E-text prepared by Al Haines

      file which includes the original illustration.
      See 23885-h.htm or 23885-h.zip:
      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/3/8/8/23885/23885-h/23885-h.htm)
      or
      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/3/8/8/23885/23885-h.zip)

THE FIFTH ACE

by

DOUGLAS GRANT

Frontispiece by George W. Gage

[Frontispiece: "Peach of a town," he repeated with added conviction]

Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
New York

Copyright, 1918, by
W. J. Watt & Company

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

     I. GENTLEMAN GEOFF'S BILLIE
    II. A SUPERFLUOUS KNIGHT-ERRANT
   III. THE COMING OF EL NEGRITO
    IV. GENTLEMAN GEOFF PASSES THE DEAL
     V. A GRINGO CINDERELLA
    VI. TIA JUANA'S CAULDRON COOLS
   VII. ALIEN KIN
  VIII. WILLA SITS IN
    IX. BIRDS OF A FEATHER
     X. AN ACE IN THE HOLE
    XI. A CHANGE OF FRONT
   XII. COALS OF FIRE
  XIII. THE CHALLENGE
   XIV. THE KNIGHT-ERRANT ONCE MORE
    XV. GONE
   XVI. THE POOL OF THE LOST SOULS
  XVII. ANGIE SCORES
 XVIII. MIDNIGHT FOR CINDERELLA
   XIX. THE VENDER OF TOMALES
    XX. WINNIE MASON STANDS BY
   XXI. THE RETURN OF TIA JUANA
  XXII. WHERE TRAILS MEET
 XXIII. THE SLIPPER OF CINDERELLA
  XXIV. THE LOST SOULS' TREASURE
   XXV. INTO HER OWN

THE FIFTH ACE

CHAPTER I

GENTLEMAN GEOFF'S BILLIE

Kearn Thode mounted his pinto and rode out of the courtyard of the
Baggott Hotel and down the Calle Rivera under a seething tropic sun.
Limasito's principal street was well-nigh deserted in the lethargy of
the noon-day siesta, but the flower-market was a riotous blaze of color
in the glistening white plaza, from which radiated broad vistas of
fantastically painted adobe and soberer concrete, ending in a soft
green blur.

The young petroleum engineer had pictured a ten-year-old boom town in
the Mexican oil belt as a wilderness of rough shacks and board
sidewalks, with possibly a dancehall or two and an open-air movie as
the only attractions, and the thriving little city had proved a welcome
surprise.

"Limasito," he mused.  "That means 'Little Lemon.'  Wonder who tacked
that name to this burg?  Peach of a town, I call it."

A long, low adobe house, tinted a screaming blue which rivaled the
skies, faced the southern end of the plaza, covering nearly an entire
block.  As Thode jogged past, a door in the side wall opened, and a
girl appeared.  She was tall with a lithe slenderness that betokened
well-poised strength rather than fragility.  Masses of sloe-black hair
waved beneath the broad brim of her sombrero, but her skin was
unbelievably fair and the eyes she lifted to his in frank scrutiny were
the deep blue of a wood violet.

The young man caught his breath as she turned and started across the
plaza, walking with long, free, swinging strides.

"Peach of a town," he repeated, with added conviction.  "All to the
good!"

The Calle Rivera dwindled into a dusty, white, winding road,
straggling, flower-choked gardens replaced the city blocks and gave way
in turn to haciendas whose flat fertile acres teemed with the luscious
harvest.  The pinto covered the ground at an easy lope which ate up the
miles, and Thode sat his high Mexican saddle, as easy as a
rocking-chair, scanning each turn of the road for landmarks.

The sun was well upon its western course when he reined in at a low
stout gateway.  A peon, lazily hoeing in the ditch, straightened his
bent back and eyed the stranger in mild curiosity.

"This Hallock's ranch?" Thode asked, laconically.

The peon nodded and waved a brown hand toward the house half hidden
among the trees.

"Señor Hallo', si, Señor."

The engineer wheeled and cantered up the winding driveway, with the
serried rows of grapefruit trees spreading out endlessly on either side
of the little rising where the square white ranch-house squatted, its
broad wings outstretched like those of a brooding hen.

In the shade of a mahogany tree, an excessively fat, excessively bald
person sprawled in a low chair by a rustic table, alternately sipping
from the tall glass at his elbow and mopping his ruddy glabrous brow
with a vivid bandanna.

He rose to his short legs as Thode swung himself from the saddle and
advanced.

"Mr. Hallock?"

"That's me, Stranger.  Howdy!"  He held out a pudgy hand, and noting
the fresh coat of sunburn on his visitor, he added: "Just come over the
border?"

"Further than that, Sir; from New York.  I'm Kearn Thode.  Perhaps Mr.
Larkin mentioned me to you; Perry Larkin, of the Mexamer Oil Company."

"To be sho'!  I'm right glad to see you, Thode."

Benjamin Hallock pumped his hand vigorously.  "Been kinder expectin'
you down in these parts.  We'll set a spell out here, it's hotter'n
blazes inside.  Hey, Luis!  Juan!"

Two mozos scurried from the veranda in response to the bull-throated
roar, and Thode found himself seated opposite his host with another
tall glass before him and a slender black cigar between his fingers.

"Great country for you folks, down here," Hallock remarked.  "We've got
the largest producing oil wells in the world right in this leetle strip
of land along the Gulf and, at that, the undeveloped resources are a
damn' sight greater'n you can judge from what's been brought to light.
Yes, Sir, I shouldn't be surprised any day to strike a gusher right
here on my ranch!  Rufe Terwilliger, twelve miles yonder at the Dos
Zapotes, spudded in only six months ago on a hunch, and now with the
valve-gate only part-way open, he's bringing in a thousand barrels a
day!"

"I know that the development which has taken place here is, speaking
relatively to the possibilities, only a beginning," Thode assured the
heated enthusiast.  "I'm down here to look after Mr. Larkin's
interests, and those of the Mexamer Company with a view to extending
their holdings if I can pick up anything promising.  By the way, Mr.
Hallock, that was a curious yarn you told Mr. Larkin, about some
mysterious lost pool in a swamp with surface oil indications.  He
happened to mention it one day.  The Pool of the Lost Souls, wasn't it?"

Hallock nodded, grinning expansively.

"You've got it right," he chuckled.  "So Larkin bit, did he?  It's
nothing but pure bunk, one of those old Mex' legends that run back to
the beginning of time.  We pass it on to every green operator from over
the border, but I reckoned Larkin was too wise a bird to take any stock
in it."

"He didn't," Thode returned carelessly.  "Up in Oklahoma where I've
been locating some sections for the company there are any amount of
Indian myths and queer old traditions handed down from the first
settlers, and I made a collection of them.  It's rather a hobby of
mine.  I was discussing them with Mr. Larkin when he recalled this odd
tale.  He had forgotten the particulars, but he said you would be able
to supply them.  The pool was supposed to be located somewhere around
here, wasn't it?"

"Anywhere within a radius of two hundred miles."  His host drained his
glass and settled back comfortably.  "I judge it about that, for I've
been pretty much over this whole country and it's only around these
parts that you hear of the Lost Souls' Pool.  I got the tale from a
hunchbacked half-breed and he got it from his grandmother.

