The two drivers sat on the bench and laughed.
The drink they had given Beaut was a horrible mess
concocted by the laughing bartender at their suggestion.
“We will get the big fellow drunk and hear him
roar,” the bartender had said.
As he walked toward the back of the stable a convulsive
nausea seized Beaut. He stumbled and pitched
forward, cutting his face on the floor. Then
he rolled over on his back and groaned and a little
stream of blood ran down his cheek.
The two boys jumped up from the bench and ran toward
him. They stood looking at his pale lips.
Fear seized them. They tried to lift him but
he fell from their arms and lay again on the stable
floor, white and motionless. Filled with fright
they ran from the stable and through Main Street.
“We must get a doctor,” they said as they
hurried along, “He is mighty sick—that
fellow.”
In the doorway leading to the rooms over the undertaker’s
shop stood the tall pale girl. One of the running
boys stopped and addressed her, “Your red-head,”
he shouted, “is blind drunk lying on the stable
floor. He has cut his head and is bleeding.”
The tall girl ran down the street to the offices of
the mine. With Nance McGregor she hurried to
the stable. The store keepers along Main Street
looked out of their doors and saw the two women pale
and with set faces half-carrying the huge form of
Beaut McGregor along the street and in at the door
of the bakery.
* * * *
*
At eight o’clock that evening Beaut McGregor,
his legs still unsteady, his face white, climbed aboard
a passenger train and passed out of the life of Coal
Creek. On the seat beside him a bag contained
all his clothes. In his pocket lay a ticket to
Chicago and eighty-five dollars, the last of Cracked
McGregor’s savings. He looked out of the
car window at the little woman thin and worn standing
alone on the station platform and a great wave of
anger passed through him. “I’ll show
them,” he muttered. The woman looked at
him and forced a smile to her lips. The train
began to move into the west. Beaut looked at his
mother and at the deserted streets of Coal Creek and
put his head down upon his hands and in the crowded
car before the gaping people wept with joy that he
had seen the last of youth. He looked back at
Coal Creek, full of hate. Like Nero he might
have wished that all of the people of the town had
but one head so that he might have cut it off with
a sweep of a sword or knocked it into the gutter with
one swinging blow.
