I take it mighty kind of you to have thought I could fill the bill and--I'm wishing you all sorts of luck, Miss Jordan." "Thank you," said Marianne, and hated herself for her unbending stiffness.
At the door he turned again.
"I sure hope it's easy for you to forget songs," he said.
"Songs ?" echoed Marianne, and then turned crimson with the memory.
"'You see," explained Red Jim Perris, "it's a bad habit I've picked up-- of doing the first fool thing that comes into my head.

Good-bye, Miss Jordan." He was gone.
She felt, confusedly, that there were many thing?
she should have said and at the same time there was a strange surety that sometime she would see him again and say them.

She walked absently to the window which opened on the vacant lot to the rear of the hotel.
Red Perris vanished from her mind, for below her she saw Cordova in the act of tethering Alcatraz to the rack which stood in the middle of the lot; saddle and bridle had been removed--the stallion wore only a stout halter.
The Mexican kept on the far side of the rack and whipped his knot together hastily; it was not till he sprang back from his work that she saw the snaky length of an eight foot blacksnake uncoil from his hand.
He passed the lash slowly through his fingers, while surveying the stallion with great complacence.

The ears of Alcatraz flattened back, a sufficient proof that he knew what was coming; he maintained his weary attitude, but it now seemed one of despair.

As for Marianne she refused to admit the ugly suspicion which began to occur to her.