"It seems that away back in the times when the Spaniards were scrapping
with the Indians for a foothold, an old grandee named Del Reyes had
staked out a claim hereabout.  Mighty poor judgment he showed, too, for
he wouldn't have known what to do with oil if he'd found it in those
days and by all accounts the land couldn't have been much good for
anything else; swampy and low-lying, without even timber.  He had a
beautiful daughter, Dolores, of course.  Funny how that gal Dolores
manages to get herself mixed up in every yarn below the border, ain't
it?  There was a kid brother, José, too, but he don't figure much.

"Dolores must have been some Jane for all the male population, what
there was of it, went plumb loco about her, among 'em a young Spanish
explorer and the son of the chief of the tribe, whose claims Del Reyes
and the rest had jumped.  Dolores favored the explorer, but the young
chief had seen her first, and being a simple-hearted child of nature,
he decided that the way to get what he wanted was to go right out after
it.

"Accordingly, he showed up unexpected at the Del Reyes hacienda with
his outfit one moonlight night and laid hands on the gal.  Dolores was
packing a knife, though, and she let him have it, full to the hilt.
His outfit vamoosed, taking the corpse with them, and the settlement
got ready for trouble.

"Nothing happened, howsomever, until the night of the fiesta for
Dolores' marriage to the explorer.  Then the old chief dropped in,
informal like, and wiped out the whole wedding party.  He macheted all
but the bride, throwing the bodies into a shallow pool on the claim.
Her he roped up, tied heavy weights to and stood up in the pool; the
water came about to her shoulders.  Then he held the knife before her
eyes, the knife she'd stuck his son with, and waited for the weights to
drag her down.  I reckon he waited some time, for Dolores must have
been a right-strong young woman, but she went under finally.  The only
one that escaped the pool was the kid brother, José, and him the old
chief carried off.

"According to the yarn, Dolores still breathes in the pool, the bubbles
rise to the surface and there's a murmuring from the other souls that
went down unshriven.  What's more, the water is never ruffled but
smooth and glassy, with streaks that gleam in the moonlight.  Of
course, that's oil, all right, or would be if the pool ever existed,
but nobody's found it yet."

"It's got the punch to it, as a story."  Thode paused to relight his
cigar.  "Did your hunchbacked friend give you any further description
of the pool itself or its location?"

"Nothing to work on, Son.  This flat part of the country don't run much
to scenery.  He did say something about a mahogany tree close by, that
grew up with two outstretched branches like a cross and then turned to
stone, but I'm not letting my peons loaf on the job while I go moseying
around looking for it."

"It's a great little ranch you have here."  Thode turned in his chair
to survey the close-packed avenues of low-hanging trees.  "Any oil on
your land, Mr. Hallock?"

"Not here.  Got two gushers over near Tuxpam, next to some property
that I reckon you'll want to look into for the Mexamer people.  Larkin
told me himself that he thought of taking it over."

The talk drifted into a discussion of relative values and prospects,
and when Thode cantered down the driveway an hour or so later he had
secured a good working knowledge of the surrounding country with which
to commence his labors.  He had parted with some little difficulty from
his host, who insisted on sending in to Limasito for the young
engineer's baggage and wholeheartedly desired that he make the Hacienda
de Rosa his headquarters.

Kearn Thode, however, had other intentions.  He must be free to go and
come as he pleased on his mission and he determined to make the town
itself the center of his activities.  Moreover, Hallock's hacienda was
a bachelor establishment and in Limasito there were girls; girls with
blue eyes and black hair and incredibly white skin, who looked a man
straight in the eyes and made him feel as if maybe he'd found a friend.

That blue adobe house on the southern end of the square began to loom
large in the architecture of Limasito.  Thode had caught a glimpse of
the patio as he swung past; it had looked cool and green and inviting,
with a fountain playing and little tables scattered about.  What was
it, anyway, and how could one meet a girl who lived there?

The curious old tale of the Lost Souls' Pool was temporarily forgotten
in speculations of a more warmly personal nature.  Was she an
Americano?  She seemed of too fair a type for a native daughter, in
spite of her dark hair, and that, together with her violet-blue eyes,
gave more than a hint of Irish ancestry.  What could bring a girl of
her sort to a boom town below the border?

So absorbed was the young engineer in his cogitations that he had
reached the outskirts of Limasito before he awoke from his reverie.
The swiftly falling curtain of twilight had wrapped the spreading
orchards and haciendas in fragrant gloom and a myriad of mysterious
chirpings and rustlings forecasted the coming night, when the harsh,
grating screech of a horn blared upon their monotone and a low roadster
appeared suddenly around a turn in the road, careening sharply on two
wheels, and bore down recklessly upon the lone rider.

Thode's pony was quicker than he and leaped aside barely in time to
avoid disaster as the car shot past and hurtled on into the dusk.  He
turned in his saddle and watched its unlighted shape swerve drunkenly
from side to side of the road, until a further turn hid it from view.
With a muttered imprecation, he gave the sure-footed pinto its head,
and as it floundered out of the ditch the white, jeering face of the
man at the wheel, as he had seen it in that flashing glimpse, rose
again before his consciousness.  It seemed for a startling instant to
be grimly, portentously familiar, then the fancy faded before the fact
of its obvious absurdity, and he laughed contemptuously.  The danger of
the moment had played tricks with his nerves.

A long-drawn, tremulous moan from the roadside broke in upon his
thoughts and he halted the pinto abruptly.  A small crumpled figure lay
face downward in the ditch, twisting and quivering like a shot rabbit,
and, bending over it, Thode saw a slender feminine form which made his
pulse miss a beat or two and then race on with unaccountable
acceleration.  He flung himself from the saddle and reached the edge of
the ditch, hat in hand, just as a pair of soft violet eyes were raised
to his.  It was the girl of the adobe house on the plaza.

"There has been an accident?" he stammered.

She nodded briefly.

"Put on your hat and help me tote him.  He lives in that shack just
over yonder."

Her voice was low and musically clear, but it bore a ring of authority
as well as of impatience at the obviousness of his question, and Thode
meekly obeyed.

The prostrate figure was that of a boy, dark-skinned and thin to the
point of emaciation.  He was clad only in a ragged shirt and trousers,
with a battered straw hat lying torn and crushed beside him.

"Stand aside, please.  I can carry him," Thode directed, and as he
slung the inert form gently over his shoulder he saw that the boy's
shoulders were pathetically humped.

In spite of his assertion, he found it no easy matter to struggle up
from the steep ditch, cumbered by his helpless burden, but the girl
steadied it with a capable hand and leaped lightly up beside him.

"Put him across your galapago, I'll walk on the other side and hold him
up.  It's only to that shack there, where the light is."

Again Thode obeyed, but he could not forbear a further query.

"You are not hurt yourself, are you?  It was that maniac in the car who
ran him down?"

"I came on him just now, lying that-a-way in the ditch.  Poor little
José!  I know who did it, though; he passed me a minute before, going
like hell.  It was Wiley."

Thode started as the forceful comparison fell artlessly from her lips,
but at the final word a hot wave as of rage swept through his veins and
receded, leaving him tense and cold.  So his vision had not tricked
him, after all.  The man in the car had been no stranger.

