But he failed miserably, as Jud Clark could never have failed. He could
not drink with them. He could not sink to their level of degradation.
Their oaths and obscenity sickened and disgusted him, and their talk of
women drove him into the fresh air.

The fact that he could no longer drink himself into a stupor puzzled
him. Bad whiskey circulated freely among the hay stacks and bunk houses
where the harvest hands were quartered, and at ruinous prices. The men
clubbed together to buy it, and he put in his share, only to find that
it not only sickened him, but that he had a mental inhibition against
it.

They called him the "Dude," and put into it gradually all the class
hatred of their wretched sullen lives. He had to fight them, more than
once, and had they united against him he might have been killed. But
they never united. Their own personal animosities and angers kept them
apart, as their misery held them together. And as time went on and his
muscles hardened he was able to give a better account of himself. The
time came when they let him alone, and when one day a big shocker fell
off a stack and broke his leg and Dick set it, he gained their respect.
They asked no questions, for their law was that the past was the past.
They did not like him, but in the queer twisted ethics of the camp they
judged the secret behind him by the height from which he had fallen, and
began slowly to accept him as of the brotherhood of derelicts.