How much of a shock it had been was shown weeks later, when the hour of peril came. It was a pleasant day in September, and the bridge was singing its busy song in the morning sunshine. The engineer in charge had made his round of inspection, and was standing idly on the false work under the end-span. He was just over the street, and could look down upon his own office, a hundred feet or so below. Every timber and girder here was familiar to him. Rumbling along on the trestle track came the big "traveler," its four booms groaning under their iron loads. The "traveler" came on slowly, as befits a huge thing weighing one hundred and fifty tons. The engineer was whittling a stick. The "traveler" came nearer, with one of its booms swinging toward Bedell, but lazily. He had plenty of time to step aside. One step to the right, one step to the left, one step forward was all he need take. Of course, he would not think of taking a step backward, for there was destruction—there yawned the gulf. It was inconceivable to the man on the "traveler" that his chief, who knew all about everything, would take a step backward.
Still the engineer in charge did not move. The boom swung nearer. Still he whittled at his stick. His thoughts were far away. The man on the "traveler" shouted, and Bedell looked up. Now he saw, and the sudden fear he had never known surged in his heart. He had still time to step aside, but his mind could not act. The boom was on him. Up went his right arm to clutch it, and back reeled his body. His right hand missed, his left hand caught the stringer as he fell, caught its sharp edge and held there by the fingers—the left-hand fingers—for five, six, seven seconds or so, legs swinging in the void. Down sprang the man on the "traveler," and leaped along the ties to his relief, and reached the spot to find the fingers gone, to see far below on the stones a broken, huddled heap that lay still. So died the man who had been kind to me (as they say he was kind to every one), and who had warned me to "take it easy and be careful."
Despite the constant peril of their days, the nights of bridge-builders are often spent in gaiety. The habit of excitement holds them even in their leisure, and many a sturdy riveter has danced away the small hours and been on his swing at the tower-top betimes the next morning. They are whole-souled, frank-spoken young fellows (there are few old bridge-men), and to spend an evening at their club, on West Thirty-second Street, is a thing worth doing.
On the street floor is a café, not to say saloon, where the walls are hung with churches and bridges and towering structures, monuments to the skill of the builders who have passed this way. And if you will join a group at one of these tables and speak them fair you may hear enough tales of the lads who work aloft for many a writing. And up and down the stairs move lines of bridge-men, all restless, one would say, and some pass on crutches and some with arms in slings (there is a story in every cripple), and you hear that New York has half a dozen one-legged bridge-men still fairly active in service. It's once a bridge-man always a bridge-man, for the life has its fascination, like the circus.
As I sat in a corner one evening with Zimmer and Jimmie Dunn and some of the others, there came down from overhead a racket that almost drowned our buzz of talk and the frequent ting of the bar register. The bridge-men were in vigorous debate over the question whether or not the interests of the craft call for more flooring on dangerous structures. Some said "yes," some "no," and said it with vehemence. More flooring meant less danger. That was all right, but less danger meant more competition and less pay. So there you are, and the majority favored danger with a generous wage.
"What kind of men make bridge-men?" I inquired.
"All kinds," said one of the group who was drinking birch-beer, "Some come out of machine-shops, some out of locomotive works, I was a 'shanty-jack.'"
"Lots of 'em come from farms," added another. "I know one fellow tried it who'd been a tailor. Said he changed for his health."
This struck the company as highly amusing.
"There's lots of 'em try it and quit," remarked Jimmie Dunn, who is one of the oldest and also one of the youngest men in the guild. I had seen him nearly killed a few days before by the sudden up-swing of a sixteen-ton strut. "I knew a telegraph-pole climber who said he didn't mind any old kind of a tower; he'd go up it all right and work there. Well, he got all he wanted the first morning. Came down white as that paper. Said he wouldn't stay up half an hour longer if they'd give him the whole blamed bridge. Why, it gets us fellows dizzy once in a while."