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.