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signing permission to dig up those rocks.
    The gentleman was unmoved by the mayor’s ranting and waited him out. He looked a bit regretful at the mayor’s language but not angry.
    “You’ll give permission tonight, Mr. Jones, or you’ll regret it.” He had a lovely voice, with the slightest hint of France, that made me want to sit down and listen.  
    “What are you going to do to me? You’re just a fancy lawyer for the Santiago Trust with no say over what goes on here. This is my town and I say there’s no digging until I’m happy. You understand?”
    “I understand that Susanville will have another mayor within a week.”
    I shivered at his tone of voice. I’d heard threats before but only from drunkards and fools. His words were a promise that chilled the air.  
    The mayor was shocked for a moment and then he sneered. “Never happen, not in my town.”
    The gentleman shrugged slightly. “We’ll see.”
    “What’re you doing out this late, Annie?” Bixby smelled like cheap whisky as he leaned down to talk to me. I flinched, wishing I had kept going instead of looking at the stranger. Bixby was a regular at Miss Jessie’s and every girl tried to evade her time with him.  
    “Heading to work, Mr. Bixby.” I stayed put, knowing from hard experience just how much he liked women who ran.
    “Well, now, isn’t that fine? I was just heading that way myself.”  
    I tried to think of something to say but my mind kept seeing me seated in a car next to Bixby. Then the stranger’s voice sliced into the silence.
    “The lady is traveling with me.”
    Bixby laughed as he spun to face the stranger but he fell silent under the stranger’s glare.  
    “If you wish to be useful, Bixby, you may put the lady’s suitcase into my car. After that, I’m sure that you and Mr. Jones have business elsewhere.”
    My eyes widened as Bixby meekly took my suitcase and carried it to a beautiful Packard parked next to us. I couldn’t have said anything to save my life. The mayor snarled something that began with a string of unprintable syllables and the stranger spun on him.
    “You will respect this lady’s presence, Mr. Jones, or you will be silent. Do you understand?”
    Mayor Jones spat a string of tobacco juice and sneered. “You’re a fool for treating her like a lady when she’s available to any man who can find a chicken to pay with.”
    He started to say more but suddenly stopped and clutched his throat. I stared at him and then at the stranger, who was studying the mayor regretfully, as if saddened by the mayor’s words.  
    “Since you have nothing of consequence to say, Mr. Jones, I will bid you farewell. I look forward to dealing with the next mayor about the excavation.”
    “That’ll be twenty years from now,” Mayor Jones managed to choke out and the stranger laughed at him. I was very glad that he wasn’t laughing at me.  
    “Mademoiselle, will you do me the honor of accompanying me?” The stranger finished his words with a polite bow to me.  
    “My pleasure, sir.” I’d heard a girl say that in the movies and it seemed fitting for this gentleman. Then he smiled at me and offered me his arm. Suddenly the two nasty men and their mumbled curses fell away into nothingness. I was going for a drive with a fine man.
    He seated me in the car with a flourish, waiting to be sure that I was comfortably seated and my dress tucked neatly inside. I wondered if he’d reach for me after we drove off but decided being groped would be a small payment for rescuing me from Bixby.  
    “Allow me to introduce myself, mademoiselle. My name is,” he finished with something French and complicated. I blinked, caught off guard by a formal introduction.
    “Mr. Jim, Jimmy?” I tried, stumbling over the occasion and the foreign name.  
    He grinned at that. “Yes, please call me Jimmy. It will do very well.”
    “Anne Smith,” I mumbled, flushing red over my clumsiness. I hadn’t thought that I could blush about