by Zane Grey
They walked through heavy sand and dust, then along a boardwalk, to turn wide before what was apparently a new brick structure. But a closer view showed it to be painted wood. The place rang hollow with a sound of hammers. It looked well, but did not feel stable underfoot. Durade led her through two large hall-like rooms into a small one, light and newly furnished.
“The best Benton afforded,” said Durade, waving his hand. “You’ll be comfortable. There are books . . . newspapers . . . Here’s a door opening into a little room. It’s dark, but there’s a bathtub, water, towels, soap . . . and you’ve a mirror . . . Allie, this is luxury to what you’ve had to put up with.”
“It is, indeed,” she replied, removing her veil, and then the cloak and bonnet. “But . . . am I to be shut up here?”
“Yes. Sometimes at night, early, I’ll take you out to walk. But Benton is . . .”
“What?” she asked as he paused.
“Benton will not last long,” he finished, with a shrug of his shoulders. “There’ll be another one of these towns out along the line. We’ll go there. And then to Omaha.” More than once he had hinted at going on eastward. “I’ll find your mother . . . someday,” he added darkly. “If I didn’t believe that, I’d do differently by you.”
“Why?”
“I want her to see you as good as she left you. Then . . . Are you ever going to tell me how she gave me the slip?”
“She’s dead, I told you.”
“Allie, that’s a lie. She’s hiding in some trapper’s cabin or among the Indians. I should have hunted all over that country where you met my caravan. But the scouts feared the Sioux. The Sioux! We had to run. And so I never got the truth of your strange appearance on that trail.”
Allie had learned that reiteration of the fact of her mother’s death only convinced Durade the more that she was living. While he had this hope, she was safe as long as she obeyed him. A dark and sinister meaning lay covert in his words. She doubted not that he had the nature and the power to use her to be revenged upon her mother. That and gambling appeared to be all for which he lived.
Suddenly he seized her fiercely in his arms. “You’re the picture of her!” Then slowly he released her and the corded red of his neck subsided. His action had been that of a man robbed of all he loved, who remembered in a fury of violent longing, hate, and despair, and who found that the mother’s daughter did not suffice.
Allie was left alone. She gazed around the room that she expected to be her prison for an indefinite time. Walls and ceiling were sections locking together, and in some places she could see through the cracks between. One side opened upon a tent wall, the other into a house of canvas. When Allie put her hand against any part of her room, she found that it swayed and creaked. She grasped then that this house had been made in sections, transported to Benton by train, and hurriedly thrown together.
She looked next at the newspapers. How strange to read news of the building of the U.P.R.! The name of General Lodge, chief engineer, made Allie tremble. He had predicted a fine future for Warren Neale. She read that General Lodge now had a special train and contemplated an inspection trip out as far as the rails were laid. She read that the Pacific Construction Company was reported to be crossing the Sierra Nevada—that there were ten thousand Chinamen at work on the road—and the day when East and West were to meet was sure to come. Eagerly she searched, her heart thumping, for the name of Neale, but she did not find it. She read in one paper that the Sioux were active along the line between Medicine Bow and Kearney. Every day the workmen would sight a band of Indians, and, growing accustomed to the sight, they would become careless, and so many lost their lives. A massacre had occurred out in the western end of the road where the construction gangs were working. Day after day the Sioux had prowled around, without attacking, until the hardy and reckless laborers lost fear and caution. Then, one day, a grading gang working a mile from the troops was set upon by a band of Sioux and, before they could raise a gun in defense, were killed and scalped in their tracks.
Allie read on. She devoured the news. Manifestly the world was awakening to the reality of the great railroad. How glad Neale must be! Always he had believed in the greatness and the reality of the U.P.R. Somewhere along that line he was working—perhaps every night he rode into Benton. Her emotions overwhelmed her as she thought of him so near, and for a moment she could not see the print. He was working hard, because he meant to earn an important place someday, and of course he probably thought she was dead. Strangest of all was that she did live! She breathed—she was well, strong, palpitating, right there in Benton, reading about the building of the railroad—and all the time Neale and his friends believed her dead. It was terrible. She wondered with a pang what her disappearance would mean to Neale. Once he had said his life would be over if he lost her. She shivered. What could hold him there in Benton if he no longer had her to think of?
Suddenly her eye rested on a printed letter, familiar somehow, startling her. Allison Lee!
“Allison Lee,” she breathed very low. “My father!” And she read that Allison Lee, commissioner of the U.P.R., and contractor for big jobs along the line, would shortly lease his home in Council Bluffs, to meet some of the directors in New York City in the interests of the railroad. “If Durade and he ever meet,” she whispered. “They will meet.”
And in that portent she saw loom on the gambler’s horizon another cloud. In his egotism and passion and despair he was risking more than he knew. He could not hope to keep her a prisoner this way for very long. Allie felt again the gathering surety of an approaching climax in this dire situation.
“My danger is . . . he may harm me . . . use me for his gambling lure . . . or kill me,” she murmured. And her prevision of salvation contended with the dark menace of the hour. But as always she rose beyond hopelessness. Her thought was interrupted here by the entrance of the mute, Stitt, who brought her a few effects left at the former place, and then a tray holding her dinner.
