punk heart of the driftwood.

It was during this period of deflagration and dry rot that the Eastern
owners of the railroad lost heart. Since the year of the Red Butte
inrush there had been no dividends; and Chandler, summoned from another
battle with the canyons in the far Northwest, was sent in to make an
expert report on the property. "Sell it for what it will bring," was the
substance of Chandler's advice; but there were no bidders, and from this
time on a masterless railroad was added to the spoils of war--the
inexpiable war of the Red Desert upon its invaders.

At the moment of the moribund railroad's purchase by the Pacific
Southwestern, the desert was encroaching more and more upon the town
planted in its western border. In the height of Angels's prosperity
there had been electric lights and a one-car street tramway, a bank,
and a Building and Loan Association attesting its presence in rows of
ornate cottages on the second mesa--alluring bait thrown out to catch
the potential savings of the railroad colonists.

But now only the railroad plant was electric-lighted; the single
ramshackle street-car had been turned into a _chile-con-carne_ stand;
the bank, unable to compete with the faro games and the roulette wheels,
had gone into liquidation; the Building and Loan directors had long
since looted the treasury and sought fresh fields, and the cottages were
chiefly empty shells.

Of the charter members of the Building and Loan Association, shrewdest
of the many boom-time schemes for the separation of the pay-roll man
from his money, only two remained as residents of Angels the decadent.
One of these was Gridley, the master-mechanic, and the other was