"I know.  He almost ran me down, too."  Thode set his jaw firmly.  "Is
this where we turn off?"

"This" was a narrow rutted lane, half-obliterated in the encroaching
underbrush, at the end of which a weather-beaten shack squatted in a
clump of zapote trees.  As they drew up in the little cleared space
before it the door opened and a shriveled, white-haired woman peered
out, a light held high in her trembling hand.

"Madre de Dios!" she cried.  "José!"

The girl turned to her with a rapid flow of soft liquid Spanish and the
old crone, weeping and muttering, stood aside to let them enter.  Thode
was forced to stoop under the low, sagging doorway and he stumbled as
he made his way to a rickety bed in the corner and laid his burden down.

The girl took the light from the old shaking hands and together they
bent above the injured lad.

"I don't think there are any bones broken," Thode announced at last.
"But he's had a pretty bad shaking up for a cripple and that is rather
a nasty cut on his head.  Can you find anything clean to tie it up
with?"

Without reply the girl stooped, turned back her short khaki skirt and
tore a wide strip from a snowy petticoat.  Then with a basin of water
dipped from the bucket upon a bench beside them she bathed and bandaged
the wound deftly.  The old crone had lighted a flaring oil lamp and by
its leaping glow Thode saw to his surprise that the shack although old
and ramshackle was scrupulously, incredibly clean, and its chatelaine
bore herself not without a certain dignity, despite her agitation.

She was tall and stiffly angular with piercing black eyes deep-set in
her wrinkled face, and there was a peculiar wild grace in the rapid
gestures of her withered claw-like hands.  She hovered anxiously about
as between them Thode and the girl ministered to the stricken lad, and
dropped to her knees as his eyes opened at length.

For a moment his startled gaze roved over them and then settled upon
the face of the girl.

"Señorita!"  His voice was a mere convulsive whisper.  "Señorita!  It
was the Americano, Señor Wiley!  He cursed me and laughed!  I heard him
when he struck me!"

"Never mind, José.  You must rest and get well quickly and then we will
attend to Señor Wiley.  I will come to you to-morrow.  Tia Juana--" she
laid her hand gently on the old woman's bowed shoulder--"I will send
Margarita--"

The rest was lost in a rapid patter of Spanish, but its purport was
unmistakable, for the woman seized her hand and kissed it, and even the
boy flashed a worshiping smile.

As they turned to the door, Thode jingled some coins in his pocket
tentatively, but the girl stopped him with a decisive gesture, and when
the door closed behind them and they stood out in the starlit darkness,
she gave a little, soft, low gurgle of laughter.

"Reckon you're new to these parts!" she exclaimed.  "Let her see one
wink o' gold, and you'd have been knifed good and proper.  Tia Juana's
no beggar, to be insulted with alms.  She's proud; some of the
half-breeds are, when the strain is strong enough."

"I didn't know," Thode responded humbly.  "I'd like to do something for
the kid.  Shall I send a doctor out, if I can find one?"

The girl shook her head.

"He'll do, all right.  It was a wicked thing to run him down like that,
but Wiley hasn't got the decency of a coyote, and he had it in for
José."  She broke off suddenly, and held her hand out to the young
engineer.  "Adios, stranger, and thanks for your help."

"But won't you let me take you home, or wherever you are going?" Thode
asked.

"No, thanks.  I left my basket down in the ditch--"

"I'll get it for you," he urged.  "It isn't safe for a girl like you to
go about alone after nightfall in a place like this."

The girl's eyes sought his wonderingly in the darkness.

"Me?" she ejaculated.  "Stranger, I came to this town when it was
nothing but four shacks and a gusher, and I know everyone in it, white,
yellow and Mex.  Not safe?  Why every dog knows Gentleman Geoff's
Billie!"

"You?" he stammered.

"That's me.  My Dad is Gentleman Geoff," she explained proudly.  "He
owns the Blue Chip, and it's the squarest gambling-house from Chihuahua
to Campeche.  It's kind of you to offer to go with me, but I don't need
any protection.  I sort of belong to Limasito, I reckon.  Adios!"

CHAPTER II

A SUPERFLUOUS KNIGHT-ERRANT

Kearn Thode rode back to his hotel with his brain in a whirl.  That
girl with the sweet, steady eyes and naïve, fearless manner, the
product of a gambling-house and associate of its habitués?  The thought
filled him with repugnance akin to horror.  He was in no sense a prig,
but although this was his first venture below the Rio Grande, he had
spent three years in the roughest corners of the West and he knew the
type of women who infested the dance-halls and gambling-joints; unclean
camp-followers of the army of Chance.

How had she grown to budding womanhood without contamination in such an
atmosphere?  Self-reliant she had shown herself to be, but tender in
her pitying care of the injured boy and innocently free from coquetry
or cynical suspicion in her frank acceptance of the stranger.  There
had been open amusement in her tone at his suggestion of danger to her
from any in Limasito, and genuine love and pride when she spoke of her
father and his calling.  How was it possible that the mire of her
surroundings had left her untouched?

The huge, squat adobe house was ablaze with light as he urged his jaded
pony into a gallop to pass it quickly.  Lights gleamed also in the
patio and Chinese servants flitted here and there among the crowded
tables.  He felt a hot surge of resentment as the subdued murmur of
masculine voices and jarring laughter floated after him.  What an
environment for such a girl!

After a hasty wash-up and a meal he sought further enlightenment from
his landlord.  It was promptly and enthusiastically forthcoming.

"The Blue Chip?"  Jim Baggott tilted his chair back restfully against
the wall.  "Finest place in the country; square as a die and the sky's
the limit to a regular hombre.  Gentleman Geoff's just about one
hundred per cent. man, and don't you forget it.  Everything's on the
level at his place."

"Got a daughter, hasn't he?" Thode asked, proffering a cigar.

"You're on.  Fine gal, too.  Ain't afraid of nothing, Billie ain't.
When the Yellow Jack hit us, two years ago, and not another woman in
town--and damn' few o' the men, fur that matter--but cleared out,
Billie went right in under the flag with the old Doc, and stayed till
the fever was stamped out.  Thin as a wisp o' cotton she was, when it
was all over; face no wider'n this----" he measured with a burly thumb
and forefinger--"and eyes clean gone into the back of her head, but she
only grinned and said it had been fun while it lasted, to fight the
thing.  First day she was out o' quarantine, she rode thirty miles to
Dan Willoughby's 'cienda 'cause she heard he was on a tear and
mistreating his kids and she brought him to terms, too.  There ain't an
hombre in town that don't worship her and even the women like her."

"I saw her to-day," remarked Thode.  "She's a remarkably pretty girl."

Jim bit the end off his cigar and spat it forth with emphasis.

"Wal, we 'uns that've watched her grow up from a rangy, long-legged,
stringy-haired leetle colt think more o' what she is than what she
looks like, but now that you mention it, I'll lay there ain't a Jane
this side o' the border and mighty few above it that can give her odds
on looks.  And there ain't a man in these parts but has his trigger set
for the guy that'd look cross-eyed at her."

There was a friendly but unmistakable hint in the concluding words and
the young engineer went to bed in a curious reversal of sentiment.
Gentleman Geoff had evidently earned his title; and from the tawdry,
fevered atmosphere of the Blue Chip his daughter, miraculously enough,
seemed to have drawn only strength and a warm-hearted abiding faith in
human nature.

