He smoked a short clay pipe that had
become black with age and that at night could not be seen against his black
curly beard. Smoke rolled out of his mouth in clouds and appeared to come
up out of his belly. He was like a volcanic mountain and was called, by the
men who loafed in Birdie Spinks' drug store, Smoky Pete.
Smoky Pete was in more ways than one like a mountain given to eruptions. He
did not get drunk, but after his wife died he got into the habit of having
two or three drinks of whisky every evening. The whisky inflamed his mind
and he strode up and down Main Street, ready to quarrel with any one his
eye lighted upon. He got into the habit of roaring at his fellow citizens
and making ribald jokes at their expense. Every one was a little afraid
of him and he became in an odd way the guardian of the town morals. Sandy
Ferris, a house painter, became a drunkard and did not support his family.
Smoky Pete abused him in the public streets and in the sight of all men.
"You cheap thing, warming your belly with whisky while jour children
freeze, why don't you try being a man?" he shouted at the house painter,
who staggered into a side street and went to sleep off his intoxication in
a stall in Clyde Neighbors' livery barn. The blacksmith kept at the painter
until the whole town took up his cry and the saloons became ashamed to
accept his custom. He was forced to reform.
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