Meanwhile, seeing the turn events had taken, the pursuer had likewise stopped, and now he hesitated.

"All right," replied Ben. "Go ahead! I'll see that the fellow doesn't trouble you again." And he started back.

But the girl's hand was again upon his arm. "No," she protested, "not that way, please. He's my steady, Tom is, only to-night he's drank too much, and--and--he doesn't realize what he's doing." The grip on his arm tightened as she looked imploringly into his face. "Take me home, please!" A catch was in her voice. "I'm afraid."

Ben hesitated. Even in the half-light the pet.i.tioner's face hinted brazenly of cosmetics.

"Where do you live?" he asked shortly.

"Only a little way, less than a block, and it's the direction you're going. Please take me!"

"Very well," said Blair, and they moved on, the girl still clinging to him and sobbing at intervals. Before a dark three-story and bas.e.m.e.nt building, with a decidedly sinister aspect, she stopped and indicated a stairway.

"This is the place."

"All right," responded Ben. "I guess you're safe now. Good-night!"

But she clung to him the tighter. "Come up with me," she insisted.

"We're only on the second floor, and I haven't thanked you yet. Really, I'm so grateful! You don't know what it means to be a girl, and--and--"

Her feelings got the better of her again, and she paused to wipe her eyes on her sleeve. "My mother will be so thankful too. She'd never forgive me if I didn't bring you up. Please come!" and she led the way up the darkened stair.

Again Ben hesitated. He did not in the least like the situation in which circ.u.mstances had placed him. The prospect of the girl's mother, like herself, scattering grateful tears upon him was not alluring; but it seemed the part of a cad to refuse, and at last he followed.

His guide led him up a short flight of stairs and turned to the right, down a dimly lighted hall. The ground-floor of the building was used for store purposes. This second floor was evidently a series of apartments.

Lights from within the rooms crept over the curtained transoms. Voices sounded; gla.s.ses clinked. A piano banged out ragtime like mad.

At the fourth door the girl stopped. "Thank you so much for coming," she said. "Walk right in," and throwing open the door she fairly shoved the visitor inside.

From out the semi-darkness, Ben now found himself in a well-lighted room, and the change made him blink about him. Instead of the motherly old lady in a frilled cap, whom he had expected to see, he found himself in the company of a half-dozen coatless young men and under-dressed women, lounging in questionable att.i.tudes on chairs and sofas. At his advent they all looked up. A sallow youth who had been operating the piano turned in his seat and the music stopped. Not yet realizing the trick that had been played upon him, Ben turned to look for his guide; but she was nowhere in sight, and the door was closed. His eyes shifted back and met a circle of amused faces, while a burst of mocking laughter broke upon his ears.

Then for the first time he understood, and his face went white with anger. Without a word he started to leave the room. But one of the women was already at his side, her detaining hand upon his sleeve. "No, no, honey!" she said, insinuatingly. "We're all good fellows! Stay awhile!"

Ben shook her off roughly. Her very touch was contaminating. But one of the men had had time to get between him and the door; a sarcastic smile was upon his face as he blocked the way.

"I guess it's on you, old man!" he bantered. "About a half-dozen quarts will do for a starter!" He nodded to a pudgy old woman who was watching interestedly from the background. "You heard the gent's order, mother!

Beer, and in a hurry! He looks dry and hot."

Again a gale of laughter broke forth; but Ben took no notice. He made one step forward, until he was within arm's reach of the humorist.

"Step out of my way, please," he said evenly.

Had the man been alone he would have complied, and quickly. No human being with eyes and intelligence could have misread the warning on Ben Blair's countenance. He started to move, when the girl who had first come forward turned the tide.

"Aw, Charley!" she goaded. "Is that all the nerve you've got!" and she laughed ironically.

Instantly the man's face reddened, and he fell back into his first position.

"Sorry I can't oblige you, pal," he said, "but you see it's agin de house. Us blokes has got--"

The sentence was never completed. Ben's fist shot out and caught the speaker fair on the point of his jaw, and he collapsed in his tracks.

For a second no one in the room stirred; then before Ben could open the door, the other men were upon him. The women fled screaming to the farthest corner of the room, where they huddled together like sheep.

Returning with the tray, the old woman realized an only too familiar condition.

"Gentlemen!" she pleaded. "Gentlemen!"

But no one paid the slightest attention to her. Forced by sheer odds of ma.s.s toward a corner, Ben's long arms were working like flails. Another man fell, and was up again. The first one also was upon his feet now, his face white, and a tiny stream of blood trickling from his bruised jaw. A heavy beer-bottle flung by one of the women crashed on the wall over the countryman's head, the contents spattering over him like rain.

One of the men had seized a chair and swung it high, to strike, with murder in his eye. Attracted by the confusion, the other occupants of the floor had rushed into the hall. The door was flung open and instantly blocked with a ma.s.s of sinister menacing faces.

