e 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 associates; of course, women had free run of all the places in
Benton.

At first Neale was flirted with and importuned. Then he was scorned.
Then he was let alone. Finally, as time went on, always courteous, even
considerate of the women who happened in his way, but blind and cold
to the meaning of their looks and words, he was at last respected and
admired.

There was always a game in the big gambling-place, and in fact the
greatest stakes were played for by gamblers like Hough, pitted against
each other. But most of the time was reserved for the fleecing of the
builders of the U. P. R., the wage-earners whose gold was the universal
lure and the magnet. Neale won money in those games in which he played
with Place Hough. His winnings he scattered or lost in games where he
was outpointed or cheated.

One day a number of Eastern capitalists visited Benton. The fame of the
town drew crowds of the curious and greedy. And many of these
transient visitors wanted to have their fling at the gambling-hells and
dancing-halls. There was a contagion in the wildness that affected even
the selfish. It would be something to remember and boast of when Benton
with its wild life should be a thing of the past.

Place Hough met old acquaintances among some St. Louis visitors, who
were out to see the road and Benton, and perhaps to find investments;
and he assured them blandly that their visit would not be memorable
unless he relieved them of their surplus cash. So a game with big stakes
was begun. Neale, with Hough and five of the visitors, made up the
table.

Eastern visitors worked upon Neale's mood, but he did not betray it. He
was always afraid