No--not in vain! She
breathed a prayer for them--a word of love for Larry. Larry, the
waster of life, yet the faithful, the symbol of brotherhood. As long
as she lived she would see him stalk before her with his red,
blazing fire, his magnificent effrontery, his supreme will. He, who
had been the soul of chivalry, the meekest of men before a woman,
the inheritor of a reverence for womanhood, had ruthlessly shot out
of his way that wonderful white-armed Beauty Stanton.
She, too, must lie there in the shadow. Allie shivered with the cool
desert wind that blew in her face from the shadowy spaces. She shut
her eyes to hide the dim passing traces of terrible Benton and the
darkness that hid the lonely graves.
The train moved on and on, leaving what had been Benton far behind;
and once more Allie opened her weary eyes to the dim, obscure
reaches of the desert. Her heart beat very slowly under its leaden
weight, its endless pang. Her blood flowed at low ebb. She felt the
long-forgotten recurrence of an old morbid horror, like a poison
lichen fastening upon the very spring of life. It passed and came
again, and left her once more. Her thoughts wandered back along the
night track she had traversed, until again her ears were haunted by
that strange sound which had given Roaring City its name.
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