the return of Bentley and Walker. There was no sleep in her
eyes, for her mind was full of tumult and foreboding and dread lest
something had befallen Dr. Slavens in the pitfalls of that gray city,
the true terrors and viciousness of which she could only surmise.

Bentley and Walker went their way in silence until they came to the
lights. There was no thinning of the crowds yet, for the news in the
midnight extra had given everybody a fresh excuse for celebrating, if
not on their own accounts, then on account of their friends. Had not
every holder of a number been set back one faint mark behind the line of
his hopes?

Very well. It was not a thing to laugh over, certainly, but it was not
to be mended by groans. So, if men might neither groan nor laugh, they
could drink. And liquor was becoming cheaper in Comanche. It was the
last big night; it was a wake.

"Well, I'll tell you," said Walker, "I don't think we'd better look for
him too hard, for if we found him he wouldn't be in any shape to take
back there by now."

"You mean he's celebrating his good luck?" asked Bentley.

"Sure," Walker replied. "Any man would. But I don't see what he wanted
to go off and souse up alone for when he might have had good company."

"I think you've guessed wrong, Walker," said Bentley. "I never knew him
to take a drink; I don't believe he'd celebrate in that way."

Even if he had bowled up, protested Walker, there was no harm in it. Any
man might do it, he might do it himself; in fact, he was pretty sure
that he _would do it_, under such happy conditions, although he believed
a man ought to have a friend or two along on such occasions.

From place to place they threaded their way through the throng, which
ran in back-currents and cross-currents, leaving behind it upon the bars
and gaming-tables an alluvium of gold. Dr. Slavens was not at any of the
tables; he was not reeling against any of the bars; nor was he to be
seen anywhere in the sea of faces, mottled with shadows under the smoky
lights.

"Walker, I'm worried," Bentley confessed as they stood outside the last
and lowest place of diversion that remained to be visited in the town.

"I tell you, it flies up and hits a man that way," protested Walker.
"Sheep-herders go that way all of a sudden after a year or two without a
taste of booze, sometimes. He'll turn up in a day or two, kind of mussed
up and ashamed; but we'll show him that it's expected of a gentleman in
this cou