I know
how you made your money in Mexico; how you rode with it across the
border. I have never known another man like you, Senor Jim Kendric."
"Will you have the door unlocked?" he said. "Or shall I smash it off
its hinges?"
"A man with your look and your reputation," she said calmly, "was worth
a woman's looking up. When that woman had need for a man." Her eyes
were glittering now; she leaned forward, suddenly rigid and tense and
breathing hard. "When I have found a man who stakes ten thousand,
twenty thousand on one throw and is not moved; who returns ten thousand
in rage because a word of pity goes with it, am I to let him go?"
"I don't like the company you keep," said Kendric. "And I don't like
your ways of doing business. I guess you'll have to let me go."
"You mean Ruiz Rios?" Her eyes flashed and her two hands clenched.
Then she sank back again, laughing. "When you learn to hate him as I
do, senor, then will you know what hate means!"
He pressed a knee against the door, near the lock. The hangings
getting in his way, he tore them aside. Zoraida Castelmar watched him
half in amusement, half in mockery.
"There is a heavy oak bar on the other side," she told him carelessly.
"I have a notion," he flung at her, "to take that white throat of yours
in my two hands and choke you!"
The words startled her, seemed to astound, bewilder.
"You think that you--that any man--could do that?" It was hardly more
than a whisper full of incredulity.
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