“He told me that he was a mining engineer, down there on a job for a Denver crowd.
“‘Miss Casey,’ the engineer fellow said then, ‘I’m not going to leave you here! Do you know what sort of place you’re in?’
“I told him all over again about the contract to dance. He frowned, and beat on the table with his forefinger. And when I stopped talking he told me what kind of place it was. I don’t suppose I need to tell you?
“I never would have got out of there whole except for that American. I tell you what, I burn candles in the church for that man!
“He explained it all to me; just what business Teddy’s friend was up to, shipping girls down to the dance halls in South and Central America. But I didn’t like to believe Teddy knew what that friend of his was wishing on me. The American thought he knew; and he called him an awful word. I felt mad—and sick—and I told him that he was lying about Teddy. But I didn’t believe he was lying. And he was awful nice about it; said he didn’t blame me for talking up for my friends! But say! What men are friends to girls like me? Never but one man was straight with me—that fellow in Panama!”
The blue eyes were not hard now; neither did they crinkle merrily. Mary Casey’s soul looked out of them.
“That engineer fellow was the man I told you I could respect,” she stated gravely. “You know what he did for me? He helped me get away from that place! He worked our way through the jabbering crowd until we were near the door; and then, when the music was blaring loud, he threw his coat over my dance dress and grabbed me with his left arm while he pushed off the men who ran in front of us with his right fist. He had a heavy fist—that fellow! I saw one man’s nose start bleeding. And a few more were knocked over like ninepins. It only takes one white man to ball out a crowd of niggers and spinnachers.
“‘Sorry for the rough-house, Miss Casey,’ said the engineer fellow, ‘but we have to make our get-away before these nigger police show up.’
“We made it! We ran along the crooked streets that I’d thought were so funny when I drove up from the boat; but they weren’t quite as funny when we were running along them in the dark and I was catching my heels in the holes between the big paving blocks that didn’t fit even against each other. One of the heels came off, and we didn’t have time to go back and pick it up. I hobbled along as well as I could, holding on to the engineer fellow’s nice hard arm. I didn’t want to fuss when he was being such a good sport.
“All the way down to the docks the engineer fellow was telling me, as well as he could for running and dodging from shadow to shadow of the squatty houses, and looking up and down each street that we had to cross, what I was to do when I got to New Orleans. But I didn’t hear a word he said: I was so busy thinking how nice it was to have a man like that taking care of me—and how strong his arm was. If I’d stopped thinking about his arm and thought more about what he was saying to me, I’d have been better off. But you never are foxy at the time that you ought to be.