Florrie departed leaving her cruellest laughter to ring in his ears.  This might have been a repetition of any one of a dozen episodes familiar to them both, but never, perhaps, had Elmer’s ears burned so or Florrie’s heart so disturbed her with its beating.  For, she thought regretfully as she hurried out into the street, they had been getting along so nicely. . . .

She had no business out alone at this time of night and she knew it.  So she hurried on, anxious to get home before her father, who was returning late from a visit to one of his ranches.  Abreast of the Casa Blanca she slowed up, looking in curiously.  Then, as again she was hastening on, she heard Jim Galloway’s deep voice in a quiet “Good evening, Miss Florence.”

“Good evening!” gasped Florrie aloud.  And “Oh!” said Florrie under her breath.  For Galloway’s figure had separated itself from the shadows at the side of his open door and had come out into the street, while Galloway was saying in a matter-of-fact way:  “I’ll see you home.”

She wanted to run and could not.  She hung a moment balancing upon a high heel in indecision.  Galloway stepped forward swiftly, coming to her side.  “Oh, dear,” the inner Florrie was saying.  A glance over her shoulder showed her Black Bill standing out in front of Struve’s hotel.  Well, there were compensations.

She started to hurry on, and had Jim Galloway been less sure of himself, troubled with the diffidence of youth as was Elmer, he must have either given over his purpose or else fairly run to keep up with her.  But being Jim Galloway, he laid a gentle but none the less restraining hand upon her arm.

“Please,” he said quietly.  “I want to talk with you.  May I?”

Florrie’s arm burned where he had touched her.  She was all in a flutter, half frightened and the other half flattered.  A shade more leisurely they walked on toward the cottonwoods.  Here, in the shadows, Galloway stopped and Florrie, although beginning to tremble, stopped with him.

“Men have given me a black name here,” he was saying as he faced her.  “They’ve made me somewhat worse than I am.  I feel that I have few friends, certainly very few of my own class.  I like to think of you as a friend.  May I?”

It was distinctly pleasant to have a big man like Galloway, a man whom for good or for bad the whole State knew, pleading with her.  It gave a new sort of assurance to her theory that she was “grown up”; it added to her importance in her own eyes.

“Why, yes,” said Florrie.

“I am going away,” he continued gravely.  “For just how long I don’t know.  A week, perhaps a month, maybe longer.  It is a business matter of considerable importance, Florence.  Nor is it entirely without danger.  It will take me down below the border, and an American in Mexico right now takes his life entirely into his own hands.  You know that, don’t you?”

“Then why do you go?”