Then the music started up again. Conversation was scarcely worth while during the dancing. Neale watched as before. Twice as he gazed at the whirling couples he caught the eyes of the girl Ruby bent upon him. They were expressive of pique, resentment, curiosity. Neale did not look that way any more. Besides, his attention was drawn elsewhere. Hough yelled in his ear to watch the fun. A fight had started. A strapping fellow wearing a belt containing gun and bowie-knife had jumped upon a table just as the music stopped. He was drunk. He looked like a young workman ambitious to be a desperado.

"Ladies an' gennelmen," he bawled, "I been--requested t' sing."

Yells and hoots answered him. He glared ferociously around, trying to pick out one of his insulters. Trouble was brewing. Something was thrown at him from behind and it struck him. He wheeled, unsteady upon his feet. Then several men, bareheaded and evidently attendants of the hall, made a rush for him. The table was upset. The would-be singer went down in a heap, and he was pounced upon, handled like a sack, and thrown out.

The crowd roared its glee.

"The worst of that is those fellows always come back drunk and ugly,"

said Stanton. "Then we all begin to run or dodge."

"Your men didn't lose time with that rowdy," remarked Neale.

"I've hired all kinds of men to keep order," she replied. "Laborers, ex-sheriffs, gunmen, bad men. The Irish are the best on the job. But they won't stick. I've got eight men here now, and they are a tough lot.

I'm scared to death of them. I believe they rob my guests. But what can I do? Without some aid I couldn't run the place. It'll be the death of me."

Neale did not doubt that. A shadow surely hovered over this strange woman, but he was surprised at the seriousness with which she spoke.

Evidently she tried to preserve order, to avert fights and bloodshed, so that licentiousness could go on unrestrained. Neale believed they must go hand in hand. He did not see how it would be possible for a place like this to last long. It could not. The life of the place brought out the worst in men. It created opportunities. Neale watched them pa.s.s, seeing the truth in the red eyes, the heavy lids, the open mouths, the look and gait and gesture. A wild frenzy had fastened upon their minds.

He found an added curiosity in studying the faces of Ancliffe and Hough.

The Englishman had run his race. Any place would suit him for the end.

Neale saw this and marveled at the man's ease and grace and amiability.

He reminded Neale of Larry Red King--the same cool, easy, careless air. Ancliffe would die game. Hough was not affected by this sort of debauched life any more than he would have been by any other kind.

He preyed on men. He looked on with cold, gray, expressionless face.

Possibly he, too, would find an end in Benton sooner or later.

These reflections, pa.s.sing swiftly, made Neale think of himself. What was true for others must be true for him. The presence of any of these persons--of Hough and Ancliffe, of himself, in Beauty Stanton's gaudy resort was sad proof of a disordered life.

Some one touched him, interrupted his thought.

"You've had trouble?", asked Stanton, who had turned from the others.

"Yes," he said.

"Well, we've all had that.... You seem young to me."

Hough turned to speak to Stanton. "Ruby's going to make trouble."

"No!" exclaimed the woman, with eyes lighting.

Neale then saw that the girl Ruby, with a short, bold-looking fellow who packed a gun, and several companions of both s.e.xes, had come in from the dance-hall and had taken up a position near him. Stanton went over to them. She drew Ruby aside and talked to her. The girl showed none of the pa.s.sion that had marked her manner a little while before. Presently Stanton returned.

"Ruby's got over her temper," she said, with evident relief, to Neale.

"She asked me to say that she apologized. It's just what I told you.

She'll fall madly in love with you for what you did.... She's of good family, Neale. She has a sister she talks much of, and a home she could go back to if she wasn't ashamed."

"That so?" replied Neale, thoughtfully. "Let me talk to her."

At a slight sign from Stanton, Ruby joined the group.

"Ruby, you've already introduced yourself to this gentleman, but not so nicely as you might have done," said Beauty.

"I'm sorry," replied Ruby. A certain wistfulness showed in her low tones.

"Maybe I was rude," said Neale. "I didn't intend to be. I couldn't dance with any one here--or anywhere...." Then he spoke to her in a lower tone. "But I'll tell you what I will do. I won a thousand dollars to-night. I'll give you half of it if you'll go home."

The girl shrank as if she had received a stab. Then she stiffened.

"Why don't you go home?" she retorted. "We're all going to h.e.l.l out here, and the gamest will get there soonest."

She glared at Neale an instant, white-faced and hard, and then, rejoining her companions, she led them away.

Beauty Stanton seemed to have received something of the check that had changed the girl Ruby.

"Gentlemen, you are my only friends in Benton. But these are business hours."

Presently she leaned toward Neale and whispered to him: "Boy, you're courting death. Some one--something has hurt you. But you're young....

GO HOME!"

Then she bade him good night and left the group.

He looked on in silence after that. And presently, when Ancliffe departed, he was glad to follow Hough into the street. There the same confusion held. A loud throng hurried by, as if bent on cramming into a few hours the life that would not last long.

Neale was interested to inquire more about Ancliffe. And the gambler replied that the Englishman had come from no one knew where; that he did not go to extremes in drinking or betting; that evidently he had become attached to Beauty Stanton; that surely he must be a ruined man of cla.s.s who had left all behind him, and had become like so many out there--a leaf in the storm.

"Stanton took to you," went on Hough. "I saw that.... And poor Ruby!

I'll tell you, Neale, I'm sorry for some of these women."

"Who wouldn't be?"

"Women of this cla.s.s are strange to you, Neale. But I've mixed with them for years. Of course Benton sets a pace no man ever saw before. Still, even the hardest and vilest of these scullions sometimes shows an amazing streak of good. And women like Ruby and Beauty Stanton, whose early surroundings must have been refined--they are beyond understanding. They will cut your heart out for a slight, and sacrifice their lives for sake of a courteous word. It was your manner that cut Ruby and won Beauty Stanton. They meet with neither coldness nor courtesy out here. It must be bitter as gall for a woman like Stanton to be treated as you treated her--with respect. Yet see how it got her."

"I didn't see anything in particular," replied Neale.

"You were too excited and disgusted with the whole scene," said Hough as they reached the roaring lights of the gambling-h.e.l.l. "Will you go in and play again? There are always open games."

"No, I guess not--unless you think--"

"Boy, I think nothing except that I liked your company and that I owed you a service. Good night."

Neale walked to his lodgings tired and thoughtful and moody. Behind him the roar lulled and swelled. It was three o'clock in the morning. He wondered when these night-hawks slept. He wondered where Larry was. As for himself, he found slumber not easily gained. Dawn was lighting the east when he at last fell asleep.

16

Neale slept until late the next day and awoke with the pang that a new day always gave him now. He arose slowly, gloomily, with the hateful consciousness that he had nothing to do. He had wanted to be alone, and now loneliness was bad for him.

"If I were half a man I'd get out of here, quick!" he muttered, in scorn. And he thought of the broken Englishman, serene and at ease, settled with himself. And he thought of the girl Ruby who had flung the taunt at him. Not for a long time would he forget that. Certainly this abandoned girl was not a coward. She was lost, but she was magnificent.

"I guess I'll leave Benton," he soliloquized. But the place, the wildness, fascinated him. "No! I guess I'll stay."