Pete was moving with his lurching short steps past Six.
"How about helping to-day on the floor?" I said.
He snapped back quickly in his blurred voice, "You work th' pit, tell y'—goddam quick, want y' on the floor."
I looked back at him, swore to myself, and went slowly down the pit stairs.
I couldn't find the gang at first, but later found half of them: Peter the Russian, the short Wop, the Aristocrat, and a couple more, all under furnace Eight, cleaning out cinder. The Aristocrat was trying to get the craneman to bring up one of the long boxes with curved bottoms for slag. The craneman was damning him. There was one too many at the job,—four is enough to clean cinder,—so I threw a bit of slag at Peter (for old time's sake) and passed on.
I met Al, and said, "Where are they working?"
"Clean up the pipes," he said.
The Croat, Marco, Joe, and Fritz were at Number 6, with forks. You see, the pipes run up the ladle's side and release a stopper for pouring the steel. They are covered with fire clay, which is destroyed after one or two ladlings and has to be knocked off and replaced. We loosened the clay with sledges, and Marco watered down the pipes with a hose, to cool them. They were moderately warm when Fritz and I started piling them on the truck. Once or twice the pipe touched Fritz's hand through a hole in his glove, and he yowled, and then laughed. Once or twice I yowled and laughed also.
When we piled near the top, we swung in unison, and tossed the pipe into the air. It was like piling wood.
I caught a torn piece of my pants on a sharp bit of slag while carrying two pipes, and acquired a rip halfway from pocket to knee. Marco had a safety pin for me at once; he kept emergency ones in his shirt-front.