That day passed swiftly.
Darkness came, bringing a strange augmentation of the sounds with which Allie had become familiar. She did not use her lamp, for she had become accustomed to being without one, and she seemed to be afraid of a light. Only a dim, pale glow came in at her window. But the sound of Benton—that grew as night fell. She had heard something similar in the gold camps where Durade had lingered; this was at once the same and yet vastly different. She lay listening and thinking. The low roar was that of human beings, and any one of its many constituents seemed difficult to distinguish. Voices—footsteps—movements—music—mirth—dancing—clink of gold and glasses—the high, shrill laugh of a woman—the loud, vacant laugh of a man—and the gust of dust-laden wind sweeping overhead—all these blended in the mysterious sound that seemed the strife and agony of Benton. For hours it kept her awake, and, when she did fall asleep, it was so late in the night that when she awakened next day, she thought it must be noon or later.
That day passed and another night came. It brought a change in that the house she was in became alive and roaring. Durade had gotten his establishment under way. Allie lay in sleepless suspense. Rough, noisy, thick-voiced men appeared to be close to her, in one of the rooms adjoining hers, and outside in the tents. The room, however, into which hers opened was not entered. Dawn had come before Allie fell asleep.
Thus several days passed during which she saw only the attendant Stitt, and Allie began to feel a strain that she believed would be harder on her than direct contact with Benton life. While she was shut up there, what chance had she of ever seeing Neale or Reddy if they were in Benton? Durade had said he would take her outdoors occasionally, but she had not seen him. Restlessness and gloom began to weigh upon her, and she was in continual conflict with herself. She began to think of disobeying Durade. Something would happen to him sooner or later, and in that event she would be no better off than if she tried to escape. Whatever the evil of Benton, it was possible that she might not fall into evil hands. An
ything would be better than her confinement here, with no sight of the sun, no one to speak to, nothing to do but brood and fight her fancies and doubts, and listen to that ceaseless, soft, mysterious din. Allie believed she could not long bear that. Now and then occurred a change in her mind that frightened her. It was a regurgitation of the old tide of somber horror that had been her madness after the murder of her mother.
She was working herself into a frenzied state when unexpectedly Durade came to her room. At first glance she hardly knew him. He looked thin and worn; his eyes glittered; his hands shook, and the strange radiance that emanated from him when his passion for gambling had been crowned with success shone stronger than Allie had ever seen it.
“Allie, the time’s come,” he said. He seemed to be looking back into the past.
“What . . . time?” she asked.
“For you to do for me . . . as your mother did before you.”
“I . . . I . . . don’t understand.”
“Make yourself beautiful!”
“Beautiful? How?” Allie had an inkling of what he meant, but all her mind repudiated the thought.
Durade laughed. He had indeed changed. He seemed a weaker man. Benton was acting powerfully upon him. “How little vanity you have! Allie, you are beautiful now . . . any time. You’ll be so when you’re old or dead . . . I mean for you to show more of your beauty . . . Let down your hair. Braid it a little. Put on a white waist. Open it at the neck . . . You remember how your mother did.”
Allie stared at him, slowly paling. She could not speak. It had come—what she had dreaded.
“You look like a ghost!” Durade exclaimed. “Like she did . . . years ago when I told her . . . this . . . the first time!”
“You mean to use me . . . as you used her?” faltered Allie.
“Yes. But you needn’t be afraid or sick. You’ll only be looked at. I’ll always be with you.”
“What am I to do?”
“Be ready in the afternoon when I call you. You can serve drinks . . . and be looked at.”
“I know now why my mother hated you!” burst out Allie. For the first time she too hated him, and felt the stronger for it.
“She’ll pay for that hate, and so will you,” he replied passionately. His physical reaction seemed involuntary—a shrinking as if from a stab. Then followed swift violence. He struck Allie across the mouth with his open hand, a hard blow, almost upsetting her. “Don’t let me hear that from you again!” he continued furiously. With that he left the room, closing but not barring the door.
Allie put her hand to her lips. They were bleeding. She tasted her own warm and salty blood. Then there was born in her something that burned and throbbed and swelled and drove out all that had been kind and pitying toward this man, and all her vacillations. That blow was what she had needed. There was a certainty now as to her peril, just as there was imperious call for her to help herself and save herself.
“Neale or Reddy will visit Durade’s,” she soliloquized, with her pulses beating fast. “And if they do not come . . . someone will come. Some man I can trust.”
Therefore she welcomed Durade’s intention. She paid more heed to the brushing and arranging of her hair, and to her appearance than ever before in her life. The white of her throat and neck mantled red with a blush of shame as she exposed them, intentionally, for the gaze of men. Her beauty was to be used as had been her mother’s. And she prayed that if she must submit to bold gaze and indignity from many roisterers that there might be one, attracted as the others, who would see through her beauty to her soul, and know that she was not what she seemed.
She had not long to sit down and meditate and wait. She heard the heavy steps and voices of men entering the room next to hers. Presently Durade called her. With a beating heart Allie rose and pushed open the door. From that moment there would never be any more monotony for her—nor peace—nor safety. Yet she was glad, and faced the room bravely, for Neale or Reddy might be there.
