ly I'll take you out to walk. But Benton
is--"

"What?" she asked, as he paused.

"Benton will not last long," he finished, with a shrug of his shoulders.
"There'll be another one of these towns out along the line. We'll go
there. And then to Omaha."

More than once he had hinted at going on eastward.

"I'll find your mother--some day," he added, darkly. "If I didn't
believe that I'd do differently by you."

"Why?"

"I want her to see you as good as she left you. Then!... Are you ever
going to tell me how she gave me the slip?"

"She's dead, I told you."

"Allie, that's a lie. She's hiding in some trapper's cabin or among the
Indians. I should have hunted all over that country where you met my
caravan. But the scouts feared the Sioux. The Sioux! We had to run. And
so I never got the truth of your strange appearance on that trail."

Allie had learned that reiteration of the fact of her mother's death
only convinced Durade the more that she must be living. While he had
this hope she was safe so long as she obeyed him. A dark and sinister
meaning lay covert in his words. She doubted not that he had the nature
and the power to use her in order to be revenged upon her mother. That
passion and gambling appeared to be all for which he lived.

Suddenly he seized her fiercely in his arms. "You're the picture of
HER!"

Then slowly he released her and the corded red of his neck subsided. His
action had been that of a man robbed of all he loved, who remembered, in
a fury of violent longing, hate, and despair, what he had lost in life.
Allie was left alone.

She gazed around the room that she expected to be her prison for an
indefinite length of time. Walls and ceiling were sections, locking
together, and in some places she could see through the cracks. One side
opened upon a tent wall; the other into another room; the small glass
windows upon a house of canvas. When Allie put her hand against any part
of her room she found that it swayed and creaked. She understood then
that this house had been made in sections, transported to Benton by
train, and hurriedly thrown together.

She looked next at the newspapers. How strange to read news of the
building of the U. P. R.! The name of General Lodge, chief engineer,
made Allie tremble. He had predicted a fine future for Warren Neale. She
read that General Lodge now had a special train and that he contemplated
an inspection trip out as far as the rails were laid. She read t