The still heat of mid-afternoon lay like a stifling veil upon the
little weather-beaten shack among the zapote trees, when Gentleman
Geoff's Billie lifted the latch next day.  The single room was empty
save for the boy who tossed restlessly upon his pallet, but the
movement ceased and the sunken eyes glowed in the thin brown face, as
she bent over him.

"The pain is better, comment?" she asked gently.  "See, José!  I have
brought you broth and wine."

He stammered his gratitude with weak but fervent voice, then the elfin
face darkened.

"The Señor Wiley!" he muttered.  "It was because I would not tell him
of the Pool!  He is great and strong and he would crush me for that I
keep silencioso, but when I am cured of this hurt----"

"We will pay back the score to the Señor Wiley."  The girl spoke
quietly, but a swift ominous light gleamed for a fleeting moment in her
eyes, turning their blue to steel.  "We'll teach him what fair play
means in Limasito!  But where is thy grandmother, José?"

The lad shivered in spite of the heat.

"She stirs her cauldron," he whispered.  "She crept in at the dawn and
since she has muttered of strange things.  There must have been a
warning, Señorita."

With a stifled exclamation, Billie straightened and crossed to the
door.  A thin spiral of smoke rose like a gray wisp above the zapote
trees and a low-crooned, rhythmic chant was borne to her on the
stirless air.  Without hesitation she followed the narrow, scarcely
discernible path toward the opening in the clump of trees.

A battered pot was slung above a blaze of dried wood and before it Tia
Juana sat upon her heels, swaying from side to side with half-closed
eyes and outstretched tremulous hands.

For a moment the girl paused, and then stepped forward.

"What is it, Tia Juana?" she asked softly in Spanish.  "Would you brew
a cure for José or a curse for the evil which has befallen him?"

The swaying ceased and the arms dropped as the old woman turned swiftly.

"Neither, Señorita, but I would learn the truth," she responded
solemnly.  "Last night I beheld a thing which passed my understanding,
but of it only evil can come, and I would know it now."

"What did you see?" asked Billie, seating herself on a moss-grown log.
"What was this evil thing, Tia Juana?"

"I went to the hacienda of the Señor Wiley."  The old woman announced
simply.  "He had harmed my José, child of my blood, and I would have
taken revenge upon him."

"Tia Juana, that was wrong!" Billie cried.  "I have told my father and
he will see that justice is done.  You--you found him?"

Tia Juana nodded and her thin lips compressed.

"Behind the casito where the carro is stored I came upon him in the
shadow.  Beside him was a figure I could not see, to whom he talked low
and quickly, with many gestures.  Me he did not see, and I waited.
Then in a moment, Señorita, the figure moved so that the moonlight fell
upon him.  It was that messenger of the Evil One, De Soria."

"John Sawyer?" the girl repeated in a hushed tone.

"So you know him, Señorita."  The old woman's lip curled.  "Before your
coming, or ever a rooftree was raised in Limasito, he was Juan De
Soria, son of thieves and black of heart as his master's skin."

The girl shivered.

"El Negrito!" she whispered.  "You think he came from Alvarez?  But
what dealings does the Americano Wiley have with El Negrito?"

The old woman muttered and her withered, clenched hand struck her
breast.

"It is that which I would see in the cauldron," she hissed.  "Before El
Negrito, comes always his creature, De Soria, and with him come fire
and looting and death!  The Señor Wiley turns all things to his purpose
and if he has sold himself to the Evil One and traffics with El
Negrito, I would be warned.  I have seen one of his raids, Señorita; it
was as if the sky rained destruction and slaughter!"

Her head sank on her breast and a brief, tense silence ensued.

"I do not believe such evil of the Señor Wiley," Billie remarked at
last.  "Cruel he is and like a madman in his anger, but between him and
El Negrito there could be no covenant.  It may be that he came upon
Sawyer skulking about and was warning him off the hacienda.  Sawyer has
been in Limasito for many days, and he plays high at my father's casa."

"With what gold?" the old woman retorted.  "He who has been beggar and
thief since the hour of his birth.  Much gold he could not steal for he
has not the wit.  For what evil compact has he been paid in riches?"

The girl shrugged.

"Luck turns," she said laconically.  "Once a man came to the Blue Chip
with pesos ciento and broke the faro bank.  Fortune--buena suerte--has
smiled on as worthless ones as Sawyer.  But you, Tia Juana; what did
you do last night when you saw?"

"I crept away, silently, so that none knew of my presence and returned
to José."  Tia Juana chuckled mirthlessly.  "My vengeance can wait.
The Señor Wiley is a fool, and the son of fools!  It was not to the boy
he should have gone for knowledge of the Pool; José knows no more than
the idle words he repeated one evil day to the Señor Hallock, for which
I beat him soundly!  It is I who have seen the Pool of the Lost Souls,
only I who knows where Dolores and her lover sleep."

Her voice died in an unintelligible murmur, and the rhythmic swaying
recommenced.  The legend of the Lost Souls' Pool was no new one to
Billie; she had heard it often from the lips of the old crone, who
could never be persuaded to divulge its supposed location and the myth
had become an old settlers' joke around Limasito.

She stole away presently, leaving Tia Juana to her incantations, and
returned to the shack, but José had fallen into uneasy slumber, and
after moistening the bandage about his head, she started for home.

The old woman's account of her nocturnal adventure would not be
exorcised from Billie's thoughts.  The Señor Wiley was a young Eastern
capitalist, who held vast oil and fruit-growing properties in the
surrounding countryside.  It was incredible that he could hold any
communication with the rebel bandit and murderer, Alvarez, the "Little
Negro," whose name was enough to strike terror to native hearts.

El Negrito had pillaged and burned, raped and killed unhindered until
he was glutted with blood and loot, but that was in the old days, only
a few years ago before the newest government was in power and the white
men came in force.  Of late he had retired to the hills, the memory of
his atrocities had faded and only when news came of a burning village
far away, or the murder of a lone prospector was the sporadic attempt
to capture him renewed, and then in a half-hearted manner.

It was rumored that the nomadic, down-at-heel half-breed, John Sawyer,
was an agent of the killer, but no proof could be brought to bear upon
him and he was allowed to go his cringing way unmolested.  Billie
wondered now, with a cold, unaccustomed sense of dread, if rumor spoke
truly.  What if Sawyer were indeed the forerunner of a visitation from
the bandit of the hills?

The girl had turned mechanically into a side road, shadier than the
highway and leading by a short cut to the plaza and the heart of the
town.  She was still in the open country, with orchards stretching out
interminably on either side and not even a peon within hailing
distance, when the chug and snort of a motor reached her reluctant
ears.  Billie knew that irregular rattling hum, and insensibly
quickened her pace.

Then as the car drew close behind her she slowed, a peculiar light
glinting in her eyes.

"Buenas tardes, Señorita Billie!"  A merry, mocking voice called, and
she wheeled about.

A sallow, sandy-haired young man, with pale protruding blue eyes and
thin curling lips, sprawled low behind the wheel of his roadster,
leering familiarly at her.

