's hair be fine or coarse." ”

“ Gunnill.
“And I shall want some glue, and Miss Gunnill, and some tin-tacks,” said Drill.
“What do you want me for?” inquired Selina.
“To hold the things for me,” replied Mr. Drill.
Miss Gunnill tossed her head, but after a little demur consented; and Drill, ignoring the impatience of the constable, picked up his bag and led the way into the kitchen. Messrs. Gunnill and Jenkins, left behind in the living-room, sought for some neutral topic of discourse, but in vain; conversation would revolve round hard labour and lost pensions. ”

“ But half-a-dozen hands were on his plunder, it was snatched away, and he was flung back on the flags. There was a clatter on the stones of Luck Row, and a light van came rattling into Old Jago Street, the horse galloping, the carman lashing and shouting:—'Stop 'im! Stop thief!'
The sight was so novel that for a moment the gang merely stared and grinned. This man must be a greenhorn—new to the neighbourhood—to venture a load of goods up Luck Row. And it was tobacco, too. He was pale and flustered, and he called wildly, as he looked this way and that:—'A man's stole somethin' auf my van. ”

“ There was times when you went hungry because the junk-heap needed oil, or wiring, or a pattern-analysis, or parts. Now you got something! Now you can be on top! You know damn well you don't want any part of that Hollywood fiasco. You got a crack at big money. You gonna let it go by-the-by because you're afraid a pile of wires might get killed? Naw! We fight, and that's the way it stacks!"
"You mean it, don't you, Tanker?"
The Tanker said nothing.
Charlie Jingle slowly rose, tired in his bones, tired in his joints. "Okay. I'll arrange it. ”

“ Who might have reason enough to threaten the life of a Robot-Trainer? Mischa Hannigan, innocently and in a moment of anger at what he thought must be vengeful murder, stated that attempts had been made to intimidate Charles Jingle into selling out Tanker Bell. ”

“ Our Cruise in the Junk.
Just as we got out of the creek we caught sight of a large junk stealing round a point at no great distance from us. Although Mr Hanson and one of the men were wounded, he instantly ordered us to give chase, and away we pulled after the junk, which as we rounded the point we saw was making for one of the innumerable canals which intersect the country in all directions. If she once got into it she might escape us. The men therefore bent to their oars with a right good will, apparently just as fresh, as when they left the schooner in the morning. ”

“ Johnny shrugged. “Okay. Chew it up all you like, fellers. The only other choice is to sit here like bugs in a bottle until we die of old age. When you get tired of thinking that over, just let me know. I'll fly you out.”
“We can always depend on Johnny,” said Paresi with no detectable emphasis at all.
“Not on me,” said Johnny, and swatted the bulkhead. “On the ship. Nothing on any planet can stop this baby once I pour on the coal. ”

“ The interior of the junk shop was dark and damp, and foul with all manner of choking odors. On the walls, on the floor, and hanging from the rafters was a world of debris, dust-blackened, rust-corroded. Everything was there, every trade was represented, every class of society; things of iron and cloth and wood; all the detritus that a great city sloughs off in its daily life. Zerkow's junk shop was the last abiding-place, the almshouse, of such articles as had outlived their usefulness.
Maria found Zerkow himself in the back room, cooking some sort of a meal over an alcohol stove. ”

“ Johnny’s thoughts were cut short by a hand lightly laid on his shoulder.
“Thought I’d find you here.” It was his employer. “Some things in the factory I want to show you when the men are gone. They’re about out now. I’ll just wait here. Don’t let me disturb you.”
[25]
But Johnny had been disturbed; his eyes for the moment had been drawn from that passing string of men and the electro-magnet. As he again focused his eyes on the crack, he gave an involuntary start. Clinging to the face of the electro-magnet as if glued there, was an oblong paper box—a lunch-box. And the man who owned it? ”

“ His laugh comes ringing the loudest of all.”
“The Junker is more of a boy at two-and-twenty than I ever recollect myself! He lacks not sense nor wit, but a fray or a feast, a chase or a dance, seem to suffice him at an age when I had long been dwelling on matters of moment.”
“Thou wast left to be thine own pilot; he is but one of thy gay crew, and thus even these stirring times touch him not so deeply as thou wert affected by thine own choice in life between disorderly freedom and honourable restraint.” ”

“ A cybernetics engineer and machine tender, he was down to ten hours a week of work. Many others in the luxury-gorged economy had even smaller shares of the purposeful activities that remained. At night he dreamed of the slagger moving from house to house as it burned, melted and then evaporated each group of junked labor-blocking devices. He even had glorious daydreams about it. Walking down the park side of his home block, he was liable to lose all contact with the outside world and peer through the mind's eye alone at the climactic destruction. ”

