crowd; then with
savage action of terrible passion he flung the glass at the quivering
form of the still living Mexican on the floor.

Helen felt herself slipping. All seemed to darken around her. She could
not see Dale, though she knew he held her. Then she fainted.

CHAPTER XXV

Las Vegas Carmichael was a product of his day.

The Pan Handle of Texas, the old Chisholm Trail along which were
driven the great cattle herds northward, Fort Dodge, where the cowboys
conflicted with the card-sharps--these hard places had left their marks
on Carmichael. To come from Texas was to come from fighting stock. And
a cowboy's life was strenuous, wild, violent, and generally brief. The
exceptions were the fortunate and the swiftest men with guns; and they
drifted from south to north and west, taking with them the reckless,
chivalrous, vitriolic spirit peculiar to their breed.

The pioneers and ranchers of the frontier would never have made the West
habitable had it not been for these wild cowboys, these hard-drinking,
hard-riding, hard-living rangers of the barrens, these easy, cool,
laconic, simple young men whose blood was tinged with fire and who
possessed a magnificent and terrible effrontery toward danger and death.

Las Vegas ran his horse from Widow Cass's cottage to Turner's saloon,
and the hoofs of the goaded steed crashed in the door. Las Vegas's
entrance was a leap. Then he stood still with the door ajar and the
horse pounding and snorting back. All the men in that saloon who saw the
entrance of Las Vegas knew what it portended. No thunderbolt could
have more quickly checked the drinking, gambling, talking crowd. They
recognized with kindred senses the nature of the man and his arrival.
For a second the blue-hazed room was perfectly quiet, then men breathed,
moved, rose, and suddenly caused a quick, sliding crash of chairs and
tables.

The cowboy's glittering eyes flashed to and fro, and then fixed on
Mulvey and his Mexican companion. That glance singled out these two, and
the sudden rush of nervous men proved it. Mulvey and the sheep-herder
were left alone in the center of the floor.

"Howdy, Jeff! Where's your boss?" asked Las Vegas. His voice was cool,
friendly; his manner was easy, natural; but the look of him was what
made Mulvey pale and the Mexican livid.

"Reckon he's home," replied Mulvey.

"Home? What's he call home now?"

"He's hangin' out hyar at Auchincloss's," replied Mulvey. His voice was
n