"Good-afternoon," she responded formally.  "You must be in a hurry, Mr.
Wiley, to have taken this short cut instead of keeping to the highway.
It was good of you not to run me down, but the way is clear now."

She stepped aside into a mass of flowering low-grown bushes, but with a
light laugh the young man sprang from the car, hat in hand.

"I am never in a hurry to go when you are about, Billie!  But you
always run away; you never will play with me.  Why aren't you kind?"

Involuntarily she stepped back still farther as he advanced upon her.

"Are you in need of kindness?" she asked.

"I should think I was."  He paused before her, still laughing, but his
pale eyes glittered.  "You're the only girl in this God-forsaken town
that I want to be friends with, and you won't play.  Be a good sport
and come for a little ride now; I'll show you some speed."

"Thanks," she drawled, her hand moving to rest lightly on her hip.
"Have you a few more old scores to settle to-day, with that tin
Juggernaut of yours?"

A shadow had fallen across the dazzling white of the road, but neither
noted it.  The girl stood straight as a sapling, smiling up fearlessly
into the twisted, sardonic face thrust close to hers.

"You mean that yellow dog I ran over yesterday?"  The semblance of
mirth was gone from his voice.  "The fool wouldn't move quick enough,
and if anyone stands in my way I get them, sooner or later.  You're a
little queen, Billie, and you've been lording it over the roughnecks
around here so long that you think you can set your heel on the neck of
the universe.  A little cave-man stuff would be good for you, my dear."

"You being the cave-man?"  Her clear laughter rang out scornfully.
"You aren't very well acquainted with us around here, Mr. Wiley, or
you'd realize that it isn't right healthy to appoint yourself to office
in these parts.  The road is still clear, but you might find it barred
with something you couldn't run down if you don't move quick."

"You little she-cat!"  He sprang forward and seized the wrist which
swung at her side.  "You'll take a ride with me, do you hear?  And
you'll come now, or I'll pick you up and carry----"

He got no farther.  Something caught him sidewise and whirled him
headlong into the bushes, and a very calm, very resolute voice sounded
in almost forgotten tones.

"You'll pick yourself up first, Starr Wiley, and come back for more if
you want it.  You know what's coming to you!"

Billie started in sheer amazement.  There before her, sprung from
nowhere, was her companion of yesterday, the smug young man who had
wanted to play the chaperon, and who had seemed surprised and shocked
when she revealed her identity.  Her eyes blazed.

"How come you to butt in on this little argument?"  There was an
ominous note in her slow drawl.  "No one asked you to sit in, Señor
Duenna, I'm playing my own hand.  You durn fool, don't you see I had
the coyote covered all the time?"

Her hand moved from the hip pocket of her khaki skirt and he saw the
glint of the sun upon a small but business-like, blunt-nosed revolver.

Kearn Thode stepped back, his face crimson at the name she had dubbed
him as well as at the unexpectedness of her attack, and at that moment
Starr Wiley leaped, snarling, from the undergrowth.

The girl stood fascinated.  She had seen many rough-and-tumble fights
in the history of Limasito, but the clean-cut scientific way the two
lean, lithe, well-matched figures sprang to combat thrilled her.

Wiley was the heavier of the two, but indolence and dissipation had
softened him and Thode was in the pink of condition.  After the first
blind onslaught he steadied himself and parried, waiting for the
opening his opponent's uncontrolled rage would give him.  It was soon
forthcoming; a side-stepped lunge left Wiley's pallid face exposed and
Thode caught him fairly on the point of the jaw.  He shot across the
road, crumpled into the ditch and lay quivering and still, as his
victim of the day before.

Panting, Thode turned to the girl.

"I am sorry," he said stiffly.  "I didn't mean to butt in on your game,
but, having started, I had to finish."

She seemed not to have heard.  Her eyes were shining and a little spot
of clear rose showed in her cheeks as she held out her hand.

"A good, clean knock-out!" she cried.  "I wish Dad could have seen it.
You're some fighter, Mr.----?"

"Duenna," he supplied grimly.  "Do you wish me to leave you here with
him now, or shall I wait until he comes to, and see if he wants a fresh
deal?"

She laughed merrily.

"Wiley won't be looking for anything but home and a stiff drink of
hooch when he gets back to the world," she remarked.  "I reckon he's in
for quite a siesta."

"We can't very well leave him there."  Thode spoke reflectively.  "Last
time, he had a buckboard and I dumped him back into it.  The team took
him home, all right, but you can't very well expect that of a motor."

Billie eyed him curiously.

"But you've only just come, and he hasn't driven any team around here."

"We've met before."  Thode's face had darkened and his tone was terse.
"His car's drawn well up on the side of the road.  I'll just put him in
it and he can find his way when he wakes."

The girl watched as he hauled the limp body out of the ditch and thrust
it unceremoniously into the seat behind the wheel.  Wiley stirred,
grunted and then slumped forward, his head resting upon his arms.

"He'll do."  Billie gave the unconscious figure a last contemptuous
glance.  "I like the way you play when you do get into a little game,
and unless you want the whole town to be calling you 'Mr. Duenna'
inside of three days, you'd better tell me your name."

He complied, and quite naturally they swung off down the road together.

Thode stole a glance at her in utter bewilderment.  A girl who could
watch a fight without timidity or squeamishness but in impartial,
impersonal joy of the conflict was unique in his experience.  She had
been angry, contemptuous of them both; would she as heartily have
congratulated his adversary, had the tables been turned?

"You are still angry with me for my interference, Miss----?" he began,
but she stopped him with a gesture.

"I've been just 'Billie' to all Limasito since the first well was
spudded in; you don't want the boys to think you're putting notions
into my head, do you?"  She smiled, frankly.  "I hated you because I'd
bragged to you that I could take care of myself and nobody would molest
me in these parts, and then you had to come along just when it looked
as though I was a maiden in distress.  You see, I hadn't reckoned on
Wiley showing yellow; we don't have many like him in Limasito; at least
not long."

"If I thought you a maiden in distress, I proved to be a very
superfluous knight-errant," he retorted.  "You were well able to take
care of yourself, so your boast was no idle one."

"Dad taught me that," she responded simply.  "He runs the Blue Chip on
the square, but there are times when an extra ace appears in the
show-down, and then it isn't a question of who produced it, but which
one is quickest on the draw.  Five aces never grew in a straight deck,
and I sometimes think I can see the fifth ace in an hombre's eye.  I
saw it in Señor Wiley's."

"I'm going to look in at the Blue Chip, if I may."  Thode sheered the
topic away from his late antagonist, and Billie followed his lead.

"Of course you must," she said cordially.  "You'll find the whole works
going; monte, Fairbank, stud and blackjack.  There's roulette and
craps, too, but it's mostly the women who go after them."

"And you--do you play?"  He could not forebear the question.

"Dad says there never was a good bartender yet who drank."  Billie
grimaced.  "He even stopped me being mascot; it always raised a riot.
It isn't the winning hand or the stakes themselves that I care for,
it's the fun of the game, but Dad says gambling is a poor game for
women.  They never count the odds they stack up against, and when they
over-play, they're bad losers.  You'll like Dad, Mr. Thode; he's the
whitest hombre that ever crossed the Rio."

