The Aura. In an hour or more he came back. He had dined at the hotel
and he had bathed. His naturally vivid coloring glowed under the
street-light. He was shaved and brushed and sleek. He pushed quickly
through the swinging doors of the bar and stepped into the saloon. It
was truly a famous bar--The Aura--and it deserved its fame. It shone
bright and cool and polished. There was a cheerful clink of glasses, a
subdued, comfortable sound of talk. Men drank at the bar, and drank and
played cards at the small tables. A giant in a white apron stood to
serve the newcomer.

Hilliard ordered his drink, sipped it leisurely, then wandered off to a
near-by table. There he stood, watching the game. Not long after, he
accepted an invitation and joined the players. From then till midnight he
was oblivious of everything but the magic squares of pasteboard, the
shifting pile of dirty silver at his elbow, the faces--vacant, clever, or
rascally--of his opponents. But at about midnight, trouble came. For some
time Hilliard had been subconsciously irritated by the divided attention
of a player opposite to him across the table. This man, with a long, thin
face, was constantly squinting past Cosme's shoulder, squinting and
leering and stretching his great full-lipped mouth into a queer
half-smile. At last, abruptly, the irritation came to consciousness and
Cosme threw an angry glance over his own shoulder.

Beside the giant who had served him his drink a girl stood: a thin,
straight girl in black and white who held herself so still that she
seemed painted there against the mirror on the wall. Her hands rested on
her slight hips, the fine, pointed, ringless fingers white against the
black stuff of her dress. Her neck, too, was white and her face, the pure
unpowdered whiteness of childhood. Her chin was lifted, her lips laid
together, her eyes, brilliant and clear, of no definite color, looked
through her surroundings. She was very young, not more than seventeen.
The mere presence of a girl was startling enough. Barmaids are unknown to
the experience of the average cowboy. But this girl was trebly startling.
For her face was rare. It was not Western, not even American. It was a
fine-drawn, finished, Old-World face, with long, arched eyebrows, large
lids, shadowed eyes, nostrils a little pinched, a sad and tender mouth.
It was a face whose lines might have followed the pencil of
Botticelli--those little hollows in the cheeks, that slight exagg