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.

There was to be one more incident relating to this poor girl before
Benton in its mad rush should forget her.

Neale divined the tragedy before it came to pass, but he was as
powerless to prevent it as any other spectator in Beauty Stanton's hall.

Larry King reacted in his own peculiar way to the news of Ruby's
suicide, and the rumored cause. He stalked into that dancing-hall, where
his voice stopped the music and the dancers.

"Come out heah!" he shouted to the pale Cordy.

And King spun the man into the center of the hall, where he called him
every vile name known to the camp, scorned and slapped and insulted
him, shamed him before that breathless crowd, goaded him at last into a
desperate reaching for his gun, and killed him as he drew it.

21

Benton slowed and quieted down a few days before pay-day, to get ready
for the great rush. Only the saloons and dance-halls and gambling-hells
were active, and even here the difference was manifest.

The railroad-yard was the busiest place in the town, for every train
brought huge loads of food, merchandise, and liquor, the transporting of
which taxed the teamsters to their utmost.

The day just before pay-day saw the beginning of a singular cycle
of change. Gangs of laborers rode in on the work-trains from the
grading-camps and the camps at the head of the rails, now miles west
of Benton. A rest of several days inevitably followed the visit of the
pay-car. It was difficult to keep enough men at work to feed and water
the teams, and there would have been sorry protection from the Indians
had not the troops been on duty. Pay-days were not off-days for the
soldiers.

Steady streams of men flowed toward Benton from east and west; and that
night the hum of Benton was merry, subdued, waiting.

Bright and early the town with its added thousands awoke. The mo