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The funeral of Nance McGregor was an event in Coal Creek. In the minds of the miners she stood for something. Fearing and hating the husband and the tall big-fisted son they had yet a tenderness for the mother and wife. "She lost her money handing us out bread," they said as they pounded on the bar in the saloon. Word ran about among them and they returned again and again to the subject.
I had no big-fisted uncle to thump me persuasively when I needed it; had fortune granted me one I might have been a very different man, Lisbeth. You behold in me a horrible example of what one may become whose boyhood has been denuded of uncles." "If you will be so very obliging as to return my my property."
As a result, most of the big oil men, especially those engaged in production, are graduates of the school of hard knocks; they are big-fisted, harsh-handed fellows who are as thoroughly at home on the "thribble board" of a derrick as at a desk or a directors' table, and they are quite as colorful as the oil fields themselves. Their lives are full and vigorous.
So they came, at half-past eleven, in their own ships' dinghies, which were sent back with orders to return at nightfall six big-fisted, more or less fat captains, and six big-fisted, beetle-browed, and embarrassed chief mates.
He glanced aside at me, but with no response in the depths of his eyes, in which I could perceive only a dumb anguish of despair. Beyond him marched Grover, one time butcher at Harwich, a stocky, big-fisted fellow, with a ghastly sword wound, yet red and unhealed on his face, extending from hair to chin, his little pig eyes glinting ugly, and his lips cursing.
With all his heart he wanted to repeat a sentence he had heard from the lips of grey-haired, big-fisted Valmore "How can they believe and not lead a life of simple, fervent devotion to their belief?" He thought himself superior to the thin-lipped man who talked with him and had he been able to express what was in his heart he might have said, "Look here, man!
"They know better than to shoot at a German soldier now; but if looks would kill we'd all be dead men a hundred times a day." And he laughed again. Of course it was none of our business; but it seemed to us that if we were choosing a man to pacify and control the ruined people of ruined Louvain this square-headed, big-fisted captain would not have been our first choice.
And presently, my thirst recurring to me, I approached the inn, and descending three steps entered its cool shade. Here I found four men, each with his pipe and tankard, to whom a large, red-faced, big-fisted fellow was holding forth in a high state of heat and indignation.
One Sunday morning found me, how or why I cannot now remember, at the Morrisey ranch. A number of young people had gathered there from the nearer ranches. Besides, the oldsters had been there, drinking since early dawn, and, some of them, since the night before. The Morriseys were a huge breed, and there were many strapping great sons and uncles, heavy-booted, big-fisted, rough-voiced.
The big-fisted brute can't write a hand that anybody could read. But, still, he should have dictated a letter, Skinner. The least he might have done was to say: 'Enclosed herewith find my report of disbursements for last voyage. And then he could have slipped in some mild complaint about the creosote, the trouble he had in getting a crew, and so on.
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