Outside,
Nestor. Out you go. Get your subscription ready for the Sheriff.
Skiddoo, Nestor.
NESTOR. Afraid to be hanged! Afraid to be hanged! [At the door]
Coward! [He is thrown out].
BLANCO. Dearly beloved brethren--
A BOY. Same to you, Blanco. [Laughter].
BLANCO. And many of them. Boys: this is a rotten world.
ANOTHER BOY. Lord have mercy on us, miserable sinners. [More
laughter].
BLANCO [Forcibly] No: thats where youre wrong. Dont flatter
yourselves that youre miserable sinners. Am I a miserable sinner?
No: I'm a fraud and a failure. I started in to be a bad man like
the rest of you. You all started in to be bad men or you wouldn't
be in this jumped-up, jerked-off, hospital-turned-out camp that
calls itself a town. I took the broad path because I thought I
was a man and not a snivelling canting turning-the-other-cheek
apprentice angel serving his time in a vale of tears. They talked
Christianity to us on Sundays; but when they really meant
business they told us never to take a blow without giving it
back, and to get dollars. When they talked the golden rule to me,
I just looked at them as if they werent there, and spat. But when
they told me to try to live my life so that I could always look
my fellowman straight in the eye and tell him to go to hell, that
fetched me.
THE BOYS. Quite right. Good. Bully for you, Blanco, old son.
Right good sense too. Aha-a-ah!
BLANCO. Yes; but whats come of it all? Am I a real bad man? a man
of game and grit? a man that does what he likes and goes over or
through other people to his own gain? or am I a snivelling cry-
baby that let a horse his life depended on be took from him by a
woman, and then sat on the grass looking at the rainbow and let
himself be took like a hare in a trap by Strapper Kemp: a lad
whose back I or any grown man here could break against his knee?
I'm a rottener fraud and failure than the Elder here.
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