"Tom," she said, her voice low and appealing, "Tom, I never had any idea you loved me. And I'm awfully sorry I can't love you. Truly, I am. But we can be friends, can't we?" "Friends! Friends!" The words were like a curse. "Why not?" Loudon, head lowered, looked at her under his eyebrows. "Then it all didn't mean nothin'?" He spoke with an effort. "All? All what? What do you mean?" "Yuh know what I mean. You've been awful nice to me. Yuh always acted like yuh enjoyed havin' me around. An' I thought yuh liked me--a little. An' it didn't mean nothin' 'cept we can be friends. Friends!" Again the word sounded like a curse. Loudon turned his head and stared unseeingly out of the window. He raised his hand and pushed his hair back from his forehead. A great misery was in his heart. Kate, for once in her life swayed by honest impulse, stepped forward and laid a hand on his arm. "Don't take it so hard, Tom," she begged. Loudon's eyes slid around and gazed down into her face. Kate was a remarkably handsome girl, but she had never appeared so alluring as she did at that moment. Loudon stared at the vivid dark eyes, the parted lips, and the tilted chin. Her warm breath fanned his neck. The moment was tense, fraught with possibilities, and--Kate smiled. Even a bloodless cucumber would have been provoked. And Loudon was far from being a cucumber. His long arms swept out and about her body, and he crushed her gasping against his chest. Once, twice, three times he kissed her mouth, then, his grasp relaxing, she wrenched herself free and staggered back against the table. Panting, hands clenched at her throat, she faced him. Loudon stood swaying, his great frame trembling. "Kate! Oh, Kate!" he cried, and stretched out his arms. But Kate groped her dazed way around the table. Physically and mentally, she had been severely shocked. To meet a tornado where one had expected a summer breeze is rather shattering to one's poise. Quite so. Kate suffered. Then, out of the chaos of her emotions, erupted wild anger. "You! You!" she hissed. "How dare you kiss me! Ugh-h! I could kill you!" She drew the back of her hand across her mouth and snapped her hand downward with precisely the same snap and jerk that a Mexican bartender employs when he flips the pulque from his fingers. "Do you know I'm engaged to Sam Blakely? What do you think he'll do when he finds this out? Do you understand? I'm going to marry Sam Blakely!" This facer cooled Loudon as nothing else could have done. Outwardly, at least, he became calm. "I didn't understand, but I do now," he said, stooping to recover his hat. "If you'd told me that in the first place it would have saved trouble." "You'd have been afraid to kiss me then!" she taunted. "Not afraid," he corrected, gently. "I wouldn't 'a' wanted to. I ain't kissin' another man's girl." "No, I guess not! The nerve of you! Think I'd marry an ignorant puncher!"