sotted senses they still held in precarious possession. It
was an old experience to both of them and they looked listlessly about
with the disinterestedness of bored familiarity.

Time was when these young men would have entered into the orgies with a
certain reckless aplomb; there were a few girls among the throng who had
not yet lost all their pristine comeliness, who still retained some few
pitiful shreds of the femininity that should have made of them the
loving wives and good mothers that Nature's God creatively intended; but
to-night none of them looked good to these two not usually
over-discriminative animals, intrepidly fresh as they were from pasture.

The whole thing jarred unaccountably upon both of them; Douglass looking
disgustedly at the tawdry surroundings, at the flushed faces and
professionally displayed charms, felt a great irritation at himself for
coming here. Unconsciously he was comparing this sickening
meretriciousness with the delightful reserve and dignity of another
environment, and he felt the quick shame of a schoolboy detected in his
first illicit adventure.

Red grunted telepathically: "Gawd, Ken, this yeah's a punk layout. Let's
go out wheah it's clean." They settled their score and were in the act
of rising when, McVey touched Douglass on the arm. A woman had just
entered by a side door and was looking at them with a strange
intentness.

"That's Coogan's woman," said Red, in a low voice; "Stunner, ain't she!
Wonder he stands fer her comin' here."

The woman came forward with a curious snake-like quickness and seated
herself at the adjoining table. She was a very striking creature,
evidently one of the higher class Mexicans occasionally still to be met
with on the Colorado frontier. She was not more than twenty-four or five
years old, with all the color and voluptuousness of the younger women of
her race. Her hair and eyes were of a peculiar blue-black color, her
complexion ordinarily very light olive with carmine cheek tints but now
exhibiting a pallor that only intensified the gleam in her big eyes. She
was neither painted nor powdered, as both men noted approvingly, and was
finely gowned in a modest, though expensive style. The only inharmonious
thing in her entourage was the blaze of the diamonds with which she was
lavishly bedecked.

She ordered brandy, and when it was brought drank it with reckless haste
and called for more. Twice was her glass refilled, and the fiery
stimulan