Marching Men | Page 3

loved the memory of his father,

"Cracked McGregor." "They called him 'Cracked' until that became his
name," he thought. "Now they are at me." The thought renewed a
feeling of fellowship between himself and his dead father--it softened
him. When he reached the first of the bleak miners' houses a smile
played about the corners of his huge mouth.
In his day Cracked McGregor had not borne a good reputation in Coal
Creek. He was a tall silent man with something morose and dangerous
about him. He inspired fear born of hatred. In the mines he worked
silently and with fiery energy, hating his fellow miners among whom
he was thought to be "a bit off his head." They it was who named him
"Cracked" McGregor and they avoided him while subscribing to the
common opinion that he was the best miner in the district. Like his
fellow workers he occasionally got drunk. When he went into the
saloon where other men stood in groups buying drinks for each other he
bought only for himself. Once a stranger, a fat man who sold liquor for
a wholesale house, approached and slapped him on the back. "Come,
cheer up and have a drink with me," he said. Cracked McGregor turned
and knocked the stranger to the floor. When the fat man was down he
kicked him and glared at the crowd in the room. Then he walked slowly
out at the door staring around and hoping some one would interfere.
In his house also Cracked McGregor was silent. When he spoke at all
he spoke kindly and looked into the eyes of his wife with an eager
expectant air. To his red-haired son he seemed to be forever pouring
forth a kind of dumb affection. Taking the boy in his arms he sat for
hours rocking back and forth and saying nothing. When the boy was ill
or troubled by strange dreams at night the feel of his father's arms about
him quieted him. In his arms the boy went to sleep happily. In the mind
of the father there was a single recurring thought, "We have but the one
bairn, we'll not put him into the hole in the ground," he said, looking
eagerly to the mother for approval.
Twice had Cracked McGregor walked with his son on a Sunday
afternoon. Taking the lad by the hand the miner went up the face of the
hill, past the last of the miners' houses, through the grove of pine trees
at the summit and on over the hill into sight of a wide valley on the

farther side. When he walked he twisted his head far to one side like
one listening. A falling timber in the mines had given him a deformed
shoulder and left a great scar on his face, partly covered by a red beard
filled with coal dust. The blow that had deformed his shoulder had
clouded his mind. He muttered as he walked along the road and talked
to himself like an old man.
The red-haired boy ran beside his father happily. He did not see the
smiles on the faces of the miners, who came down the hill and stopped
to look at the odd pair. The miners went on down the road to sit in front
of the stores on Main Street, their day brightened by the memory of the
hurrying McGregors. They had a remark they tossed about. "Nance
McGregor should not have looked at her man when she conceived,"
they said.
Up the face of the hill climbed the McGregors. In the mind of the boy a
thousand questions wanted answering. Looking at the silent gloomy
face of his father, he choked back the questions rising in his throat,
saving them for the quiet hour with his mother when Cracked
McGregor was gone to the mine. He wanted to know of the boyhood of
his father, of the life in the mine, of the birds that flew overhead and
why they wheeled and flew in great ovals in the sky. He looked at the
fallen trees in the woods and wondered what made them fall and
whether the others would presently fall in their turn.
Over the hill went the silent pair and through the pinewood to an
eminence half way down the farther side. When the boy saw the valley
lying so green and broad and fruitful at their feet he thought it the most
wonderful sight in the world. He was not surprised that his father had
brought him there. Sitting on the ground he opened and closed his eyes,
his soul stirred by the beauty of the scene that lay before them.
On the hillside Cracked McGregor went through a kind of ceremony.
Sitting upon a log he made a telescope