Larry took the news hard. He inclined to the idea that she had fallen again into the hands of the Indians. Nevertheless, he showed himself terribly bitter against men of the Fresno stamp, and in fact against all the outlaw, ruffianly, desperado cla.s.s so numerous in Benton.

Neale begged Larry to be cautious, to go slow, to ferret out things, and so help him, instead of making it harder to locate Allie through his impetuosity.

"Pard, I reckon Allie's done for," said Larry, gloomily.

"No--no! Larry, I feel she's alive--well. If she were dead or--or--well, wouldn't I know?" protested Neale.

But Larry was not convinced. He had seen the hard side of border life; he knew the odds against Allie.

"Reckon I'll look fer that Fresno," he said.

And deeper than before he plunged into Benton's wild life.

One evening Neale, on returning from work to his lodgings, found the cowboy there. In the dim light Larry looked strange. He had his gun-belt in his hands. Neale turned up the lamp.

"h.e.l.lo, Red! What's the matter? You look pale and sick," said Neale.

"They wanted to throw me out of thet dance ball," said Larry.

"Which one?"

"Stanton's."

"Well, DID they?" inquired Neale.

"Wal, I reckon not. I walked. An' some night I'll sh.o.r.e clean out thet hall."

Neale did not know what to make of Larry's appearance. The cowboy seemed to be relaxing. His lips, that had been tight, began to quiver, and his hands shook. Then he swung the heavy gun-belt with somber and serious air, as if he were undecided about leaving it off even when about to go to bed.

"Red, you've thrown a gun!" exclaimed Neale.

Larry glanced at him, and Neale sustained a shock.

"Sh.o.r.e," drawled Larry.

"By Heaven! I knew you would," declared Neale, excitedly, and he clenched his fist. "Did you--you kill some one?"

"Pard, I reckon he's daid," mused the cowboy. "I didn't look to see....

Fust gun I've throwed fer long.... It 'll come back now, sh.o.r.er 'n h.e.l.l!"

"What 'll come back?" queried Neale.

Larry did not answer this.

"Who'd you shoot?" Neale went on.

"Pard, I reckon it ain't my way to gab a lot," replied Larry.

"But you'll tell ME," insisted Neale, pa.s.sionately. He jerked the gun and belt from Larry, and threw them on the bed. "All right," drawled Larry, taking a deep breath. "I went into Stanton's hall the other night, an' a pretty girl made eyes at me. Wal, I sh.o.r.e asked her to dance. I reckon we'd been good pards if we'd been let alone. But there's a heap of fellers runnin' her an' some of them didn't cotton to me. One they called Cordy--he sh.o.r.e did get offensive. He's the four-flush, loud kind. I didn't want to make any trouble for the girl Ruby--thet's her name--so I was mighty good-natured.... I dropped in Stanton's to-day.

Ruby spotted me fust off, an' SHE asked me to dance. Sh.o.r.e I'm no dandy dancer, but I tried to learn. We was gettin' along powerful nice when in comes Cordy, hoppin' mad. He had a feller with him. An' both had been triflin' with red liquor. You oughter seen the crowd get back. Made me think Cordy an' his pard had blowed a lot round heah an' got a rep.

Wal, I knowed they was bluff. Jest mean, ugly four-flushers. Sh.o.r.e they didn't an' couldn't know nothin' of me. I reckon I was only thet long-legged, red-headed galoot from Texas. Anyhow, I was made to understand it might get hot sudden-like if I didn't clear out. I left it to the girl. An' some of them girls is full of h.e.l.l. Ruby jest stood there scornful an' sa.s.sy, with her haid leanin' to one side, her eyes half-shut, an' a little smile on her face. I'd call her more 'n h.e.l.l.

A nice girl gone wrong. Them kind sh.o.r.e is the dangerest.... Wal, she says: 'Reddy, are you goin' to let them run you out of heah? They haven't any strings on me.' So I slapped Cordy's face an' told him to shut up. He let out a roar an' got wild with his hands, like them four-flush fellers do who wants to look real bad. I says, pretty sharplike, 'Don't make any moves now!' An' the darned fool went fer his gun!... Wal, I caught his hand, twisted the gun away from him, poked him in the ribs with it, an' then shoved it back in his belt. He was crazy, but pretty pale an' surprised. Sh.o.r.e I acted sudden-like. Then I says, 'My festive gent, if you THINK of thet move again you'll be stiff before you start it.'... Guess he believed me."

Larry paused in his narrative, wiped his face, and moistened his lips.

Evidently he was considerably shaken.

"Well, go on," said Neale, impatiently.

"Thet was all right so far as it went," resumed Larry. "But the pard of Cordy's--he was half-drunk an' a big brag, anyhow. He took up Cordy's quarrel. He hollered so he stopped the music an' drove 'most everybody out of the hall. They was peepin' in at the door. But Ruby stayed.

There's a game kid, an' I'm goin' to see her to-morrow."

"You are not," declared Neale. "Hurry up. Finish your story."

"Wal, the big bloke swaggered all over me, an' I seen right off thet he didn't have sense enough to be turned. Then I got cold. I always used to.... He says, 'Are you goin' to keep away from Ruby?'