Secretly, Thode was beginning to think that he should.  The girl was an
anomaly and he was curious to see what manner of man her idol was and
learn how he had kept her so singularly free from the dross of his
world and managed to hold so unswervingly before her the real stakes of
the game, truth and honor and a high heart.

When he left her at the side door of the Blue Chip, the young engineer
held her hand for an appreciable moment longer than the occasion
demanded.

"I'm coming to-night," he announced.  "Will you--will I see you?"

"In the patio," she dimpled swiftly.  "Buena suerte!"

"Good luck!"  The phrase echoed in his brain, but oddly enough his
thoughts did not go forward to the hot, crowded, smoke-hung card-room,
or the girl waiting in the cool, fragrant darkness of the inner court,
but instead there arose before his mental eyes the vision of a
petrified wooden cross beside a glassy pool, and mingled incongruously
with it, the face of Starr Wiley, distorted as he had last seen it,
with the bruised lips twisted into a mocking leer.  Would the lightly
expressed wish of Gentleman Geoff's Billie prove a presage of victory
in the great game they two were playing?

THE COMING OF EL NEGRITO

When he entered the Blue Chip that night, Thode found play already in
full blast.  The tables were crowded, smoke hung in low-banked clouds
below the flaring oil lamps, and the glittering bar at the far end of
the room was phalanxed three deep by a jostling, good-natured throng.
Soft-footed, wooden-faced Chinese mozos glided about, and the whining
monotone of the croupier came from a distant corner.

The scene was not an unfamiliar one to the young engineer, but he
glanced about him with quickened interest.  The walls of the huge room,
like the exterior, were painted a garish blue, the floor bare but
scrubbed clean, and the chairs and tables had been obviously selected
with a view to utility and strength rather than ornamentation.  No
attempt had been made to render the place attractive and in this
Gentleman Geoff's psychology was sound; Limasito wanted its play, like
its liquor, without frills.

Leisurely, Thode approached the roulette-table and stood looking over
the shoulder of a burly drill-shirted tool-dresser as the little ball
spun in the whirling wheel and dropped into seventeen.  The
tool-dresser grunted with satisfaction and raked in the heap of silver
pushed toward him by the croupier, but one or two of the watchers
turned away.  The play was evidently not yet high enough to hold their
interest, and Thode was on the point of following when a hand clapped
his arm.

Turning, he found a tall, lean figure beside him clad in immaculate
white duck from top to toe, with a drooping gray mustache beneath a
high, thin nose, keen, twinkling eyes and a mass of grizzled, waving
hair.  He might have been anywhere between forty-five and sixty, and in
a flash his identity was disclosed to the young engineer.

"Howdy!"  The hand which had rested on his arm clasped his in a hearty
grip.  "Glad to see you here, Sir.  My daughter told me to expect you."

"You're Gentleman Geoff?" the younger man asked quickly, smiling in
return.  "My name is Thode.  I met your daughter yesterday----"

"So she told me."  The twinkle brightened in the genial eyes.  "I'm
glad of a chance to thank you for helping her with that poor little
cuss, José.  He's a special favorite of hers.  Were you thinking of
sitting in right now, Mr. Thode?"

"Not just yet.  I was having a look around----"

"Then come out where it's cool, and have a man-sized drink."

His surprising host led the way to the patio where they found a little
table close by the plashing fountain and a hovering mozo attended to
their needs.  When the servant had departed, Gentleman Geoff folded his
arms on the table and leaned forward.

"You're a newcomer, Mr. Thode, and down here we don't ask a man where
he came from or the nature of his business, as long as he attends to it
strictly and doesn't interfere with others.  There is no objection to
his playing a tight game providing he is on the level, but when he
makes a crooked move, it's time for the rest of us to take a hand.  My
Billie tells me you are an old acquaintance of this man Wiley and I am
going to ask you one question straight, Sir.  Do you know anything good
of him?"

"Well," Thode temporized, "he's rated a millionaire in New York and his
father was one of the pioneer Pennsylvania oil men.  He is a partner of
Harrington Chase, and together they hold some of the best leases in
this part of the country, I understand."

"They do.  But I was speaking of the man himself."  Gentleman Geoff's
eyes smiled a perfect understanding.  "I was wondering if there could
be some point in his favor that I'd overlooked."

"In that case, we've been mutually blind," said Thode, frankly.  "I met
him first out in Oklahoma two years ago, and I've run across him more
than once since, and I don't mind telling you candidly that each
meeting has given me less pleasure.  I didn't expect to encounter him
down here, and I guess Limasito is big enough to hold us both, but if
he wants to see me after to-day he knows where to find me."

The older man nodded, slowly.

"I reckoned as much.  He hasn't been any favorite since he blew in
here, to draw it mild, but he's getting just a little bit too offensive
for the good of the community.  I know his breed, but I didn't think
even he would snap at my Billie's heels.  I would have looked you up at
the hotel to-night to shake hands with you for what you did this
afternoon, Mr. Thode, but Billie told me you intended to pay us a
little visit."

"It was a pleasure," the other responded with sincerity.  "It has been
coming to Wiley for a long time.  But your daughter had the situation
well in hand.  She is a remarkable young woman."

"She is an honest one, honest with herself and the world.  There wasn't
much else I could teach her and it hasn't been possible for her to have
regular schooling and the influence of women.  I've always reckoned
fair play was about the biggest thing in life, and woman-like she's
gone further than my teachings and worked out an eye-for-an-eye creed
of justice for herself that would shame a vigilance committee, but
she's wholesome and sound in mind and limb."

"I've learned a little of what they think of her in this town."  Thode
hesitated, and then went on earnestly.  "I know the strict code of even
the roughest mining camps up over the border, where good women are
concerned, but I'll own that it gave me a jolt to see how freely and
fearlessly she goes about down here.  You may think, Sir, that I'm
exhibiting a lot of nerve, and it may be that I have a distorted
picture in my mind of the life in this part of the country for a young
girl like your daughter, but is she safe with all these low-caste
half-breeds about?"

"As safe as in a convent."  Gentleman Geoff's eyes had narrowed.  "I
appreciate your interest, Mr. Thode, but let me remind you that it was
a man from the States, a New York swell, who molested her this
afternoon.  There isn't a low-caste Mex' who would take a chance, for
he'd know that every gun from here to the Sierra Madre would be cocked
for him, and even the hills couldn't give him a hiding-place!  But as
to Wiley.  I had a reason apart from his little attentions to Billie,
for asking about him.  Whatever lies between you two is your own game,
but I know you better than you think, Mr. Thode.  Your chief, Perry
Larkin, told me he was sending you down, and what manner of hombre you
were.  If Larkin can trust you, I'm going to take a chance.  I thought
I had Wiley's number, but I learned something to-day, aside from that
little fracas, that makes me doubt I've given him credit for his limit
of crookedness.  Mr. Thode, do you figure that Starr Wiley is enough of
a man to be a very big rascal?"

Thode hesitated again.

"I think," he began at last, "that it would depend wholly on the size
of the stakes.  He's a coward when it comes to a show-down, but money
and place and power are his gods.  If it was a tremendous piece of
villainy with a big incentive he mightn't have the courage to see it
through himself, but he is quite capable of aiding and abetting it, or
hiring others to do it for him."

