man at that. No matter what Larry said, Neale knew the shooting was on
his account. This deed made the cowboy a marked man. It changed him,
also, toward Neale, inasmuch as that he saw his wildness, was making
small Neale’s chances of returning to work. Larry never ceased
importuning Neale to go back to his job. After shooting Smith the cowboy
made one more eloquent appeal to Neale and then left for Cheyenne. Neale
followed him.
Cheyenne was just sobering up after its brief and tempestuous reign as
headquarters town, and though depleted and thin, it was now making a bid
for permanency. But the sting and wildness of life had departed with
the construction operations, and now Benton had become the hub of the
railway universe.
Neale boarded a train for Benton and watched with bitterness the
familiar landmarks he had learned to know so well while surveying the
line. He was no longer connected with the great project--no more a
necessary part of the great movement.
Beyond Medicine Bow the grass and the green failed and the immense train
of freight-cars and passenger-coaches, loaded to capacity, clattered on
into arid country. Gray and red, the drab and fiery colors of the desert
lent the ridges character--forbidding and barren.
From a car window Neale got his first glimpse of the wonderful
terminus city, and for once his old thrills returned. He recalled the
distance--seven hundred--no, six hundred and ninety-eight miles from
Omaha. So far westward was Benton.
It lay in the heart of barrenness, alkali, and desolation, on the face
of the windy desert, alive with dust-devils, sweeping along, yellow and
funnel-shaped--a huge blocked-out town, and set where no town could ever
live. Benton was prey for sun, wind, dust, drought, and the wind was
terribly and insupportably cold. No sage, no cedars, no grass, not even
a cactus-bush, nothing green or living to relieve the eye, which swept
across the gray and the white, through the dust, to the distant bare and
desolate hills of drab.
The hell that was reported to abide at Benton was in harmony with its
setting.
The immense train clattered and jolted to a stop. A roar of wind, a
cloud of powdery dust, a discordant and unceasing din of voices, came
through the open windows of the car. The heterogeneous mass of humanity
with which Neale had traveled jostled out, struggling with packs and
bags.
Neale, carrying his bag, stepped off into half a foot of dust. He saw a
disintegrated crowd of travelers that had just arrived, and of travelers
ready to depart--soldiers, Indians, Mexicans, Negroes, loafers,
merchants, tradesmen, laborers, an ever-changing and ever-remarkable
spectacle of humanity. He saw stage-coaches with hawkers bawling for
passengers bound to Salt Lake, Ogden, Montana, Idaho; he saw a wide
white street--white with dust where it was not thronged with moving
men and women, and lined by tents and canvas houses and clapboard
structures, together with the strangest conglomeration of painted and
printed signs that ever advertised anything in the world.
A woman, well clad, young, not uncomely, but with hungry eyes like those
of a hawk, accosted Neale. He drew away. In the din he had not heard
what she said. A boy likewise spoke to him; a greaser tried to take his
luggage; a man jostling him felt of his pocket; and as Neale walked on
he was leered at, importuned, jolted, accosted, and all but mobbed.
So this was Benton.
A pistol-shot pierced the din. Some one shouted. A wave of the crowd
indicated commotion somewhere; and then the action and noise went on
precisely as before. Neale crossed five intersecting streets; evidently
the wide street he was on must be the main one.
In that walk of five blocks he saw thousands of persons, but they were
not the soldiers who protected the line, nor the laborers who made the
road. These were the travelers, the business people, the stragglers,
the nondescripts, the parasites, the criminals, the desperadoes, and the
idlers--all who must by hook or crook live off the builders.
Neale was conscious of a sudden exhilaration. The spirit was still in
him. After all, his defeated ambition counted for nothing in the great
sum of this work. How many had failed! He thought of the nameless graves
already dotting the slopes along the line and already forgotten. It
would be something to live through the heyday of Benton.
Under a sign, “Hotel,” he entered a door in a clapboard house. The place
was as crude as an unfinished barn. Paying in advance for lodgings, he
went to the room shown him--a stall with a door and a bar, a cot and
a bench, a bowl and a pitcher. Through cracks he could see out over an
uneven stretch of tents and houses. Toward the edge of town stood a long
string of small tents and several huge ones, which might have been the
soldiers’ quarters.
Neale went out in search of a meal and entered the first restaurant. It
was merely a canvas house stretched over poles, with compartments at the
back. High wooden benches served as tables, low benches as seats. The
floor was sand. At one table sat a Mexican, an Irishman, and a Negro.
