Twilight fell.  All hours were difficult for Neale, but twilight was the most unendurable, for it had been the hour Allie Lee loved best, and during which she and Neale had walked hand in hand along the brook, back there in the lovely and beautiful valley in the hills.  Neale could not sit still long; he could not rest, nor sleep well, nor work, nor indeed be of any use to himself or to any one, and all because he was haunted and driven by the memory of Allie Lee.  And at such quiet hours as this, in the midst of the turmoil he had sought for weeks, a sadness filled his soul, and an eternal remorse.  The love that had changed him and the life that had failed him seemed utterly misrelated.

To and fro he paced on the bare ridge while twilight shadowed.  A star twinkled in the west, a night wind began to seep the sand.  The desert, vast, hidden, mysterious, yet so free and untrammeled, darkened.

Lights began to flash up along the streets of Benton, and presently Neale became aware of a low and mounting hum, like a first stir of angry bees.

The loud and challenging strains of a band drew Neale toward the center of the main street, where men were pouring into a big tent.

He halted outside and watched.  This strident, businesslike, quick-step music and the sight of the men and women attracted thereby made Neale realize that Benton had arisen in a day and would die out in a night; its life would be swift, vile, and deadly.

When the band ceased a sudden roar came from inside the big tent, a commingling of the rough voices of men and the humming of wheels, the clinking of glasses and gold, the rattling of dice, the hoarse call of a dealer, the shuffling of feet—­a roar pierced now and then by the shrill, vacant, soundless laugh of a woman.

It was that last sound which almost turned Neale away from the door.  He shunned women.  But this place fascinated him.  He went in under the flaming lamps.

The place was crowded—­a huge tent stretched over a framework of wood, and it was full of people, din, smoke, movement.  The floor was good planking covered with sand.  Walking was possible only round the narrow aisles between groups at tables.

Neale’s sauntering brought him to the bar.  It had to him a familiar look, and afterward he learned that it had been brought complete from St. Louis, where he had seen it in a saloon.  It seemed a huge, glittering, magnificent monstrosity in that coarse, bare setting.  Wide mirrors, glistening bottles, paintings of nude women, row after row of polished glasses, a brawny, villainous barkeeper, with three attendants, all working fast, a line of rough, hoarse men five deep before the counter—­all these things constituted a scene that had the aspects of a city and yet was redolent with an atmosphere no city ever knew.  The drinkers were not all rough men.  There were elegant black-hatted, frock-coated men of leisure in that line—­not directors and commissioners and traveling guests of the U. P. R., but gentlemen of chance.  Gamblers!