The sentence was never finished.  Quick as lightning Ramerrez stepped in and caught Nina’s up-raised arm.  For one instant her eyes flashed fire at him; another, and submissive to his will, she slipped the knife somewhere in the folds of her dress and the attention that she had succeeded in attracting was diverted elsewhere.  Those who had rushed up expecting a tragedy returned, once more, to their dancing.

“I have been looking for you, Nina,” he said, taking her to one side.  “I want to speak with you.”

Nina laughed airily, but only another woman would have been able to detect the danger lurking in that laugh.

“Have you just come in?” she inquired casually.  “It is generally not difficult to find me when there is dancing.”  And then with a significant smile:  “But perhaps there were so many men about me that I was completely hidden from the view of the Senor.”

Ramerrez bowed politely his belief in the truth of her words; then he said somewhat seriously: 

“I see a vacant table over in the corner where we can talk without danger of being overheard.  Come!” He led the way, the woman following him, to a rough table of pine at the farther end of the room where, immediately, a bottle and two glasses were placed before them.  When they had pledged each other, Ramerrez went on to say, in a low voice, that he had made the appointment in order to deliver to her her share for the information that led to his successful holdup of the stage at a place known as “The Forks,” a few miles back; and taking from his pocket a sack of gold he placed it on the table before her.

There was a silence in which Nina made no movement to pick up the gold; whereupon, Ramerrez repeated a little harshly: 

“Your share.”

Slowly the woman rose, picking up the sack as she did so, and with a request that he await her, she made her way over to the bar where she handed it to the Mexican in charge with a few words of instruction.  In another moment she was again seated at the table with him.

“Why did you send for me to meet you here?” she now asked.  “Why did you not come to my room—­surely you knew that there was danger here?”

Carelessly, Ramerrez let his eyes wander about the room; no one was paying the slightest attention to them and, apparently, there being nothing to fear, he answered: 

“From whom?”

For a brief space of time the woman looked at him as if she would ferret out his innermost thoughts; at length, she said with a shrug of the shoulders: 

“Few here are to be thoroughly trusted.  The woman you were with—­she knows you?”

“I never met her but once before,” was his laconic rejoinder.

Nina eyed him suspiciously; at last she was satisfied that he spoke the truth, but there was still that cold, abstracted manner of his to be explained.  However, cleverly taking her cue from him she inquired in business-like tones: