Social lines are none too clearly drawn in towns like San Juan; often enough they have long ago failed to exist.  A John Engle, though six days of the seven he sat behind his desk in a bank, was only a man, his daughter only the daughter of a mere man; a Jim Galloway, though he owned the Casa Blanca and upon occasion stood behind his own bar, might be a man and look with level eyes upon all other men, their wives, and their daughters.  Here, with conditions what they always had been, there could stand but one barrier between Galloway and Florrie Engle, the barrier of character.  And already the girl had cried:  “His eyes are not bad eyes, are they?” A barrier is a silent command to pause; what is the spontaneous answer of a spoiled child to any command?

Galloway spoke lightly of this and that, managing in a dozen little ways to compliment Florrie who chattered with a gayety which partook of excitement.  In ten minutes he went his way, drawing her musing eyes after him.  Until he had reached his own door and turned it at the Casa Blanca the two girls on Struve’s veranda were silent.  Florrie’s thoughts were flitting hither and yon, bright-winged, inconsequential, fluttering about Jim Galloway, deserting him for Roderick Norton, darting off to Elmer Page, coming home to Florrie herself.  As for Virginia, conscious of a sort of dread, she was oppressed with the stubbornly insistent thought that if Jim Galloway cared to amuse himself with Florrie he was strong and she was weak; if he called to her she would follow. . . .

Virginia was not the only one whom Galloway had set pondering; certain of his words spoken to the sheriff when the two faced each other on the Tecolote trail gave Norton food for thought.  For the first time Jim Galloway had openly offered a bribe, one of no insignificant proportions, prefacing his offer with the remark:  “I have just begun to imagine lately that I have doped you up wrong all the time.”  If Galloway had gone on to add:  “Time was when I didn’t believe I could buy you, but I have changed my mind about that,” his meaning could have been no plainer.  Now he held out a bribe in one hand, a threat in the other, and Norton riding on to Tecolote mused long over them both.

In Tecolote, a straggling village of many dogs and swarthy, grimy-faced children, he tarried until well after dark, making his meal of coffee, frijoles, and chili con carne, thereafter smoking a contemplative pipe.  Abandoning the little lunch-room to the flies and silence he crossed the road to the saloon kept by Pete Nunez, the brother of the man whom it was Norton’s present business to make answer for a crime committed.  Pete, a law-abiding citizen nowadays, principally for the reason that he had lost a leg in his younger, gayer days, swept up his crutch and swung across the room from the table where he was sitting to the bar, saying a careless “Que hay?” by way of greeting.

“Hello, Pete,” Norton returned quietly.  “Haven’t seen Vidal lately, have you?”