Picture-Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1916)

The Aryan 241 trail and found her lying prone in a little hollow a few feet below the rocky path. "She made me suffer," he said aloud — not altogether pleased with himself, for deep beneath his grief that had driven him almost insane, he still had the sense of justice characteristic of the Aryan race. "She made me suffer," he repeated, "and it's only right that suffering should come to her, too." As he was about to lift the girl, something in the formation of the rocky soil of the little hollow where she lay caught his eye. He inspected it carefully, and then picked away till he dislodged a fragment of rock. Running through it was a fat streak of pay ore. He had stumbled upon what zvas to be the richest mine in the Territory! Steve surveyed the ore coldly. With the knowledge that he was again rich came no elation — nothing but bitterness. He turned and gazed at the crumpled form of the girl. "You have already begun to pay me back," he said; "but this is only the beginning." And, gathering her up in his arms, he carried her back to the camp. Devil's Hole — " 'way up in the mountains, in behind the big sand rim" — was a household word along the sparsely settled Southwestern frontier; and, in a day when there was no law and strong men made their own code, Devil's Hole was feared. Men spoke of it with awe, and to the inquiring stranger would recount, with elaborate detail, the actual and supposed doings of a crazed prospector who, two years before, had stolen a girl from Yellow Ridge and fled with her to the mountains, where he had found a mine of fabulous wealth. There, he had slowly built up a town of hate, a town made up of the offscourings of humanity, men and women who lived without the law. Hate was the watchword, the emblem of that hell in the mountains, hemmed in by the 6 blistering desert. Hate summed up the reason for its existence. Here dwelt the strange, cruel man, the Aryan, fair of skin, ruler of men, hater of women. Here dwelt the shadow of Steve Denton, sole owner of the Devil's Mine. From time to time shipments of ore came down the mountainside and across the desert to the frontier, shipments accompanied by fierce men, outlaws, murderers, and thieves, most of them half-breeds or the worst type of Mexicans. The women were most of them dance-hall girls, picked up at various times by members of Steve's gang. A slatternly company of unfortunates, whose souls were dead. Among them was Trixie, the former magnet of the Swinging Light. No longer the Firefly, but a ragged travesty on woman, wrinkled, prematurely aged, with matted hair and eyes long dulled. Of all the women in the camp, she was the only one who ever entered Steve's home. And his attitude with regard to her was that of master and servant, of master and slave, indeed, taking no thought of her as a woman but as a household drudge. Trixie shuffled into his room one day with the report that a caravan of homesteaders had camped at the foot of the trail and had sought food and drink, as their supply was exhausted. Without speaking, Steve pointed to a wall closet; and mechanically Trixie brought down a bottle and glass and poured him a stiff drink. He gulped it, and for a long moment sat staring vacantly at her. Then "Homesteaders !" he said dreamily. "Men of the type I might have been ! W^omen of the type you might have been, Trixie !" There was no gleam of interest in her lackluster eyes. He rose and went out. Along the unpaved street he paced, buried in thought. Passing a drinking hall, the sound of uproarious laughter assailed him. He stopped and flung