The Irishman was drunk. The Negro came to wait on Neale, and, receiving
an order, went to the kitchen. The Irishman sidled over to Neale.
“Say, did yez hear about Casey?” he inquired, in very friendly fashion.
“No, I didn’t,” replied Neale. He remembered Casey, the flagman, but
probably there were many Caseys in that camp.
“There wus a foight, out on the line, yisteddy,” went on the fellow,
“an’ the dom’ redskins chased the gang to the troop-train. Phwat do
you think? A bullet knocked Casey’s pipe out of his mouth, as he wus
runnin’, an’ b’gorra, Casey sthopped fer it an’ wus all shot up.”
“Is he dead?” inquired Neale.
“Not yit. No bullets can’t kill Casey.”
“Was his pipe a short, black one?”
“It wus thot.”
“And did Casey have it everlastingly in his mouth?”
“He shlept in it.”
Neale knew that particular Casey, and he examined this loquacious
Irishman more closely. He recognized him as Pat Shane, one of the
trio he had known during the survey in the hills two years ago. The
recognition was like a stab to Neale. Memory of the Wyoming hills--of
the lost Allie Lee--cut him to the quick. Shane had aged greatly. There
were scars on his face that Neale had not seen before.
“Mister, don’t I know yez?” leered Shane, studying Neale with bleary
eyes.
Neale did not care to be remembered. The waiter brought his dinner,
which turned out to be a poor one at a high price. After eating, Neale
went out and began to saunter along the walk. The sun had set and the
wind had gone down. There was no flying dust. The street was again
crowded with men, but nothing like it had been after the arrival of
the train. No one paid much attention to Neale. On that walk he counted
nineteen saloons, and probably some of the larger places were of like
nature, but not so wide open to the casual glance.
Neale strolled through the town from end to end, and across the railroad
outside the limits, to a high bank, where he sat down. The desert was
beautiful away to the west, with its dull, mottled hues backed by gold
and purple, with its sweep and heave and notched horizon. Near at hand
it seemed drab and bare. He watched a long train of flat and box cars
come in, and saw that every car swarmed with soldiers and laborers. The
train discharged its load of thousands, and steamed back for more.
Twilight fell. All hours were difficult for Neale, but twilight was the
most unendurable, for it had been the hour Allie Lee loved best, and
during which she and Neale had walked hand in hand along the brook, back
there in the lovely and beautiful valley in the hills. Neale could not
sit still long; he could not rest, nor sleep well, nor work, nor indeed
be of any use to himself or to any one, and all because he was haunted
and driven by the memory of Allie Lee. And at such quiet hours as this,
in the midst of the turmoil he had sought for weeks, a sadness filled
his soul, and an eternal remorse. The love that had changed him and the
life that had failed him seemed utterly misrelated.
To and fro he paced on the bare ridge while twilight shadowed. A star
twinkled in the west, a night wind began to seep the sand. The desert,
vast, hidden, mysterious, yet so free and untrammeled, darkened.
Lights began to flash up along the streets of Benton, and presently
Neale became aware of a low and mounting hum, like a first stir of angry
bees.
The loud and challenging strains of a band drew Neale toward the center
of the main street, where men were pouring into a big tent.
He halted outside and watched. This strident, businesslike, quick-step
music and the sight of the men and women attracted thereby made Neale
realize that Benton had arisen in a day and would die out in a night;
its life would be swift, vile, and deadly.
When the band ceased a sudden roar came from inside the big tent, a
commingling of the rough voices of men and the humming of wheels, the
clinking of glasses and gold, the rattling of dice, the hoarse call of
a dealer, the shuffling of feet--a roar pierced now and then by the
shrill, vacant, soundless laugh of a woman.
It was that last sound which almost turned Neale away from the door.
He shunned women. But this place fascinated him. He went in under the
flaming lamps.
The place was crowded--a huge tent stretched over a framework of wood,
and it was full of people, din, smoke, movement. The floor was good
planking covered with sand. Walking was possible only round the narrow
aisles between groups at tables.
Neale’s sauntering brought him to the bar. It had to him a familiar
look, and afterward he learned that it had been brought complete
from St. Louis, where he had seen it in a saloon. It seemed a huge,
glittering, magnificent monstrosity in that coarse, bare setting. Wide
mirrors, glistening bottles, paintings of nude women, row after row of
polished glasses, a brawny, villainous barkeeper, with three attendants,
all working fast, a line of rough, hoarse men five deep before the
counter--all these things constituted a scene that had the aspects of
a city and yet was redolent with an atmosphere no city ever knew.
