eivable
and mysterious passion of the fallen woman; she could become a flame,
a scourge, a fatal wind, a devastation. She was fire to man; to her own
sex, ice. Stanton reached her house and entered. Festivities in honor
of the last night of Benton were already riotously in order. She placed
herself well back in the shadow and watched the wide door.

"The first man who enters I'll give him this key!" she hissed.

She was unsteady on her feet. All her frame quivered. The lights in the
hall seemed to have a reddish tinge. She watched. Several men passed
out. Then a tall, stalking form appeared, entering.

A ball of fire in Stanton's breast leaped and burst. She had recognized
in that entering form the wildest, the most violent and the most
dangerous man in Benton--Larry Red King.

Stanton stepped forward and for the first time in the cowboy's presence
she did not experience that singular chill of gloom which he was wont to
inspire in her.

Her eyes gloated over King. Tall, lean, graceful, easy, with his flushed
ruddy face and his flashing blue eyes and the upstanding red hair, he
looked exactly what he was--a handsome red devil, fearing no man or
thing, hell-bent in his cool, reckless wildness.

He appeared to be half-drunk. Stanton was trained to read the faces of
men who entered there; and what she saw in King's added the last and
crowning throb of joy to her hate. If she had been given her pick of
the devils in Benton she would have selected this stalking, gun-packing
cowboy.

"Larry, I've a new girl here," she said. "Come."

"Evenin', Miss--Stanton," he drawled. He puffed slightly, after the
manner of men under the influence of liquor, and a wicked, boyish,
heated smile crossed his face.

She led him easily. But his heavy gun bumped against her, giving her
little cold shudders. The passage opened into a wide room, which in turn
opened into her dancing-hall. She saw strange, eager, dark faces
among the men present, but in her excitement she did not note them
particularly. She led Larry across the wide room, up a stairway to
another hall, and down this to the corner of an intersecting passageway.

"Take--this--key!" she whispered. Her hand shook. She felt herself to
be a black and monstrous creature. All of Benton seemed driving her.
She was another woman. This was her fling at a rotten world, her slap
in Neale's face. But she could not speak again; her lips failed. She
pointed to a door.

She waited long e