town, a place that
really is but that I never seen?"

CHAPTER XXXII

LUCY PLANS A COUNTER-ATTACK

One who has never lived in a frontier camp such as Ragtown may find it
difficult to analyze the characters of Lucy Dalles and Albert Drummond.

Less than a year before Ragtown had sprung up overnight, both had been
ordinarily respectable American citizens. Lucy's crowning fault had
been the lust for wealth. Added to this now was the fierce
determination to realize her ambition, coupled with the complete
breakdown of the moral fabric of her soul. She had been flirtatious
and pleasure-loving in San Francisco, but perhaps not really bad at
heart.

Drummond had been as decent as millions of other young men who pass for
that in good society. A bit wild, but a man who dealt squarely with
others sportsmanlike, and perhaps considered perfectly honest by
himself and all who knew him.

But all this the frontier town had changed. That little semidormant
spark of wickedness and criminality which is perhaps in every mother's
son and daughter of us had been fanned to a flame by the lawlessness of
Ragtown. The feverish night life, the chink of gold on gambling tables
that were seldom unoccupied, the continual drinking of intoxicants, the
doping and robbing of stiffs, which was practiced with studied,
businesslike regularity, the brawls and shooting scrapes--all these had
worked their insidious spell upon mentalities not forfeited by careful
early training and bed-rock character.

Drummond and Lucy Dalles were dangerous conspirators now, and took a
certain pride in the knowledge of it. They not only schemed for great
rewards, but for the love of it. Lust for wealth and for revenge, the
thrill of the dangerous and underhanded game they played, contempt for
those whose moral fabric was too strongly woven to break under the
strain of Ragtown, a certain vague satisfaction in their newly
discovered rascality--all these spurred them on to make the most of
their opportunities. One step in the direction they had taken leads so
easily to another, that now they had reached a point in their moral
lapse where they would stop at nothing--not even the taking of life--to
win that on which they had set their hearts.

From a night spent at poker, Al Drummond, weary and half dead for
sleep, reeled from the Dugout early on the morning when Hiram Hooker
set out to find the crazy prospector, Basil Filer. As he slouched
along the stre