In a cellar-like house driven like a stake into the
hillside above Coal Creek lived Kate Hartnet with
her son Mike. Her man had died with the others
during the fire in the mine. Her son like Beaut
McGregor did not work in the mine. He hurried
through Main Street or went half running among the
trees on the hills. Miners seeing him hurrying
along with white intense face shook their heads.
“He’s cracked,” they said.
“He’ll hurt some one yet.”
Beaut saw Mike hurrying about the streets. Once
encountering him in the pine woods above the town
he walked with him and tried to get him to talk.
In his pockets Mike carried books and pamphlets.
He set traps in the woods and brought home rabbits
and squirrels. He got together collections of
birds’ eggs which he sold to women in the trains
that stopped at Coal Creek and when he caught birds
he stuffed them, put beads in their eyesockets and
sold them also. He proclaimed himself an anarchist
and like Cracked McGregor muttered to himself as he
hurried along.
One day Beaut came upon Mike Hartnet reading a book
as he sat on a log overlooking the town. A shock
ran through McGregor when he looked over the shoulder
of the man and saw what book he read. “It
is strange,” he thought, “that this fellow
should stick to the same book that fat old Weeks makes
his living by.”
Beaut sat on the log beside Hartnet and watched him.
The reading man looked up and nodded nervously then
slid along the log to the farther end. Beaut
laughed. He looked down at the town and then at
the frightened nervous book-reading man on the log.
An inspiration came to him.
“If you had the power, Mike, what would you
do to Coal Creek?” he asked.
The nervous man jumped and tears came into his eyes.
He stood before the log and spread out his hands.
“I would go among men like Christ,” he
cried, pitching his voice forward like one addressing
an audience. “Poor and humble, I would
go teaching them of love.” Spreading out
his hands like one pronouncing a benediction he shouted,
“Oh men of Coal Creek, I would teach you love
and the destruction of evil.”
Beaut jumped up from the log and strode before the
trembling figure. He was strangely moved.
Grasping the man he thrust him back upon the log.
His own voice rolled down the hillside in a great roaring
laugh. “Men of Coal Creek,” he shouted,
mimicking the earnestness of Hartnet, “listen
to the voice of McGregor. I hate you. I hate
you because you jeered at my father and at me and
because you cheated my mother, Nance McGregor.
I hate you because you are weak and disorganised like
cattle. I would like to come among you teaching
the power of force. I would like to slay you
one by one, not with weapons but with my naked fists.
If they have made you work like rats buried in a hole
they are right. It is man’s right to do
what he can. Get up and fight. Fight and
I’ll get on the other side and you can fight
me. I’ll help drive you back into your
holes.”