Gentleman Geoff's fists clenched and he drew a deep breath.

"That's it!" he cried.  "You've struck it, Mr. Thode!  Unless I'm
mistaken, he's dealing the biggest, crookedest hand of his life right
now, but we'll get him, Sir.  We'll show him what fair play is below
the border--"

He broke off and for a minute the two men sat in silence, straining
their ears.

Above the click of glasses and sound of many voices in the
gambling-rooms had come the sharp, staccato clatter of a horse's hoofs
upon the hard-packed road.  It was not unusual in a land where hooch
was cheap and stimulating and every drunken roysterer celebrated in the
saddle, but there was an ominous, tragic suggestion in the irregularity
of the hoof-beats as of an exhausted, failing beast urged on by grim
and vital need.

The young engineer leaped to his feet as the clatter ceased in a harsh
scraping thud, and with Gentleman Geoff beside him, he crossed the
patio and re-entered the gambling-room.  The voices had hushed as if by
magic, and every motionless figure was turned toward the entrance door.

It was flung open and a man staggered blindly over the sill, reeling
and clutching at his breast with both gnarled, sinewy hands.

"El Negrito!" his voice rose in a smothered sob.  "He's hit the trail
and coming fast.  Look out for your----"

The stranger choked, caught at his throat and crumpled slowly to the
floor, a thin scarlet stream pouring from his lips.  The silence held
for one tense moment and then pandemonium broke loose.

"A raid!  A raid!"

Hoarse cries filled the room and a mad stampede ensued, but somehow
through the rampant throng, Kearn Thode found himself before that
fallen figure.  Gentleman Geoff was still at his side, but another had
been quicker than they.  Soft hands raised the dying man's head and
Billie knelt beside him, her pallor intensified but her eyes steady and
calm.

"Sam! can you speak to me?  Where are the babies, and Mamie?"

"Gone!"  The breath whistled through the tortured lips.
"Macheted--thank God, I saw them die.  Tell Geoff--save you----"

The whisper died in a rattle and the head slumped inert against her
knee.

"It's over, Billie.  Get on down to the cellar, quick----"  Gentleman
Geoff's tones rang with command, but the girl shook her head.

"Where the liquor is stored?" she smiled.  "Alvarez's men won't leave a
cask unturned.  No, Dad, I'd rather take a chance with you, here.  If
it comes to a showdown, they won't get me."

She made a significant gesture, and the lethargy of consternation fell
from Thode as he saw for the second time that day the glint of her
revolver.

"Good God!" he exclaimed.  "Isn't there something to be done?  We're
only a handful!  Are we going to wait here for that black devil to come
and slaughter us?"

"No, Son," Gentleman Geoff drawled.  "We're going to put up the
stiffest fight we know how, but there's no help nearer than the
barracks at the oil refinery ten miles north, and El Negrito is on the
way."

As if in corroboration of his words a new sound broke all at once upon
their ears, distant at first but drawing rapidly close, a fusillade of
shots, and the pounding of a multitude of hoofs.

Gentleman Geoff drew one slim hand across his reeking forehead.

"It's come.  Boys!  Steady now, to the finish!"

"Look here, Sir!  I'm going to try for it."  Thode caught his host by
the arm.  "I can slip out before they have the house surrounded and
find a horse somewhere.  If they down me, one man more or less here
won't make any difference, and it's a chance!"

"Look!"  Gentleman Geoff waved the young engineer to a narrow window
beside the entrance door.

Down the straight level expanse of the Calle Rivera clattered an
unending stream of horsemen, their accoutrements jingling a sinister
diapason as they poured helter-skelter across the plaza in the waning
moonlight.  Tatterdemalion as they were, the ragged army were
well-organized as Thode saw at a glance; no haphazard, leaderless crew
was this, for at their head rode a diminutive, jockey-like figure, his
face glistening and ebony in the eerie radiance, his teeth flashing
white as he turned in the saddle.  The Little Nigger had come!

His company halted in an irregular line against the eastern end of the
plaza, flung themselves from their horses and came on in a rushing,
yelling horde.  A weak scattered volley rattled from the dwellings
about the square, but the raiders made unswervingly for what was
obviously their main objective, the Blue Chip, where most of the male
population, unlimited alcohol and a fabulous ransom in gold were theirs
for the taking.

They had reached the center of the Calle, when Gentleman Geoff barked a
brief command and a withering blast of shots rang forth from the
besieged garrison.  The advancing line crumpled, wavered, then at a
cat-like yowl from its dusky leader, closed in and came forward with an
answering roar.

Kearn Thode sprang from his point of vantage and faced the other man
once more with undiminished determination in his eyes.

"I've got to get to the barracks--it means death to us all if I stay
here!  Isn't there a door on the other side of the house somewhere back
of the patio?"

"Yes.  It opens on a little alley that leads to the plaza."  It was the
girl's eager voice which replied.

"And the Carranzistas, the government troops, are ten miles away to the
north.  I'm going to ride for it, Sir, it's the only chance.  I can
slip out of that alley and around the edge of the plaza to where their
horses are picketed.  There'll be interference there, and I may have a
running fight for it, but I'll take the odds."

"Come then.  You're a brave man, Mr. Thode!"  Gentleman Geoff led the
way swiftly across the patio to a little door half hidden in the
creeping vines.  But even as he laid his hand upon the rusty bolts,
there was a storm of feet in the alley and a rain of shot pattered
against the outer wall.

Gentleman Geoff stepped back with a gesture of defeat, but Thode cried
desperately:

"I can cut my way through them.  I must, Man!  Open the door!"

Instead, his companion shot the hasp of a small oblong look-out on a
level with their eyes, and Thode beheld the alley choked with figures,
their carbines bristling and maniacal, distorted faces pressed close.

"No use."  Gentleman Geoff snapped the slide in place as a stray bullet
whistled past their ears.  "It's too late.  Even had you gone when Sam
first came, they would have cut you down in the plaza.  You can only
lend a hand here."

Wordlessly, Thode stumbled back beside him to the gambling-room.  That
which but a moment before had seemed like a wild, purposeless stampede
had resolved itself into an unorganized but determined defensive.  Few
of the men had departed, those few who had ridden in from nearby
haciendas where unwarned families waited in ignorance of the menace
sweeping down upon them from the hills.

Thode worked with heaving chest and straining muscles, but his brain
was singularly clear and his observation acute.  Gentleman Geoff seemed
to be everywhere at once, urging, exhorting, commanding.  The mozos,
their yellow faces gray, were huddled in a corner, clucking like
dismayed fowl at the approach of a storm, but a word from Billie sent
them scurrying for the store of guns and ammunition.

She, too, it was who opened the door of an inner room where a group of
disheveled women, their faces ghastly beneath the cheap paint, cowered
about a roulette-table, and ranged them behind the shelter of the stout
mahogany bar, seeing to it that each was armed.

Her calm face in the tumult and smoke and dust seemed etherialized,
glorified to the wondering eyes of the young engineer; the marvel of
her strength and courage shone forth like a radiance, imbuing even the
panic-stricken Celestials with a spirit of defense.

