r when respectable Comanche
put out its lights and went to bed. Not to sleep in every case, perhaps,
for the din was at crescendo pitch by then; but, at any event, to
deprive the iniquitous of the moral support of looking on their
debaucheries and sins.

Dr. Slavens was in no mood for his sagging canvas cot, for his new
enthusiasm was bounding through him as if he had been given an
intravenous injection of nitroglycerin. There was Wyoming before him,
all white and virginal and fresh, a big place for a big deed. Certainly,
said Dr. Slavens. Just as if made to order for his needs.

So he would look around a bit before turning in, with his high-stepping
humor over him, and that spot on his arm, where her hand had lain, still
aglow with her mysterious fire.

CHAPTER IV

THE FLAT-GAME MAN

The noises of the tented town swelled in picturesque chorus as Dr.
Slavens walked toward them, rising and trailing off into the night until
they wore themselves out in the echoless plain.

He heard the far-away roll and rumble of voices coming from the
gambling-tents; the high-tenor invitation of the barkers outside
questionable shows; the bawl of street-gamblers, who had all manner of
devices, from ring-pitching to shell-games on folding tables, which they
could pick up in a twinkling and run away with when their dupes began to
threaten and rough them up; the clear soprano of the singer, who wore
long skirts and sang chaste songs, in the vaudeville tent down by the
station.

And above all, mingled with all--always, everywhere--the brattle of
cornet and trombone, the whang of piano, the wail of violin, the tinkle
of the noble harp, an aristocrat in base company, weeping its own
downfall.

All of the flaring scene appeared to the doctor to be extremely
artificial. It was a stage set for the allurement of the unsophisticated,
who saw in this strained and overdone imitation of the old West the
romance of their expectations. If they hadn't found it there thousands of
them would have been disappointed, perhaps disillusioned with a
healthful jolt. All the reality about it was its viciousness, and that
was unquestionable.

It looked as if gambling crooks from everywhere had collected at
Comanche, and as if the most openly and notoriously crooked of them all
was the bony, dry-faced man with a white spot over the sight of his left
eye, who conducted a dice-game in the front part of the chief
amusement-place of the town. This wa