patrician, and her cheeks were tinted with the bloom of exquisite
fruit. Her gown was extremely decollete, revealing shoulders and arms
of perfect ivory beauty. She was dancing a waltz with a man in
elaborate evening dress, who had discarded orthodox sobriety for crude
embellishments. The string band in the orchestra was playing with
seductive skill.

"Who's that dame with the guy who guesses he's a parakeet?" he
demanded, without reply to the other's statement.

"You mean the feller with the sky blue lapels to his swallow-tails?"

"Sure. That's the guy."

"Maude. Chesapeake Maude. She's Pap Shaunbaum's piece. Quite a girl.
She's only been along since we quit here last spring. Pap's crazy on
her. Folks say he dopes out thousands a week on her. He brought her
from the East on a specially chartered vessel he had fitted up to suit
her fancy. They figger he's raised his pool here by fifty per cent
since she came."

"She plays the old game for him right here?"

"Sure."

Both men were absorbed in the girl's perfect grace of movement, as she
and her partner glided in and out through the dancing crowd. Her
attraction was immense even to these men, who were only onlookers of
the Leaping Horse riot.

Bill touched his friend's arm. He indicated the bar at the far end of
the hall.

"There's Pap. He's watching her. Gee, he's watching her."

A slim iron gray man, with a dark, keen face was standing beside one of
the pillars which supported the gallery above. He was dressed in
evening clothes of perfect cut, which displayed a clean-cut figure. He
was a handsome man of perhaps forty, without a sign of the dissipation
about his dark face that was to be seen in dozens of younger men about
him. As Dr. Bill once said of him, "One of hell's gentle-folk."

A better description of him could not have been found. Under a
well-nigh perfect exterior he concealed a depth of infamy beyond
description. A confidential police report to the authorities in the
East once contained this paragraph:

"Pap Shaunbaum has set up a big hotel in Leaping Horse. It will be
necessary to keep a 'special' at work watching him. We should like
authority to develop this further from time to time. His record both
here, and confidential from the States, leaves him more than
undesirable. Half the toughs in Leaping Horse are in his pay."

That was written five years before. Since then the "special" had been
developed till a large