“Lady,” murmured Ronicky, “they’s nothing to be afraid of.  We’re going to walk right up and down this street and never get out of sight of the friends you got in this here house.”

At the word “friends” she shivered slightly, and he added:  “Unless you want to go farther of your own free will.”

“No, no!” she exclaimed, as if frightened by the very prospect.

“Then we won’t.  It’s all up to you.  You’re the boss, and I’m the cow-puncher, lady.”

“But tell me quickly,” she urged.  “I—­I have to go back.  I mustn’t stay out too long.”

“Starting right in at the first,” Ronicky said, “I got to tell you that Bill has told me pretty much everything that ever went on between you two.  All about the correspondence-school work and about the letters and about the pictures.”

“I don’t understand,” murmured the girl faintly.

But Ronicky diplomatically raised his voice and went on, as if he had not heard her.  “You know what he’s done with that picture of yours?”

“No,” she said faintly.

“He got the biggest nugget that he’s ever taken out of the dirt.  He got it beaten out into the right shape, and then he made a locket out of it and put your picture in it, and now he wears it around his neck, even when he’s working at the mine.”

Her breath caught.  “That silly, cheap snapshot!”

She stopped.  She had admitted everything already, and she had intended to be a very sphinx with this strange Westerner.

“It was only a joke,” she said.  “I—­I didn’t really mean to—­”

“Do you know what that joke did?” asked Ronicky.  “It made two men fight, then cross the continent together and get on the trail of a girl whose name they didn’t even know.  They found the girl, and then she said she’d forgotten—­but no, I don’t mean to blame you.  There’s something queer behind it all.  But I want to explain one thing.  The reason that Bill didn’t get to that train wasn’t because he didn’t try.  He did try.  He tried so hard that he got into a fight with a gent that tried to hold him up for a few words, and Bill got shot off his hoss.”

“Shot?” asked the girl.  “Shot?”

Suddenly she was clutching his arm, terrified at the thought.  She recovered herself at once and drew away, eluding the hand of Ronicky.  He made no further attempt to detain her.

But he had lifted the mask and seen the real state of her mind; and she, too, knew that the secret was discovered.  It angered her and threw her instantly on the aggressive.

“I tell you what I guessed from the window,” said Ronicky.  “You went down to the street, all prepared to meet up with poor old Bill—­”

“Prepared to meet him?” She started up at Ronicky.  “How in the world could I ever guess—­”

She was looking up to him, trying to drag his eyes down to hers, but Ronicky diplomatically kept his attention straight ahead.