The drinkers were not all rough men. There were elegant black-hatted,
frock-coated men of leisure in that line--not directors and
commissioners and traveling guests of the U. P. R., but gentlemen of
chance. Gamblers!
The band now began a different strain of dance music. Neale slowly
worked his way around. At the end of the big tent a wide door opened
into another big room--a dance-hall, full of dancers.
Neale had seen nothing like this in the other construction camps.
A ball was in progress. Just now it was merry, excited, lively. Neale
got inside and behind the row of crowded benches; he stood up against
a post to watch. Probably two-hundred people were in the hall, most
of them sitting. How singular, it struck Neale, to see good-looking,
bare-armed and bare-necked young women dancing there, and dancing well!
There were other women--painted, hollow-eyed--sad wrecks of womanhood.
The male dancers were young men, as years counted, mostly unfamiliar
with the rhythmic motion of feet to a tune, and they bore the rough
stamp of soldiers and laborers. But there were others, as there had been
before the bar, who wore their clothes differently, who had a different
poise and swing--young men, like Neale, whose earlier years had known
some of the graces of society. They did not belong there; the young
women did not belong there. The place seemed unreal. This was a merry
scene, apparently with little sign, at that moment, of what it actually
meant. Neale sensed its undercurrent.
He left the dance-hall. Of the gambling games, he liked best both to
watch and to play poker. It had interest for him. The winning or losing
of money was not of great moment. Poker was not all chance or luck, such
as the roll of a ball, the turn of a card, or the facing up of dice.
Presently he became one of an interested group round a table watching
four men play poker.
One, a gambler in black, immaculate in contrast to his companions, had a
white, hard, expressionless face, with eyes of steel and thin lips. His
hands were wonderful. Probably they never saw the sunlight, certainly no
labor. They were as swift as light, too swift for the glance of an eye.
But when he dealt the cards he was slow, careful, deliberate. The
stakes were gold, and the largest heap lay in front of him. One of his
opponents was a giant of a fellow, young, with hulking shoulders, heated
face, and broken nose--a desperado if Neale ever saw one. The other two
players called this strapping brute Fresno. The little man with a sallow
face like a wolf was evidently too intent on the game to look up. He
appeared to be losing. Beside his small pile of gold stood an empty
tumbler. The other and last player was a huge, bull-necked man whom
Neale had seen before. It was difficult to place him, but after studying
the red cheeks and heavy, drooping mustache, and hearing the loud voice,
he recognized him as a boss of graders--a head boss. Presently the
sallow-faced player called him Mull, and then Neale remembered him well.
Several of the watchers round this table lounged away, leaving a better
vantage-place for Neale.
“May I sit in the game?” he inquired, during a deal.
“Certainly,” replied the gambler.
“Naw. We gotta nough,” said the sallow man, and he glanced from Neale to
the gambler as if he suspected them. Gamblers often worked in pairs.
“I just came to Benton,” added Neale, reading the man’s thought. “I
never saw the gentleman in black before.”
“What th’ hell!” rumbled Mull, grabbing up his cards.
Fresno leered.
The gambler leaned back and his swift white hands flashed. Neale
believed he had a derringer up each sleeve. A wrong word now would
precipitate a fight.
“Excuse me,” said Neale, hastily. “I don’t want to make trouble. I just
said I never saw this gentleman before.”
“Nor I him,” returned the gambler, courteously. “My name is Place Hough
and my word is not doubted.”
Neale had heard of this famous Mississippi River gambler. So, evidently,
had the other three players. The game proceeded, and when it came to
Hough’s deal Mull bet hard and lost all. His big, hairy hands shook. He
looked at Fresno and the other fellow, but not at Hough.
“I’m broke,” he said, gruffly, and got up from the bench.
He strode past Hough, and behind him; then as if suddenly,
instinctively, answering to fury, he whipped out a gun.
Neale, just as instinctively, grasped the rising hand.
“Hold on, there!” he called. “Would you shoot a man in the back?”
And Neale, whose grip was powerful, caused the other to drop the gun.
Neale kicked it aside. Fresno got up.
“Whar’s your head, Mull?” he growled. “Git out of this!”
Attention had been attracted to Mull. Some one picked up the gun. The
sallow-faced man rose, holding out his hand for it. Hough did not even
turn around.
