ible--they had no substance
for her. They made her sick with rage and revolt at the moment, but they
had no power, no taint, no endurance. They were evil passing winds.

As she saw Durade's retrogression, so she saw the changes in all about
him. His winnings were large and his strange passion for play increased
with them. The free gold that enriched Fresno and Mull and Andy
only augmented their native ferocity. There were also Durade's other
helpers--Black, his swarthy doorkeeper, a pallid fellow called Dayss,
who always glanced behind him, and Grist, a short, lame, bullet-headed,
silent man--all of them under the spell of the green cloth.

With Durade's success had come the craze for bigger stakes, and these
could only be played for with other gamblers. So the black-frocked,
cold-faced sharps became frequent visitors at Durade's. Jones, the
professional, won on that second visit--a fatal winning for him. Allie
saw the giant Fresno suddenly fling himself upon Jones and bear him to
the floor. Then Allie fled to her room. But she heard curses--a shot--a
groan--Durade's loud voice proclaiming that the gambler had cheated--and
then the scraping of a heavy body being dragged out.

This murder horrified Allie, yet sharpened her senses. Providence had
protected her. Durade had grown rich--wild--vain--mad to pit himself
against the coolest and most skilful gamblers in Benton--and therefore
his end was imminent. Allie lay in the dark, listening to Benton's
strange wailing roar, sad, yet hideous, and out of what she had seen and
heard, and from the mournful message on the night wind, she realized how
closely associated were gold and evil and men, and how inevitably they
must lead to lawlessness and to bloodshed and to death.

23

Neale conceived an idea that he was in line for the long-looked-for
promotion. Neither the chief nor Baxter gave any suggestion of a hint
of such possibility, but more and more, as the work rapidly progressed,
Neale had been intrusted with important inspections.

Long since he had discovered his talent for difficult engineering
problems, and with experience had come confidence in his powers. He
had been sent from place to place, in each case with favorable results.
General Lodge consulted him, Baxter relied upon him, the young engineers
learned from him. And when Baxter and his assistants were sent on ahead
into the hills Neale had an enormous amount of work on his hands. Still
he usually man