Ancliffe had died to save
Allie Lee from the vile clutch of Benton; but to Beauty Stanton, the
woman of ill-fame, had been given the power. She gloried in it. Allie
Lee was safely hidden in her house. The iniquity of her establishment
furnished a haven for the body and life and soul of innocent Allie Lee.
Beauty Stanton marveled at the strange ways of life. If she could have
prayed, if she had ever dared to hope for some splendid duty, some
atonement to soften the dark, grim ending of her dark career, it
would not have been for so much as fate had now dealt to her. She was
overwhelmed with her opportunity.

All at once she reached the end of the street. On each side the wall
of lighted tents and houses ceased. Had she missed her way--gone down
a side street to the edge of the desert? No. The rows of lights behind
assured her this was the main street. Yet she was far from the railroad
station. The crowds of men hurried by, as always. Before her reached
a leveled space, dimly lighted, full of moving objects, and noise of
hammers and wagons, and harsh voices. Then suddenly she remembered.

Benton was being evacuated. Tents and houses were being taken down and
loaded on trains to be hauled to the next construction camp. Benton's
day was done! This was the last night. She had forgotten that the
proprietor of her hall, from whom she rented it, had told her that early
on the morrow he would take it down section by section, load it on
the train, and put it together again for her in the next town. In
forty-eight hours Benton would be a waste place of board floors, naked
frames, debris and sand, ready to be reclaimed by the desert. It would
be gone like a hideous nightmare, and no man would believe what had
happened there.

The gambling-hell where she had expected to find Neale had vanished,
in a few hours, as if by magic. Beauty Stanton retraced her steps. She
would find Neale in one of the other places--the Big Tent, perhaps.

This hall was unusually crowded, and the scene had the number of
men, though not the women and the hilarity and the gold, that was
characteristic of pay-day in Benton. All the tables in the gambling-room
were occupied.

Beauty Stanton stepped into this crowded room, her golden head
uncovered, white and rapt and strangely dark-eyed, with all the beauty
of her girlhood returned, and added to it that of a woman transformed,
supreme in her crowning hour. As a bad woman, infatuated and piqued, she
had fa