“I was goin’ to hold him up,” said Mull. He glared fiercely at Neale,
wrenched his hand free, and with his comrades disappeared in the crowd.
The gambler rose and shook down his sleeves. The action convinced Neale
that he had held a little gun in each hand. “I saw him draw,” he said.
“You saved his life!... Nevertheless, I appreciate your action. My name
is Place Hough. Will you drink with me?”
“Sure.... My name is Neale.”
They approached the bar and drank together.
“A railroad man, I take it?” asked Hough.
“I was. I’m foot-loose now.”
A fleeting smile crossed the gambler’s face. “Benton is bad enough,
without you being foot-loose.”
“All these camps are tough,” replied Neale.
“I was in North Platte, Kearney, Cheyenne, and Medicine Bow during their
rise,” said Hough. “They were tough. But they were not Benton. And the
next camp west, which will be the last--it will be Roaring Hell. What
will be its name?”
“Why is Benton worse?” inquired Neale.
“The big work is well under way now, with a tremendous push from behind.
There are three men for every man’s work. That lays off two men each
day. Drunk or dead. The place is wild--far off. There’s gold--hundreds
of thousands of dollars in gold dumped off the trains. Benton has had
one payday. That day was the sight of my life!... Then... there are
women.”
“I saw a few in the dance-hall,” replied Neale.
“Then you haven’t looked in at Stanton’s?”
“Who’s he?”
“Stanton is not a man,” replied Hough.
Neale glanced inquiringly over his glass.
“Beauty Stanton, they call her,” went on Hough. “I saw her in New
Orleans years ago when she was a very young woman--notorious then. She
had the beauty and she led the life... did Beauty Stanton.”
Neale made no comment, and Hough, turning to pay for the drinks, was
accosted by several men. They wanted to play poker.
“Gentlemen, I hate to take your money,” he said. “But I never refuse to
sit in a game. Neale, will you join us?”
They found a table just vacated. Neale took two of the three strangers
to be prosperous merchants or ranchers from the Missouri country. The
third was a gambler by profession. Neale found himself in unusually
sharp company. He did not have a great deal of money. So in order to
keep clear-headed he did not drink. And he began to win, not by reason
of excellent judgment, but because he was lucky. He had good cards all
the time, and part of the time very strong ones. It struck him presently
that these remarkable hands came during Hough’s deal, and he wondered if
the gambler was deliberately manipulating the cards to his advantage. At
any rate, he won hundreds of dollars.
“Mr. Neale, do you always hold such cards?” asked one of the men.
“Why, sure,” replied Neale. He could not help being excited and elated.
“Well, he can’t be beat,” said the other.
“Lucky at cards, unlucky in love,” remarked the third of the trio. “I
pass.”
Hough was looking straight at Neale when this last remark was made.
And Neale suddenly lost his smile, his flush. The gambler dropped his
glance.
“Play the game and don’t get personal in your remarks,” he said. “This
is poker.”
Neale continued to win, but his excitement did not return, nor his
elation. A random word from a strange man had power to sting him.
Unlucky in love! Alas! What was luck, gold--anything to him any more!
By the time the game was ended Neale felt a friendly interest in Hough
that was difficult to define or explain; and the conviction gained upon
him that the gambler had deliberately dealt him those remarkable cards.
“Let’s see,” said Hough, consulting his watch. “Twelve o’clock!
Stanton’s will be humming. We’ll go in.”
Neale did not want to show his reluctance, yet he did hot know just what
to say. After all, he was drifting. So he went.
It seemed that all the visitors who had been in the gambling-hall had
gravitated to this other dance-hall. The entrance appeared to be through
a hotel. At least Neale saw the hotel sign. The building was not made
of canvas, but painted wood in sections, like the scenes of a stage. Men
were coming and going; the hum of music and gaiety came from the rear;
there were rugs, pictures, chairs; this place, whatever its nature, made
pretensions. Neale did not see any bar.
They entered a big room full of people, apparently doing nothing. From
the opposite side, where the dance-hall opened, came a hum that seemed
at once music and discordance, gaiety and wildness, with a strange,
carrying undertone raw and violent.
Hough led Neale across the room to where he could look into the
dance-hall.
Neale saw a mad, colorful flash and whirl of dancers.
Hough whispered in Neale’s ear: “Stanton throws the drunks out of here.”
