They all flew except Teddy and Philip and the stranger with the hat. They were going to dine, Bob said, and then play bridge. The stranger was a puzzled frightened woman from Austria who had come over to paint Indians. She was going on to Japan to paint cherry-blossoms. The Indians were an interlude between cherry-blossoms in Japan and chestnut blossoms in Paris. Teddy remembered seeing some of her work in the Modern Wing of the Museum; he had thought then for a few stormy moments that they had no business being there, and now, looking at her, he was sure of it. She was open-mouthed and passive under an onslaught of information. Bob loved to give information about his country. In the dining-room they chatted thus: Bob shining with happiness. His dour Mexican maid served the soup. “You have mountains too, of course,” he said, and Miss Kolbenhayer nodded. “But I always think that it is not the mere rocks and stones and trees that make the mountains. Here we have something else to contend with: the smouldering forces of the American Indian.” Miss Kolbenhayer’s soup-spoon stopped at the edge of her plate. “But here they are quite tame, is it not so?” “Unfortunately they are, for the most part,” he admitted. “It is the mixed breed that is prone to strange outbursts. Things go on here ... religious frenzies ... crimes of innocence.... I suppose no one had told you of the Red River crime?” No one had. “Now, there’s an instance.” Bob gave up the soup proposition for the evening. “A girl from the East with her newly married husband and a guide went on a hunting north of here. They met a sheep-herder, a Mexican. A mere boy; sixteen, I think. He came up to their camp-fire one night. It is the law of the mountains: they gave him food. The next morning he went on with them and they gave him a gun to carry. Now, he had noticed the girl, and he wanted her.” Bob bit ferociously into the cracker and repeated, “Wanted her. So he shot the husband.” He stared at Miss Kolbenhayer. Flo twisted around and looked, “Hmmm. Shot the husband and the guide. They died immediately.” “Oh!” “Immediately. The girl ran seven miles to Red River, where she sobbed out her story and fainted.” Bob’s round little face beamed with pride. “The strangest thing is what the sheep-herder said at the trial. When they asked him if he had anything to offer in defence he said that the devil had entered his soul. In a way he was right, poor chap.” Miss Kolbenhayer shuddered. “It’s like your Chicago.” “Oh, Chicago,” said Bob in scorn. “That is a commercial city. The crimes are commercial and stupid. Here we are faced with a mysterious people.”