Until then, Ben had been silent as death, silent as one who realizes that he is fighting for life against overwhelming odds. Now of a sudden he leaped backward like a great cat, clear of all the others. From his throat there issued a sound, the like of which not one of those who listened had ever heard before, and which fairly lifted their hair--the Indian war-whoop that the man had learned as a boy. With the old instinctive motion, comparable in swiftness to nothing save the pa.s.sage of light, the cowboy's hands went to his hips, and as swiftly returned with the muzzles of two great revolvers protruding like elongated index fingers. With equal swiftness, his face had undergone a transformation.

His jaw was set and his blue eyes flashed like live coals.

"Stand back, little folks!" he ordered, while the twin weapons revolved in circles of reflected flame about his trigger fingers. "You seem to want a show, and you shall have it!" The whirling circles vanished. A deep report fell upon the silence, and a gaudy vase on the mantle flew into a thousand pieces. "Stand back, people, or you might get hurt!"

Awed into dumb helplessness, the spectators stared with widening eyes; but the spectacle had only begun. Like the reports of giant fire-crackers, only seconds apart, the great revolvers spoke. A nudely suggestive cast in the corner followed the vase. A quaintly carved clock paused in its measure of time, its hands chronicling the minute of interruption. A decanter of whiskey burst spattering over a table. Two baccha.n.a.lian pictures on the wall suddenly had yawning wounds in their centre. The portrait of a queen of the footlights leaped into the air.

One of the beer-bottles, which the madame had placed on a convenient table, popped as though it were champagne. Fragments of gla.s.s and porcelain fell about like hail. The place was lighted by a tuft of three big incandescent globes; and, last of all, one by one, they crashed into atoms, and the room was in total darkness. Then silence fell, startling in contrast to the late confusion, while the pungent odor of burnt gunpowder intruded upon the nostrils.

For a moment there was inaction; then the a.s.sembly broke into motion. No thought was there now of retaliation or revenge; only, as at a sudden conflagration or a wreck, of individual safety and escape. The hallway was cleared as if by magic. Within the room the men and women jostled each other in the darkness, or jammed imprecating in the narrow doorway.

In a few seconds Ben was alone. Calmly he thrust the empty revolvers back into his pockets and followed leisurely into the hall. There the dim light revealed an empty s.p.a.ce; but here and there a lock turned gratingly, and from more than one room as he pa.s.sed came the sound of furniture being hastily drawn forward as a barricade.

No human being ever knew what occurred behind the locked door of Ben Blair's room at the hotel that night. Those hours were buried as deep as what took place in his mind during the months intervening between the coming of Florence Baker to the city and his own decision to follow her.

By nature a solitary, he fought his battles alone and in silence. That he never once touched his bed, the hotel maids could have testified the next morning. As to the decision that followed those sleepless hours, his own action gave a clue. He had left a call for an early train West, and at daylight a tap sounded on his door, while a voice announced the time.

"Yes," answered the guest; but he did not stir.

In a few minutes the tap was repeated more insistently. "You've only time to make your train if you hurry," warned the voice.

For a moment Blair did not answer. Then he said: "I have decided not to go."

CHAPTER XXV

OF WHAT AVAIL?

It was late next morning, almost noon in fact, when Florence Baker awoke; and even then she did not at once rise. A physical listlessness, very unusual to her, lay upon her like a weight. A year ago, by this time of day, she would have been ravenously hungry; but now she had a feeling that she could not have taken a mouthful of food had her life depended on it. The room, although it faced the west and was well ventilated, seemed hot and depressing. A breeze stirred the lace curtains at the window, but it was heated by the blocks of city pavements over which it had come. The girl involuntarily compared this awakening with that of a former life in what now seemed to her the very long ago. She remembered the light morning wind of the prairies, which, always fresh with the coolness of dew and of growing things, had drifted in at the tiny windows of the Baker ranch-house. She recalled the sweet scent of the buffalo gra.s.s with a vague sense of depression and irrevocable loss.

She turned restlessly beneath the covers, and in doing so her face came in contact with the moistened surface of her pillow. Propping herself up on her elbow, she looked curiously at the tell-tale bit of linen.

Obviously, she had been crying in her sleep; and for this there must have been a reason. Until that moment she had not thought of the previous night; but now the sudden recollection overwhelmed her. She was only a girl-woman--a child of nature, incapable of repression. Two great tears gathered in her soft brown eyes; with instinctive desire of concealment the fluffy head dropped to the pillow, and the sobs broke out afresh.

Minutes pa.s.sed; then her mother's hesitating steps approached the door.

"Florence," called a voice. "Florence, are you well?"

The dishevelled brown head lifted, but the girl made no motion to let her mother in.

"Yes--I am well," she echoed.