m craved to learn the boat-loading business at ten dollars a day. He
marched his gang to the Embarcadero, yelling orders in a manner that
made some of the veterans of the A.E.F. homesick.

"Silence in de ranks!" The clamour subsided. "When Ah columns you lef',
head fo' de big buildin'!" The big building was the entrance to the
pier against which, eating charter money faster than the banks could
loan it and hungry for her sixteen thousand tons of mixed freight, lay
the _Empire_.

At half past seven the Wildcat reported to the pier foreman at the
office in the end of the long building. "Cap'n, suh, heah's more'n two
hund'ed twenty-dollah niggers. How much does dat come to, suh?"

The pier foreman ran his eye over the crowd without answering. He
disappeared into the office, where he spoke quickly to his clerk. "Cut
all the labour-grabbers off the payroll. Call 'em in. Here's more men
than I've seen in a year."

Outside there began the brief business of distributing the new supply
of much-needed labour. This accomplished, the Wildcat came in for his
share of attention. "We can use another gang like this. Can you get 'em
by tomorrow?"

"Cap'n, suh, Ah gits fo' times dis many does you crave 'em. When does
Ah git de money?"

Fifteen minutes later the Wildcat received a piece of blue paper.
"Cap'n, suh, Ah cain't read whut de papeh says. Kin you read fo' me,
please, suh?"

"That's a check for four thousand and eighty dollars--two hundred and
four men at twenty a throw."

"Lawd gawd, Lady Luck, you sho' showered down dis time!" The Wildcat's
brain could surround the eighty-dollar part, but the four-thousand end
was something not yet real. He stowed the check in his pocket with the
fragment of the treasury roll of the Temple of Luck.

On Saturday, unable to restrain his anxiety to see what so much money
looked like, he persuaded the pier foreman to send the clerk to the
bank to get the check cashed. The cash was handed to the Wildcat. He
stowed it away in various pockets of the yaller suit. "Ol' money sticks
out like a stole chicken. Neveh did see so much money."

That night, under the stress of prosperity, the Wildcat quit an hour
early. He drifted to the Temple of Luck, intending to sit easy and
smoke a cigar and talk big talk to the evening assembly of brethren.
Two or three of Honey Tone's former guardians were busy loafing at the
Temple when the Wildcat arrived. After a period of silence, following
the salutatio