The boys [chivying Nestor out] Now, Nestor, outside.  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.  And youre all as rotten as me, or youd have lynched me.

A boy.  Anything to oblige you, Blanco.

Another.  We can do it yet if you feel really bad about it.

Blanco.  No:  the devil’s gone out of you.  We’re all frauds.  Theres none of us real good and none of us real bad.

Elder Daniels.  There is One above, Blanco.

Blanco.  What do you know about Him? you that always talk as if He never did anything without asking your rotten leave first?  Why did the child die?  Tell me that if you can.  He cant have wanted to kill the child.  Why did He make me go soft on the child if He was going hard on it Himself?  Why should He go hard on the innocent kid and go soft on a rotten thing like me?  Why did I go soft myself?  Why did the Sheriff go soft?  Why