They hauled Bram Ash onto the canvas litter with four men lifting the ash poles, his right shoulder sagging like a sack of crushed roof slates.
Every jolt over the tram track switches produced a thin, bubbling hiss from the corner of his mouth, his dark blood dripping steadily through the canvas weave onto the crushed limestone ballast. The fustian of his waistcoat was fully black with soaked fluid, the lead ball having torn through the outer coat, fractured his right collar bone. Then he shredded the underlying shirt into red pulp.
Len Vey walked at the head of the litter. His uninjured right hand gripped the front oak crossbar. His body leaned into the rising grade to help the quarrymen drag the dead weight up into the kitchen vault. His own left forearm was throbbing with vicious spasms, the horsehair stitches pulling tight against the bruised flesh where dark discoloration had spread down toward his wrist. His boots were soaked with gutter slurry and cold machine oil, but he kept his stride steady. He leaned on his Surefoot baseline to keep his balance on the greasy cobblestones.
Behind them across the misty yard, forty armed weavers and trackmen surrounded the four surviving fever casks. It rolled the three-ton load on greased wooden skids into the secure freight cellar behind Doma Reel’s communal stoves. The sulfur drizzle fell without pause from the ceiling of the basin. It hissed as it struck the cooling brake shoes of the abandoned flatcar.
