decidedly uncomfortable,
and, to add to his discomfort, he conceived the notion that he was
being followed. On second thought he dismissed this idea, nevertheless
he took a roundabout course back toward the main street.

It seemed odd to be floundering through inky shadows, feeling a way
through this miry chaos, when aloft, as far as the eye could see, the
sky was lit. This phantom city of twinkling beacons gave one a sense of
acute unreality, for it was an empty city, a city the work of which
went on almost without the aid of human hands. The very soul of it was
mechanical. Only here and there, where a drill crew was at work, did an
occasional human figure move back and forth in the glare of low-hung
incandescents, nevertheless the whole place breathed and throbbed; it
was instinct with a tremendous vigor. From all sides came the ceaseless
rhythmic clank of pumps, the hiss of gas and steam, the gurgling flow
of liquid--they were the pulse beats, the respirations, the blood flow
of this live thing. And its body odor stung the nostrils. All night
long it panted with its heavy labors--as if the jinns that lifted those
giant pump beams were vying with one another in a desperate endeavor.
They were, for a fact. Haste, avarice, an arduous diligence, was in the
very air.

Gray stared and marveled, for imagination was not lacking in him. Those
derricks with their fires were high altars upon which were heaped ten
thousand hopes and prayers. Altars of Avarice! Towers of Greed! That is
what they were.

He marvelled, too, at the extremes these last few days had brought him;
at the long cry from the luxurious Burlington Notch to this primitive
land of fire worshipers. Here, only a few hours by motor from paved
streets and comfortable homes, was a section of the real frontier, as
crude and as lawless as any he had ever seen. Yonder, for instance, was
the Red Lion, a regular Klondike dance hall.

He looked in for a moment, but the sight of hard-faced houris revolving
cheek to cheek with men in overalls and boots was nothing new. It did
remind him of the march of progress, however, to notice that the
bartenders served coca-cola instead of "hootch." Hygienic, but vain, he
reflected. Not at all like the brave old days.

Farther up the street was a flaming theater decorated with gaudy
lithographs of women in tights. That awoke a familiar echo. The grimy
figures headed thither might well be miners just in from Eldorado or
Anvil Cre