She said, “I hate the name Florence. It sounds like I crochet and gossip and succumb in the afternoon to hot flashes.”

“Whereas I hear you’ve rustled saddle stock and cattle and you came to Silver City after a chase. Some prevaricator even told me you wear chaps of Angora goat hair and pretend you’re a boy named Tom King. That’s the most peculiar thing I ever heard.”

The woman blushed a little and turned a page of the menu before her; my brother snatched up the second menu and glanced at it, rocking back in his chair. “Can I eat with you? I’m famished.”

Miss Moore said, “Certainly.”

Bob gazed at her. “Well, isn’t that the most peculiar thing you ever heard?”

She smiled. “Lots of people are famished. Often two or three times a day.”

Bob thumped forward on his chair. “I’m talking about the rustling and all the rest of it. They say you’ve busted out of every jail the marshals locked you in. They hint that you kneel for the deputies.”

“And are you repelled?”

He crossed his legs. “I find it mysterious.”

The woman cook lumbered out of the kitchen to the table and listened to each of them order with her red wet hands on her hips and her black hair all in spikes. When the cook was gone, my brother lifted up his water glass in toast. “I’ve just been recalling my past and I’ve got to say that you’re the most beautiful and striking woman I’ve ever shared a table with.”

She said thank you like she was bored.

He said, “I’m not a flatterer. If you were ordinary I’d just go out to some porch chair and snatch the wings off bluebottle flies. When I say I’m a true admirer of yours I want it taken seriously.”

“Serious is a little hard for me, given the circumstances. How would it be if I just winced now and then?”

Bob rocked back in the chair so that the front legs were off the ground. Then the chair thudded down and he sat forward close to the table and said, “You’re an available woman in a city stacked high with cowboys who grab at themselves and miners who share sleeping bags and drummers who can’t remember the time the chippy under them wasn’t looking at the clock, and not one of those optimists won’t slide you notes and say how like a rose you are when what he’s really wondering is how he’ll get his hands under your dress. I’ll leave off all of that, thank you. I’m here to say I’m interested; that’s all.”

Miss Moore considered him with some amusement. “There’s this suddenness about you.”

He nodded. “Yes, there is.”