No, it appeared the dancers were not drunk with liquor. But there was
evidence of other drunkenness than that of the bottle. The floor was
crowded. Looking at the mass, Neale could only see whirling, heated
faces, white, clinging arms, forms swaying round and round, a wild
rhythm without grace, a dance in which music played no real part, where
men and women were lost. Neale had never seen a sight like that. He was
stunned. There were no souls here. Only beasts of men, and women for
whom there was no name. If death stalked in that camp, as Hough had
intimated, and hell was there, then the two could not meet too soon.
If the mass and the spirit and the sense of the scene dismayed Neale,
the living beings, the creatures, the women--for the men were beyond
him--confounded him with pity, consternation, and stinging regret. He
had loved two women--his mother and Allie--so well that he ought to love
all women because they were of the same sex. Yet how impossible! Had
these creatures any sex? Yet they were--at least many were--young, gay,
pretty, wild, full of life. They had swift suppleness, smiles, flashing
eyes, a look at once intent and yet vacant. But few onlookers would have
noticed that. The eyes for which the dance was meant saw the mad whirl,
the bare flesh, the brazen glances, the close embrace.
The music ended, the dancers stopped, the shuffling ceased. There were
no seats unoccupied, so the dancers walked around or formed in groups.
“Well, I see Ruby has spotted you,” observed Hough.
Neale did not gather exactly what the gambler meant, yet he associated
the remark with a girl dressed in red who had paused at the door with
others and looked directly at Neale. At that moment some one engaged
Hough’s attention.
The girl would have been striking in any company. Neale thought her
neither beautiful nor pretty, but he kept on looking. Her arms were
bare, her dress cut very low. Her face offered vivid contrast to the
carmine on her lips. It was a round, soft face, with narrow eyes, dark,
seductive, bold. She tilted her head to one side and suddenly smiled at
Neale. It startled him. It was a smile with the shock of a bullet. It
held Neale, so that when she crossed to him he could not move. He felt
rather than saw Hough return to his side. The girl took hold of the
lapels of Neale’s coat. She looked up. Her eyes were dark, with what
seemed red shadows deep in them. She had white teeth. The carmined
lips curled in a smile--a smile, impossible to believe, of youth and
sweetness, that disclosed a dimple in her cheek. She was pretty. She was
holding him, pulling him a little toward her.
“I like you!” she exclaimed.
The suddenness of the incident, the impossibility of what was happening,
made Neale dumb. He felt her, saw her as he were in a dream. Her face
possessed a peculiar fascination. The sleepy, seductive eyes; the
provoking half-smile, teasing, alluring; the red lips, full and young
through the carmine paint; all of her seemed to breathe a different kind
of a power than he had ever before experienced--unspiritual, elemental,
strong as some heady wine. She represented youth, health, beauty,
terribly linked with evil wisdom, and a corrupt and irresistible power,
possessing a base and mysterious affinity for man.
The breath and the charm and the pestilence of her passed over Neale
like fire.
“Sweetheart, will you dance with me?” she asked, with her head tilted to
one side and her half-open veiled eyes on his.
“No,” replied Neale. He put her from him, gently but coldly.
She showed slow surprise. “Why not? Can’t you dance? You don’t look like
a gawk.”
“Yes, I can dance,” replied Neale.
“Then will you dance with me?” she retorted, and red spots showed
through the white on her cheeks.
“I told you no,” replied Neale.
His reply transported her into a sudden fury. She swung her hand
viciously. Hough caught it, saving Neale from a sounding slap in the
face.
“Ruby, don’t lose your temper,” remonstrated the gambler.
“He insulted me!” she cried, passionately.
“He did not. Ruby, you’re spoiled--”
“Spoiled--hell!... Didn’t he look at me, flirt with me? That’s why I
asked him to dance. Then he insulted me. I’ll make Cordy shoot him up
for it.”
“No, you won’t,” replied Hough, and he pulled her toward his companion,
a tall woman with golden hair. “Stanton, shut her up.”
The woman addressed spoke a few words in Ruby’s ear. Then the girl
flounced away. But she spoke with withering scorn to Neale.
“What in hell did you come in here for, you big handsome stiff?”
With that she was lost amid her mirthful companions.
Hough turned to Neale. “The girl’s a favorite. You ruffled her vanity...
you see. That’s Benton. If you had happened to be alone you would have
had gunplay. Be careful after this.”
“But I didn’t flirt with her,” protested Neale. “I only looked at
her--curiously, of course. And I said I wouldn’t dance.”
Hough laughed. “You’re young in Benton. Neale, let me introduce to you
the lady who saved you from some inconvenience.... Miss Stanton--Mr.
Neale.”