“ Mr. Jobling laughed. "Gingell and Watson don't pay on those lines," he said. "We do the work and they take the money."
"It's always the way," said the girl, indignantly; "they have all the luxuries, and the men who make the money for them all the hardships. I seem to know the name Gingell and Watson. I wonder where I've seen it?"
"In the paper, p'r'aps," said Mr. Jobling. ”

“ In fact, at the tail of the truck there was nothing he could easily have moved at all, certainly nothing he could have concealed. So the rest of the little removal was hurried, for heads were now at windows, the loafers began to draw about the truck, and trouble might break out at any moment: indeed, the Ropers could never have ventured from their room but for the general uneasy awe of the parson. For nothing was so dangerous in the Jago as to impugn its honesty. To rob another was reasonable and legitimate, and to avoid being robbed, so far as might be, was natural and proper. ”

“ The innkeeper, without a word, drew a little gold and silver from his pocket, and placing it on the table, pushed it toward him.
“Enough to go on with,” said the other, pocketing it; “in future it is halves. D’ye hear me? Halves! And I’ll stay here and see I get it.”
He sat back in his chair, and meeting the other’s hatred with a gaze as steady as his own, replaced his pistol.
“A nice snug harbor after our many voyages,” he continued. “Shipmates we were, shipmates we’ll be; while Nick Gunn is alive you shall never want for company. Lord! ”

“ It was, indeed, the next door lodger, who had painted the cornice. He was very large, Johnny thought, to be so p. 116shy; he positively blushed as he grinned. “You come to this shop?” he asked in his odd whisper, as he stooped to judge the fit of his work. “I’m beddin’ down a junk ring; p’raps the gaffer’ll put you to ’elp me after breakfast.”
Bedding down a junk ring sounded advanced and technical, and Johnny felt taller at the prospect. He would learn what a junk ring was, probably, when he had to help bed it down. Meanwhile he watched the tall man, as he brought the metal to an exact face. ”

“ His trade of glove-cutter—he had taken up with that trade after two or three unsuccessful trials as an apprentice in other crafts—the habit of working in the shop-windows, of being on exhibition to the passers-by, had given to his whole person the self-assurance and the dandified airs of a poseur. Sitting in the work-shop on the street, with his white shirt, his little black cravat à la Colin, and his skin-tight pantaloons, he had adopted an awkward air of nonchalance, the pretentious carriage and canaille affectations of the workman who knows he is being stared at. ”

“ A long time that night Johnny lay awake among his deerskins. There were thoughts enough to keep him awake. A whole tribe of little brown people now were dependent upon the skill and prowess of Gordon Duncan in organizing a hunt. Most of the actual execution must fall upon Johnny’s young shoulders, for Gordon Duncan was old. Little wonder, then, that he did not sleep.
“We are trusting all to this one grand endeavor,” he told himself. “Little of our caribou meat is left. If the next drove does not pass this way, if we fail in the hunt, then we too must starve.” ”

“ Gunn drew himself up, and regarding him with a satisfied sneer, quitted the room without a word.
Affairs at the "Golden Key" grew steadily worse and worse. Gunn dominated the place, and his vile personality hung over it like a shadow. Appeals to the innkeeper were in vain; his health was breaking fast, and he moodily declined to interfere. Gunn appointed servants of his own choosing-brazen maids and foul-mouthed men. The old patrons ceased to frequent the "Golden Key," and its bedrooms stood empty. The maids scarcely deigned to take an order from Joan, and the men spoke to her familiarly. ”

“ Winkworth, "every stone-throwing urchin, discontented snob, or butcher's boy with a tray on his shoulder, has two or three hundred pounds at his mercy. A chimney-pot falling, a flower-pot overturning, or almost any other accident you please, can pick your pocket of much more than it may be convenient to lose, in the shape of glass. Then look at that jeweller's shop. Think what a temptation it must be to a poor rogue to pop his hand through and seize all those diamonds and pearls. ”

“ Altogether he thinks he is sure of six hours. So ordering the last few bales of cargo and hides to be discharged as quickly as possible, and bidding Achille to keep himself close in the cabin, he goes out hurriedly to the office of his consignees, which is just opening for the day’s business.
Here getting word in the private office with the senior partner, he says: “I have discharged my cargo. Can’t you give me consignment in ballast to some place?”
“Absurd!” answers the florid Jacobszoon. “Why should we send you with ballast when we can get charter money for you? ”