"You—you—know him?" he stammered.
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
"Your friend?"
She shook her head vigorously.
"Enemy? Kill?" Johnny's hand sought his automatic.
"No! No! No!" she fairly screamed. "Not kill!" Her hand was on his arm with a frantic grip.
"Why?"
"No can tell. Only, not kill; not kill now. No! No! No! Mebby never!"
"Well, I'll be—" Johnny took his hand from his gun and peered over the ledge. The man was gone. It was a dirty trick he had played. He half wished he had not done it. And yet, the Jap girl had laughed. She knew what the man was. She had been close enough to have stopped him, had she thought it right. She had not done so. His conscience was clear.
They crept away in the gathering darkness, these two; and Johnny suddenly felt for this little Jap girl a comradeship that he had not known before. It was such a feeling as he had experienced in school days, when he was prowling about with boy pals.