Durade had furnished this larger place luxuriously, and evidently intended to use it for a private gambling den, where he would bring picked gamesters. Allie saw about eight or ten men who resembled miners or laborers.
Durade led her to a table that had been placed under some shelves, which were littered with bottles and glasses. He gave her instructions what to do when called upon, saying that Stitt would help her, and then, motioning her to a chair, he went back to the men. It was difficult for her to raise her eyes, and she could not at once do so.
“Durade, who’s the girl?” asked a man.
The gambler vouchsafed for reply only a mysterious smile.
“Bet she’s from California,” said another. “They bloom like that out there.”
“Now, ain’t she your daughter?” queried a third.
But Durade chose to be mysterious. In that he left his guests license for covert glances without the certainty that would permit boldness.
They gathered around a table to play faro. Then Durade called for drinks. This startled Allie and she hesitated to comply with his demand. When she lifted her eyes and met the glances of these men, she had a strange feeling that somehow recalled the California days. Her legs were weak under her; a hot anger labored under her breast; she had to drag her reluctant feet across the room. Her spirit sank, and then leaped. It whispered that looks and words and touches could only hurt and shame her for this hour of her evil plight. They must rouse her resistance and cunning and wit. It was a fact that she was there, helpless for the present. But she lived—her love was infinite—and through these she trusted herself to her fate.
Fresno was there, throwing dice with ten soldiers. To his ugliness had been added something that robbed his face of bronze and health—the tinge of outdoor life—and gave it red and swollen lines and shades, and beastly greed. Benton had made a bad man worse.
Mull was there, heavier than when he had ruled the grading camp, sodden with drink, thick-lipped and red-cheeked, burly, brutal, and still showing in every action and loud word the bully. He was whirling a wheel and rolling a ball and calling out in his heavy voice. With him was a little sallow-faced man, like a wolf, with sweaty, downcast eyes and restless hands. He answered to the name of Andy. These two were engaged in fleecing several blue-shirted half-drunken spikers.
Durade was playing faro with four other men, or at least there were that number seated with him. One, whose back was turned toward Allie, wore black and looked and seemed different from the others. He did not talk or drink. Evidently his winning aggravated Durade. Presently Durade called the man Jones.
Then there were several others standing around, dividing their attention between Allie and the gamblers. The door opened occasionally, and each time a different man entered to hold a moment’s whispered conversation with Durade, and then went out. These men were of the same villainous aspect that characterized Fresno. Durade had surrounded himself with lieutenants and comrades who might be counted upon to do anything.
Allie was not long in gathering this fact, not that there were subtle signs of suspicion among the gamesters. Most of them had gotten under the influence of drink that Durade kept ordering. Evidently he furnished this liquor free and with a purpose.
The afternoon’s play ended shortly. As far as Allie could see, Jones, the man in black, a pale, thin-lipped, cold-eyed gambler, was the only guest to win. Durade’s manner was not pleasant while he paid over evident debts. Durade always had been a poor loser.
“Jones, you’ll sit in tomorrow?” said Durade.
“Maybe,” replied the other.
“Why not? You’re winnin’,” retorted Durade, hot-headed in an instant.
“Winners are choosers,” returned Jones, with an enigmatic smile. His hard, cold eyes shifted to Allie, and seemed to pierce her, then went back to Durade and Mull and Fresno. Plain it was to Allie, with her woman’s intuition, that if Jones returned, it would not be because he trusted that trio. Durade apparently made an effort to swallow his resentment or whate
ver irritated him. The gambling pallor of his face had never been more marked. He went out with Jones, and the others slowly followed.
Fresno approached Allie. “Hello, gurly! You sure look purtier than in that buckskin outfit.” He leered.
Allie got up, ready for flight or defiance, anything. Durade had forgotten her.
Fresno saw her glance at the door. “He’s goin’ to the bad,” he went on, with his big hand indicating the door. “Benton’s too hot fer his kind. He’ll not git up some fine mornin’ . . . An’ you’d better cotton to me. You ain’t his kin . . . an’ he hates you an’ you hate him. I seen that. I’m no fool. I’m sorta gone on you.”
“Fresno, I’ll tell Durade,” replied Allie, forcing her lips to be firm. If she expected to intimidate him, she was disappointed.
Fresno leered wisely. “You’d better not. Fer I’ll kill him, an’ then you’ll be a sweet little chunk of meat among a lot of wolves.” He laughed and lurched up his huge frame. He wore a heavy gun and a knife in his belt. Also, there protruded the butt of a pistol from the inside of his open vest.
Allie felt the heat from his huge body and she smelled the whiskey upon him and sensed the base faithless malignant animalism of the desperado. Assuredly if he had any fear, it was not of Durade.
“I’m sorta gone on you myself,” repeated Fresno. “An’ Durade’s a greaser. He’s runnin’ a crooked game. All these games are crooked. But Benton won’t stand for a polite greaser who talks sweet an’ gambles crooked. Mebbe no one’s told you what this place Benton is.”
“I haven’t heard. Tell me,” replied Allie. She might learn from anyone.