"An' I says, very polite, 'I reckon not.'

"Then he throws hisself in shape, like he meant to leap over a hoss, an'

hollers, 'Pull yer gun!'

"I asks, very innocent, 'What for, mister?'

"An' he bawls fer the crowd. ''Cause I'm a-goin' to bore you, an' I never kill a man till he goes fer his gun.'

"To thet I replies, more considerate: 'But it ain't fair. You'd better get the fust shot.'

"Then the fool hollers, 'Redhead!'

"Thet settled him. I leaps over QUICK, slugged him one--lefthanded. He staggered, but he didn't fall.... Then he straightens an' goes fer his gun."

Larry halted again. He looked as if he had been insulted, and a bitter irony sat upon his lips.

"I seen, when he dropped, thet he never got his hand to his gun at all.... Jest as I'd reckoned.... Wal, what made me sick was that my bullet went through him an' then some of them thin walls--an' hit a girl in another house. She's bad hurt.... They ought to have walls thet'd stop a bullet."

Neale heard the same narrative from the lips of Ancliffe, and it differed only in the essential details of the cowboy's consummate coolness. Ancliffe, who was an eye-witness of the encounter, declared that drink or pa.s.sion or bravado had no part in determining Larry's conduct. Ancliffe talked at length about the cowboy. Evidently he had been struck with Larry's singular manner and look and action. Ancliffe had all an Englishman's intelligent observing powers, and the conclusion he drew was that Larry had reacted to a situation familiar to him.

Neale took more credence in what Slingerland had told him at Medicine Bow. That night Hough and then many other acquaintances halted Neale to gossip about Larry Reel King.

The cowboy had been recognized by Texans visiting Benton. They were cattle barons and they did not speak freely of King until ready to depart from the town. Larry's right name was Fisher. He had a brother--a famous Texas outlaw called King Fisher. Larry had always been Red Fisher, and when he left Texas he was on the way to become as famous as his brother. Texas had never been too hot for Red until he killed a sheriff. He was a born gun-fighter, and was well known on all the ranches from the Pan Handle to the Rio Grande. He had many friends, he was a great horseman, a fine cowman. He had never been notorious for bad habits or ugly temper. Only he had an itch to throw a gun and he was unlucky in always running into trouble. Trouble gravitated to him. His red head was a target for abuse, and he was sensitive and dangerous because of that very thing. Texas, the land of gunfighters, had seen few who were equal to him in cool nerve and keen eye and swift hand.

Neale did not tell Larry what he had heard. The cowboy changed subtly, but not in his att.i.tude toward Neale. Benton and its wildness might have been his proper setting. So many rough and bad men, inspired by the time and place, essayed to be equal to Benton. But they lasted a day and were forgotten. The great compliment paid to Larry King was the change in the att.i.tude of this wild camp. He had been one among many--a stranger.

In time when the dance-halls grew quiet as he entered and the gambling-h.e.l.ls suspended their games. His fame increased as from lip to lip his story pa.s.sed, always gaining something. Jealousy, hatred, and fear grew with his fame. It was hinted that he was always seeking some man or men from California. He had been known to question new arrivals: "Might you-all happen to be from California? Have you ever heard of an outfit that made off with a girl out heah in the hills?"

Neale, not altogether in the interest of his search for Allie, became a friend and companion of Place Hough. Ancliffe sought him, also, and he was often in the haunts of these men. They did not take so readily to Larry King. The cowboy had become a sort of nervous factor in any community; his presence was not conducive to a comfortable hour. For Larry, though he still drawled his talk and sauntered around, looked the name the Texan visitors had left him. His flashing blue eyes, cold and intent and hard in his naming red face, his blazing red hair, his stalking form, and his gun swinging low--these characteristics were so striking as to make his presence always felt. Beauty Stanton insisted the cowboy had ruined her business and that she had a terror of him. But Neale doubted the former statement. All business, good and bad, grew in Benton. It was strange that as this attractive and notorious woman conceived a terror of Larry, she formed an infatuation for Neale. He would have been blind to it but for the dry humor of Place Hough, and the amiable indifference of Ancliffe, who had antic.i.p.ated a rival in Neale. Their talk, like most talk, drifted through Neale's ears. What did he care? Both Hough and Ancliffe began to loom large to Neale.

They wasted every day, every hour; and yet, underneath the one's cold, pa.s.sionless pursuit of gold, and the other's serene and gentle quest for effacement there was something finer left of other years. Benton was full of gamblers and broken men who had once been gentlemen. Neale met them often--gambled with them, watched them. He measured them all. They had given life up, but within him there was a continual struggle. He swore to himself, as he had to Larry, that life was hopeless without Allie Lee--yet there was never a sleeping or a waking hour that he gave up hope. The excitement and allurement of the dance-halls, though he admitted their power, were impossible for him; and he frequented them, as he went everywhere else, only in search of a possible clue.

Gambling, then, seemed the only excuse open to him for his presence in Benton's sordid halls. And he had to bear as best he could the baseness of his a.s.sociates; of course, women had free run of all the places in Benton.

At first Neale was flirted with and importuned. Then he was scorned.