him to his neglected
work. These intervals of abstraction grew upon him until he would leave
off in the act of driving a spike.

And sometimes in these strange intervals he longed for his old friend,
brother, shadow--Larry Red King. He held to Larry's memory, though with
it always would return that low, strange roar of Benton's gold and lust
and blood and death. Neale did not understand the mystery of what he had
been through. It had been a phase of wildness never to be seen again by
his race. His ambition and effort, his fall, his dark siege with hell,
his friendship and loss, his agony and toil, his victory, were all
symbolical of the progress of a great movement. In his experience lay
hid all that development.

The coming of night was always a relief now, for with the end of
the day's work he need no longer fight his battle. It was a losing
battle--that he knew. Shunning everybody, he paced to and fro out on the
dark, windy desert, under the lonely, pitiless stars.

His longing to see Allie Lee grew upon him. While he had believed her
dead he had felt her spirit hovering near him, in every shadow, and
her voice whispered on the wind. She was alive now, but gone away,
far distant, over mountains and plains, out of his sight and reach,
somewhere to take up a new life alien to his. What would she do? Could
she bear, it? Never would she forget him--be faithless to his memory!
Yet she was young and her life had been hard. She might yield to that
cold Allison Lee's dictation. In happy surroundings her beauty and
sweetness would bring a crowd of lovers to her.

"But that's all--only natural," muttered Neale, in perplexity. "I
want her to forget--to be happy--to find a home.... For her to grow
old--alone! No! She must love some man--marry--"

And with the spoken words Neale's heart contracted. He knew that he lied
to himself. If she ever cared for another man, that would be the end of
Warren Neale. But then, he was ended, anyhow. Jealousy, strange, new,
horrible, added to Neale's other burdens, finished him. He had the
manhood to try to fight selfishness, but he had failed to subdue it; and
he had nothing left to fight his consuming love and hatred of life and
terrible loneliness and that fierce thing--jealousy. He had saved Allie
Lee! Why had he given her up? He had stained his hands with blood for
her sake. And that awful moment came back to him when, maddened by the
sting of a bullet, he had gloried in the cracking o