You ask Alex Fielder who keeps a saloon in
Denver. Ask him if Gus Lamont has been there."
The other man laughed. "You've been in Jake's drinking too much beer,"
he jeered.
Nance heard the two men stumble off down the street, the traveller
protesting against the unbelief of his friend. It seemed to her that
life with all of its colour sound and meaning was running away from
her presence. The exhaust of the engine over at the mine rang in her
ears. She thought of the mine as a great monster lying asleep below
the ground, its huge nose stuck into the air, its mouth open to eat
men. In the darkness of the room her coat, flung over the back of a
chair, took the shape and outline of a face, huge and grotesque,
staring silently past her into the sky.
Nance McGregor gasped and struggled for breath. She clutched the
bedclothes with her hands and fought grimly and silently. She did not
think of the place to which she might go after death. She was trying
hard not to go there. It had been her habit of life to fight not to
dream dreams.
Nance thought of her father, drunk and throwing his money about in the
old days before her marriage, of the walks she as a young girl had
taken with her lover on Sunday afternoons and of the times when they
had gone together to sit on the hillside overlooking the farming
country.
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