She was pale and her expressive eyes were fixed upon Neale.  Hough’s words startled her.

“What ails me? ...  Place, I’ve had a forgetful moment—­a happy one—­ and I’m deathly sick!”

Ancliffe stared in surprise.  He took her literally.

Beauty Stanton looked at Neale again.  “Will you come to see me?” she asked, with sweet directness.

“Thank you—­no,” replied Neale.  He was annoyed.  She had asked him that before, and he had coldly but courteously repelled what he thought were her advances.  This time he was scarcely courteous.

The woman flushed.  She appeared about to make a quick and passionate reply, in anger and wounded pride, but she controlled the impulse.  She left the room with Ancliffe.

“Neale, do you know Stanton is infatuated with you?” asked Hough, thoughtfully.

“Nonsense!” replied Neale.

“She is, though.  These women can’t fool me.  I told you days ago I suspected that.  Now I’ll gamble on it.  And you know how I play my cards.”

“She saw me win a pile of money,” said Neale, with scorn.

“I’ll bet you can’t make her take a dollar of it.  Any amount you want and any odds.”

Neale would not accept the wager.  What was he talking about, anyway?  What was this drift of things?  His mind did not seem clear.  Perhaps he had drunk too much.  The eyes of both Ruby and Beauty Stanton troubled him.  What had he done to these women?

“Neale, you’re more than usually excited to-day,” observed Hough.  “Probably was the run of luck.  And then you spouted to the women.”  Neale confessed his offer to Ruby and Larry, and then his own impulse.

“Ruby called me a fool—­crazy—­a sky-pilot.  Maybe I am.”

“Sky-pilot!  Well, the little devil!” laughed Hough.  “I’ll gamble she called you that before you declared yourself.”

“Before, yes.  I tell you, Hough, I have crazy impulses.  They’ve grown on me out here.  They burst like lightning out of a clear sky.  I would have done just that thing for Ruby....  Mad, you say? ...  Why, man, she’s not hopeless!  There was something deep behind that impulse.  Strange—­not understandable!  I’m at the mercy of every hour I spend here.  Benton has got into my blood.  And I see how Benton is a product of this great advance of progress—­of civilization—­the U. P. R. We’re only atoms in a force no one can understand....  Look at Reddy King.  That cowboy was set—­fixed like stone in his character.  But Benton has called to the worst and wildest in him.  He’ll do something terrible.  Mark what I say.  We’ll all do something terrible.  You, too, Place Hough, with all your cold, implacable control.  The moment will come, born out of this abnormal time.  I can’t explain, but I feel.  There’s a work-shop in this hell of Benton.  Invisible, monstrous, and nameless! ...  Nameless like the new graves dug every day out here on the desert....  How few of the honest toilers dream of the spirit