The Overland had come and gone.  Another day!  Mrs. Adams sighed, patted her smooth black hair, and glanced down at her simple and neat attire.

She rearranged the flowers, and was stepping back to view the effect when something caused her to turn and glance toward the office.  There had been no sound, yet in the doorway stood a man—­evidently a rider.  He was looking at the calendar on the office wall.  Mrs. Adams stepped toward him.  The man turned and smiled.  She gazed with awakening astonishment at the dusty, khaki-clad figure, the cool gray eyes beneath the high-crowned sombrero, and last at the extended hand.  Without meeting the man’s eyes, she shook hands.

“Jim!  How did you know?” she queried, her voice trembling.

“I heard of you at Nogales.  I wasn’t looking for you—­then.  You have a right pleasant place here.  Yours?”

She nodded.

“I came to see the boy,” he said.  “I’m not here for long.”

“Oh, Jim!  Lorry is so big and strong—­and—­and he’s working for the Starr outfit over west of here.”

“Cattle, eh?  Is he a good boy?”

“A nice question for you to ask!  Lorry rides a straighter trail than his father did.”

The man laughed and patted her shoulder affectionately.  “You needn’t have said that, Annie.  You knew what I was when I married you.  And no man ever said I wasn’t straight.  Just what made you leave Sonora without saying a word?  Didn’t I always treat you well?”

“I must say that you did, Jim.  You never spoke a rough word to me in your life.  I wish you had.  You’d be away for weeks, and then come back and tell me it was all right, which meant that you’d ‘got your man,’ as they say down there.  At first I was too happy to care.  And when the baby came and I tried to get you to give up hiring out to men who wanted killing done,—­for that’s what it was,—­you kept telling me that some day you would quit.  Maybe they did pay big, but you could have been anything else you wanted to.  You came of good folks and had education.  But you couldn’t live happy without that excitement.  And you thought I was happy because you were.  Why, even up here in Arizona they sing ‘Waring of Sonora-Town.’  Our boy sings it, and I have to listen, knowing that it is you he sings about.  I was afraid of you, Jim, and afraid our boy would grow up to be like you.”

Waring nodded.  “I’m not blaming you, Annie.  I asked why you left me—­without a word or an address.  Do you think that was square?”

Mrs. Adams, flushed, and the tears came to her eyes.  “I didn’t dare think about that part of it.  I was afraid of you.  I got so I couldn’t sleep, worrying about what might happen to you when you were away.  And you always came back, but you never said where you’d been or what you’d done.  I couldn’t stand it.  If you had only told me—­even about the men—­that you were paid to kill, I might have stood it.  But you never said a word.  The wives of the American folks down there wouldn’t speak to me.  And the Mexican women hated me.  I was the wife of Jim Waring, ‘the killer.’  I think I went crazy.”