“I sat down at one of the tables, and the fat, cream-coloured woman who ran the place came over and gave me something to drink, to cool me off, she said. It made me cool, but odd feeling. I leaned my head on my hand, so’s the floor would stop going around. And something--the heat, maybe--made me so sleepy I thought to myself I’d swap my job for a bed, if I could of found a bed. And then I realized that somebody was stroking my arm; long, pressing strokes like you give a cat’s back. There wasn’t much feeling in my arm, it was sorter dead; but I knew darned well that somebody was fooling with it. I opened my eyes wide. It was a coon who was fooling with my arm! A real coon, like we have at home--only this one spoke a lingo that I guess was Spanish. Any rate, I didn’t understand a word he said. And I jumped away from him; I never had had a coon stroke my arm, and I didn’t like it a bit. So I says to him: ‘You get away from me!’ But he laughed so all his teeth showed; and he reached over and grabbed me. That waked me up sure enough; and I kicked and screamed. And the next thing I knew a white man had come across the room and lifted that coon by the scruff of his neck and thrown him in a corner. I’ve seen fights in my day--but say! I never saw a prettier one than that! The white man cleaned out the crowd! “The cream-coloured woman rushed over and began jabbering at him; and the dudes with the diamond buttons stood close by and laughed and whispered to each other in their crazy talk, and pushed their shoulders up in the air until you couldn’t see their big ears; but that American paid no attention to them. He treated them so like scum that I was proud to be standing by him. “The American took me by the arm--not spoony; just sort of as if he was boss around those diggings--and walked me over to a table in a far corner, away from the jabbering dudes. We sat down. I was sorter nervous by that time. There was something I didn’t get, if you know what I mean? So that man tells me: “‘This is no place for an American girl! How’d you come here?’ “I told him all about the contract I’d signed to dance there. And I told him about Teddy, and everything else I could think of. He was a comfort in the midst of all those funny people. He didn’t smell of perfume, and he had on plain white clothes, and they were clean around the collar and cuffs. Different, that’s all. While I was talking, he sat there looking at me with his eyes half shut, like he was sizing me up. And every now and then he’d nod his head. Once I heard him muttering something about: ‘My first assay would be--pure gold!’ And I got scared; I thought that he was crazy, too. But when he saw how I was getting as far away in my chair as I could, he laughed--first time he’d laughed. And I noticed that his nose stayed quiet while he was laughing, instead of working up and down like the dagos’ noses did. And his eyes laughed; and the dagos’ eyes don’t laugh. That made me trust him.