A train stopped at the station down the street. There came the sound
of tramping of men and quick sharp commands. A stream of men poured
out of the saloon onto the sidewalk. Down the street came a file of
soldiers with guns swung across their shoulders. Again Beaut was
thrilled by the sight of trained orderly men moving along shoulder to
shoulder. In the presence of these men the disorganized miners seemed
pitifully weak and insignificant. The girl pulled the shawl about her
head and ran up the street to disappear into the stairway. The boy
unlocked the door and went upstairs and to bed.

After the strike Nance McGregor who owned nothing but unpaid accounts
was unable to open the bakery. A small man with a white moustache, who
chewed tobacco, came from the mill and took the unused flour and
shipped it away. The boy and his mother continued living above the
bakery store room. Again she went in the morning to wash the windows
and scrub the floors in the offices of the mine and her red-haired son
stood upon the street or sat in the pool room and talked to the black-
haired boy. "Next week I'll be going to the city and will begin making
something of myself," he said. When the time came to go he waited and
idled in the streets. Once when a miner jeered at him for his idleness
he knocked him into the gutter. The miners who hated him for his
speech on the steps, admired him for his strength and brute courage.




CHAPTER IV


In a cellar-like house driven like a stake into the hillside above