"You"re no four-flush," he said. "You"re game. You mean to play this out to a finish.... But you"re no--no maggot like the most. You can think.
You"re afraid to talk to me."
"I"m afraid of no man. But you--you"re a fool--a sky-pilot. You"re--"
"The thing is--it"s not too late."
"It is too late!" she cried, with trembling lips.
Neale saw and felt his dominance over her.
"It is NEVER too late!" he responded, with all his force. "I can prove that."
She looked at him mutely. The ghost of another girl stood there instead of the wild Ruby of Benton.
"Pard, you"re drunk sh.o.r.e!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Larry, as he towered over them and gave his belt a hitch. The cowboy sensed events.
"I"ve annoyed you more than once," said Neale. "This"s the last.... So tell me the truth.... Could _I_ take you away from this life?"
"Take me?... How--man?"
"I--I don"t know. But somehow.... I"d hold it--as worthy--to save a girl like you--ANY girl--from h.e.l.l."
"But--how?" she faltered. The bitterness, the irony, the wrong done by her life, was not manifest now.
"You refused my plan with Larry.... Come, let me find a home for you--with good people."
"My G.o.d--he"s not in earnest!" gasped the girl to her women friends.
"I am in earnest," said Neale.
Then the tension of the girl relaxed. Her face showed a rebirth of soul.
"I can"t accept," she replied. If she thanked him it was with a look.
a.s.suredly her eyes had never before held that gaze for Neale. Then she left the room, and presently Stanton"s companion followed her. But Beauty Stanton remained. She appeared amazed, even dismayed.
Larry lighted his cigarette. "Sh.o.r.e I"d call thet a square kid," he said. "Neale, if you get any drunker you"ll lose all thet money."
"I"ll lose it anyhow," replied Neale, absent-mindedly.
"Wal, stake me right heah an" now."
At that Neale generously and still absent-mindedly delivered to Larry a handful of gold and notes that he did not count.
"h.e.l.l! I ain"t no bank," protested the cowboy.
Hough and Ancliffe joined them and with amus.e.m.e.nt watched Larry try to find pockets enough for his small fortune.
"Easy come, easy go in Benton," said the gambler, with a smile. Then his glance, alighting upon the quiet Stanton, grew a little puzzled.
"Beauty, what ails you?" he asked.
She was pale and her expressive eyes were fixed upon Neale. Hough"s words startled her.
"What ails me?... Place, I"ve had a forgetful moment--a happy one--and I"m deathly sick!"
Ancliffe stared in surprise. He took her literally.
Beauty Stanton looked at Neale again. "Will you come to see me?" she asked, with sweet directness.
"Thank you--no," replied Neale. He was annoyed. She had asked him that before, and he had coldly but courteously repelled what he thought were her advances. This time he was scarcely courteous.
The woman flushed. She appeared about to make a quick and pa.s.sionate reply, in anger and wounded pride, but she controlled the impulse. She left the room with Ancliffe.
"Neale, do you know Stanton is infatuated with you?" asked Hough, thoughtfully.
"Nonsense!" replied Neale.
"She is, though. These women can"t fool me. I told you days ago I suspected that. Now I"ll gamble on it. And you know how I play my cards."
"She saw me win a pile of money," said Neale, with scorn.
"I"ll bet you can"t make her take a dollar of it. Any amount you want and any odds."
Neale would not accept the wager. What was he talking about, anyway?
What was this drift of things? His mind did not seem clear. Perhaps he had drunk too much. The eyes of both Ruby and Beauty Stanton troubled him. What had he done to these women?
"Neale, you"re more than usually excited to-day," observed Hough.
"Probably was the run of luck. And then you spouted to the women." Neale confessed his offer to Ruby and Larry, and then his own impulse.
"Ruby called me a fool--crazy--a sky-pilot. Maybe I am."
"Sky-pilot! Well, the little devil!" laughed Hough. "I"ll gamble she called you that before you declared yourself."
"Before, yes. I tell you, Hough, I have crazy impulses. They"ve grown on me out here. They burst like lightning out of a clear sky. I would have done just that thing for Ruby.... Mad, you say?... Why, man, she"s not hopeless! There was something deep behind that impulse. Strange--not understandable! I"m at the mercy of every hour I spend here. Benton has got into my blood. And I see how Benton is a product of this great advance of progress--of civilization--the U. P. R. We"re only atoms in a force no one can understand.... Look at Reddy King. That cowboy was set--fixed like stone in his character. But Benton has called to the worst and wildest in him. He"ll do something terrible. Mark what I say.
We"ll all do something terrible. You, too, Place Hough, with all your cold, implacable control. The moment will come, born out of this abnormal time. I can"t explain, but I feel. There"s a work-shop in this h.e.l.l of Benton. Invisible, monstrous, and nameless!... Nameless like the new graves dug every day out here on the desert.... How few of the honest toilers dream of the spirit that is working on them. That Irishman, Shane, think of him. He fought while his brains oozed from a hole in his head; I saw, but I didn"t know then. I wanted to take his place. He said, no, he wasn"t hurt, and Casey would laugh at him. Aye, Casey would have laughed!.... They are men. There are thousands of them.
The U. P. R. goes on. It can"t be stopped. It has the momentum of a great nation pushing it on from behind.... And I, who have lost all I cared for, and you, who are a drone among the bees, and Ruby and Stanton with their kind, poor creatures sucked into the vortex; yes, and that mob of leeches, why we all are so stung by that nameless spirit that we are stirred beyond ourselves and dare both height and depth of impossible things."
"You must be drunk," said Place, gravely, "and yet what you say hits me hard. I"m a gambler. But sometimes--there are moments when I might be less or more. There"s mystery in the air. This Benton is a chaos. Those hairy toilers of the rails! I"ve watched them hammer and lift and dig and fight. By day they sweat and they bleed, they sing and joke and quarrel--and go on with the work. By night they are seized by the furies. They fight among themselves while being plundered and murdered by Benton"s wolves. Heroic by day--h.e.l.lish by night.... And so, spirit or what--they set the pace."
Next afternoon, when parasitic Benton awoke, it found the girl Ruby dead in her bed.
Her door had to be forced. She had not been murdered. She had destroyed much of the contents of a trunk. She had dressed herself in simple garments that no one in Benton had ever seen. It did not appear what means she had employed to take her life. She was only one of many. More than one girl of Benton"s throng had sought the same short road and cheated life of further pain.
When Neale heard about it, upon his return to Benton, late that afternoon, Ruby was in her grave. It suited him to walk out in the twilight and stand awhile in the silence beside the bare sandy mound. No stone--no mark. Another nameless grave! She had been a child once, with dancing eyes and smiles, loved by some one, surely, and perhaps mourned by some one living. The low hum of Benton"s awakening night life was borne faintly on the wind. The sand seeped; the coyotes wailed; and yet there was silence. Twilight lingered. Out on the desert the shadows deepened.
By some chance the grave of the scarlet woman adjoined that of a laborer who had been killed by a blast. Neale remembered the spot. He had walked out there before. A morbid fascination often drew him to view that ever-increasing row of nameless graves. As the workman had given his life to the road, so had the woman. Neale saw a significance in the parallel.
Neale returned to the town troubled in mind. He remembered the last look Ruby had given him. Had he awakened conscience in her? Upon questioning Hough, he learned that Ruby had absented herself from the dancing-hall and had denied herself to all on that last night of her life.