Son, those same fellows would steal crusts from starving
men and pull gold fillings from the mouths of corpses,
yep, and squawk like Sam Scratch if some blamed corpse
hit back. They’re all tarred with the
same brush, little and big. Look at your Sugar
Trust—with all its millions stealing water
like a common thief from New York City, and short-weighing
the government on its phoney scales. Morality
and civic duty! Son, forget it.”
Daylight’s coming to civilization had not improved
him. True, he wore better clothes, had learned
slightly better manners, and spoke better English.
As a gambler and a man-trampler he had developed
remarkable efficiency. Also, he had become used
to a higher standard of living, and he had whetted
his wits to razor sharpness in the fierce, complicated
struggle of fighting males. But he had hardened,
and at the expense of his old-time, whole-souled geniality.
Of the essential refinements of civilization he knew
nothing. He did not know they existed.
He had become cynical, bitter, and brutal. Power
had its effect on him that it had on all men.
Suspicious of the big exploiters, despising the fools
of the exploited herd, he had faith only in himself.
This led to an undue and erroneous exaltation of his
ego, while kindly consideration of others—nay,
even simple respect—was destroyed, until
naught was left for him but to worship at the shrine
of self. Physically, he was not the man of iron
muscles who had come down out of the Arctic.
He did not exercise sufficiently, ate more than was
good for him, and drank altogether too much.
His muscles were getting flabby, and his tailor called
attention to his increasing waistband. In fact,
Daylight was developing a definite paunch. This
physical deterioration was manifest likewise in his
face. The lean Indian visage was suffering a
city change. The slight hollows in the cheeks
under the high cheek-bones had filled out. The
beginning of puff-sacks under the eyes was faintly
visible. The girth of the neck had increased,
and the first crease and fold of a double chin were
becoming plainly discernible. The old effect
of asceticism, bred of terrific hardships and toil,
had vanished; the features had become broader and
heavier, betraying all the stigmata of the life he
lived, advertising the man’s self-indulgence,
harshness, and brutality.
Even his human affiliations were descending.
Playing a lone hand, contemptuous of most of the
men with whom he played, lacking in sympathy or understanding
of them, and certainly independent of them, he found
little in common with those to be encountered, say
at the Alta-Pacific. In point of fact, when the
battle with the steamship companies was at its height
and his raid was inflicting incalculable damage on
all business interests, he had been asked to resign
from the Alta-Pacific. The idea had been rather
to his liking, and he had found new quarters in clubs
