Salvation Gap by Owen Wister — Read

After cutting the Gazelle's throat, Drylyn had gone out of her tent, secure and happy in choosing the skilful moment. They would think it was the other man -- the unknown one. There were his boot-prints this fine morning, marking his way from the tent down the hill into the trees. He was not an inhabitant of the camp. This was his first visit, cautiously made, and nobody had seen him come or go except Drylyn.

The woman was proprietor of the dance-hall at Salvation Gap, and on account of her beauty and habits had been named the American Beer Gazelle by a travelling naturalist who had education, and was interested in the wild animals of all countries. Drylyn's relations with the Gazelle were colored with sentiment. The sentiment on his part was genuine; so genuine that the shrewd noticing camp joked Drylyn, telling him he had grown to look young again under the elixir of romance. One of the prospectors had remarked fancifully that Drylyn's "rusted mustache had livened up; same ez flow'rs ye've kerried a long ways when yer girl puts 'em in a pitcher o' water. " Being the sentiment of a placer miner, the lover's feeling took no offence or wound at any conduct of the Gazelle's that was purely official; it was for him that she personally cared. He never thought of suspecting anything when, after one of her trips to Folsom, she began to send away some of the profits -- gold, coined sometimes, sometimes raw dust -- that her hall of entertainment earned for her. She mentioned to him that her mother in San Anton' needed it, and simple-minded Drylyn believed. It did not occur to him to ask, or even wonder, how it came that this mother had never needed money until so lately, or why the trips to Folsom became so constant. Counting her middle-aged adorer a fool, the humorous Gazelle had actually once, on being prevented from taking the journey herself, asked him to carry the package to Folsom for her, and deliver it there to a certain shot-gun messenger of the express company, who would see that it went to the right place.