“Joan!  Joan!” it called.  “Where are you, dear?”

The little girl answered, and Ross Shanklin saw a woman, clad in a soft, clinging gown, come through the gate from the bungalow.  She was a slender, graceful woman, and to his charmed eyes she seemed rather to float along than walk like ordinary flesh and blood.

“What have you been doing all afternoon?” the woman asked, as she came up.

“Talking, mamma,” the little girl replied.  “I’ve had a very interesting time.”

Ross Shanklin scrambled to his feet and stood watchfully and awkwardly.  The little girl took the mother’s hand, and she, in turn, looked at him frankly and pleasantly, with a recognition of his humanness that was a new thing to him.  In his mind ran the thought:  the woman who ain’t afraid.  Not a hint was there of the timidity he was accustomed to seeing in women’s eyes.  And he was quite aware, and never more so, of his bleary-eyed, forbidding appearance.

“How do you do?” she greeted him sweetly and naturally.

“How do you do, ma’am,” he responded, unpleasantly conscious of the huskiness and rawness of his voice.

“And did you have an interesting time, too!” she smiled.

“Yes, ma’am.  I sure did.  I was just telling your little girl about bosses.”

“He was a cowboy, once, mamma,” she cried.

The mother smiled her acknowledgment to him, and looked fondly down at the little girl.  The thought that came into Ross Shanklin’s mind was the awfulness of the crime if any one should harm either of the wonderful pair.  This was followed by the wish that some terrible danger should threaten, so that he could fight, as he well knew how, with all his strength and life, to defend them.

“You’ll have to come along, dear,” the mother said.  “It’s growing late.”  She looked at Ross Shanklin hesitantly.  “Would you care to have something to eat?”

“No, ma’am, thanking you kindly just the same.  I ...  I ain’t hungry.”

“Then say good-bye, Joan,” she counselled.

“Good-bye.”  The little girl held out her hand, and her eyes lighted roguishly.  “Good-bye, Mr. Man from the bad, wicked world.”

To him, the touch of her hand as he pressed it in his was the capstone of the whole adventure.

“Good-bye, little fairy,” he mumbled.  “I reckon I got to be pullin’ along.”

But he did not pull along.  He stood staring after his vision until it vanished through the gate.  The day seemed suddenly empty.  He looked about him irresolutely, then climbed the fence, crossed the bridge, and slouched along the road.  He was in a dream.  He did not note his feet nor the way they led him.  At times he stumbled in the dust-filled ruts.

A mile farther on, he aroused at the crossroads.  Before him stood the saloon.  He came to a stop and stared at it, licking his lips.  He sank his hand into his pants pocket and fumbled a solitary dime.  “God!” he muttered.  “God!” Then, with dragging, reluctant feet, went on along the road.