Thode's eyes were smarting, his veins on fire and in his nostrils the
reek of powder mingled with a strange, new, sweetish odor.  The
table-top on which he stood was slippery where Rufe Terwilliger had
doubled up beside him and rolled to the floor.  Others were falling,
too, stumbling and clutching vainly for support, but Billie's slim
white figure still stood unwavering beside her father and Thode turned
grimly to his task.

Twice more the bandits charged, and twice they were beaten back,
leaving augmented blotches of huddled bodies in the road, but the toll
had been heavy within.  Groans and curses filled the air as men pitched
headlong from their loophole posts to writhe upon the floor and once a
woman's shrill scream rang out as a tawdrily clothed shape dropped
across the bar.

Thode's shoulder burned and a warm stream raced down his arm; his
forehead, too, was seared as if by a white-hot brand, but he dashed the
blood impatiently from his eyes that he might see what this sudden lull
in the hostilities portended.  He was not long in doubt for a thin
skirmish line leaped across the road, yelling like demons and firing as
they ran, and close behind their protecting curtain of shot appeared a
double row of half-crouched forms, bearing a huge battering-ram.

Heroically the little garrison sought to stem the tide of destruction,
but as quickly as a gap appeared in the on-coming wave it was filled
and the flood swept irresistibly on.  More than one narrow window now
was unmanned against the attack and as the bullets pattered like hail
through the unobstructed apertures, Thode heard a sharp little cry
which turned his heart to lead within him.

Wheeling, he saw through the murky reek that Gentleman Geoff was down
at last, his head cradled in Billie's arms, a spreading stain upon the
soft white silk of his shirt.  Thrusting his rifle into the hands of a
neighbor, Thode leaped from the table, and as he reached the girl's
side a thunderous crash smote the heavy door.

"He isn't----?"

Billie shook her head and at the unfinished sentence Gentleman Geoff's
eyelids lifted and he gazed full and understandingly into the face of
the young engineer.

"Not yet, but I'm done for.  See that--Billie--cashes in before----"

"Listen, Sir!  Can you hear me?  I'm going to make a break for it, do
you understand?"  Thode's voice rang out clear above the strife.  "How
long will that door hold?"

"An hour, maybe.  It's as solid as a rock, and the bolts are steel, but
nothing could withstand that ramming for long."  Gentleman Geoff had
rallied his waning strength to meet that new note of quickened impulse.

"It's the one chance left!  They've found by this time that they
couldn't batter down that iron door at the back, set as it is in the
solid masonry, and it may be that they've concentrated all their
efforts here on this side.  At least I'll have to try my luck and cut
through.  We've got to have the troops!  Ten level miles, and the dawn
is coming; I ought to make it and back in an hour, before the door
gives way."

Gentleman Geoff raised himself on one elbow and extended his hand.

"You're right!  It's the last chance, and maybe your luck will hold.
Go to it, Thode, I know you'll play--to win!"

The girl was staring at him with shining eyes, and he paused only long
enough to lay his hand upon her arm.

"You have your revolver--if they break through before I get back----?"

"Don't be afraid for us."  Her voice rang out steadily and clearly
above the roar of conflict.  "I'll take care of myself and Dad until
you come!  Hasta la vista!"

Thode drew a deep breath, and, turning, made for the door and across
the patio, miraculously cool and calm beneath the dimming stars.  The
little door at the farther end of the house wall was guarded now by a
dark-skinned youth whose teeth chattered in his head, and Thode, with a
hasty explanation, shot the bolts and slipped through into the
rubbish-heaped alley.

Not a living thing was in sight but a yellow cur crouching under a
cask, and Thode reached the mouth of the narrow passage to see only the
backs of the mob clustered about the corner.

The moonlight was gone, and slipping into the darker shadows of the
wall, he sped off in the opposite direction around the square to where
the moving bulk of the line of picketed horses showed at the end of an
intersecting street.

Unnoted, he reached them and laid his hand upon the bridle of the
nearest.  The beast plunged nervously and a dark figure sprang up with
a hoarse cry, which died in his throat as Thode brought his clubbed
rifle down upon his head.

Other shouts arose above the distant crash of the battering-ram; other
figures advanced, and in the patter of stray shots a horse screamed and
fell kicking among his terrorized fellows, but Thode had twitched free
the knot which haltered his mount and was off and away up the narrow
street, in a thunder of hoof-beats which outran the fusillade and
pounded steadily on into the silence of the coming dawn.

CHAPTER IV

GENTLEMAN GEOFF PASSES THE DEAL

With the departure of Kearn Thode on his mission Gentleman Geoff sank
into a stupor from which all Billie's efforts failed to arouse him.
She glanced at the little watch on her wrist.  Twenty minutes past
four!  One hour for the massive door to hold against those crashing
blows which seemed beating upon her brain.  One hour for the young
engineer to ride ten miles on an already jaded horse, provided he had
succeeded in making his perilous start, and bring the Carranzistas to
the rescue!

The din of the volley which had greeted him from the pickets could not
reach her ears above the roar of conflict surrounding her, much less
the receding hoof-beats of his mount.  From the moment of his passing
into the darkness of the patio the girl could only wait, but her spirit
was staunch and unflagging.  He would win through!  He would return in
time!

At her order, two mozos had dragged a couch from an inner room and the
insensible body of Gentleman Geoff was placed upon it.  Billie bound
the hideous gaping wound and forced a few drops of brandy between the
set lips, but he only moaned faintly and drifted into a deeper oblivion.

Twenty-five minutes of five!  Unless he were lying stark and still in
the plaza, Thode must be well upon his way.

But Billie had no time to nurse her suspense; she could not even linger
by her father's side, for there was grim and urgent work for her hands,
and one by one the women crept out from behind the comparative safety
of the bar and joined her.  Barely a man of all those who had thronged
the gambling-rooms remained unscathed, and the cries of the wounded
rang in her ears with piteous insistence.

As she passed from one fallen man to another, heedless of her own
exposure to stray bullets, administering brandy and water, improvising
rude bandages and comforting as best she might, one thought echoed like
a chant through her brain, solemn with its intensity.  He would come.
Her head seemed bursting with each reverberating crash of the
battering-ram and her heart pulsed time to the slow march of the
interminable hour, but the thought remained.  He would come.

Ten minutes to five.  Thode must have reached the barracks at the
refinery by now, unless----  She set her small teeth firmly.  Half of
the hour had passed, but already the door was sagging with each renewed
assault and the bolts were snapping beneath the strain.  She dared not
look again toward that last failing defense, dared not consult the
little watch lest her self-control, her very reason give way.  He would
come, of course, but would he be in time?

All at once the hammering strokes ceased and the rattle of rifle fire
died out in a desultory spatter as stray bullets impinged against the
stout adobe wall.

Jim Baggott from his perch upon a heap of chairs before the window
called out in amazement:

"They've drawn back clear across the road!  Reckon they've given it up
as a bad job at last!  The dawn's almost here."

"Don't fool yourself!"  A burly gang foreman rested his rifle against
the wall and seized avidly upon the dipper of water held out to him by
one of the women.  "Thanks, ma'am.--Maybe they're just taking a
breathing spell, but it's my opinion they're planning some new
devilment.  Alvarez knows that once that door's down----"

He glanced toward the woman and the sentence ended in a shrug.

"What's the matter with Geoff?"  Baggott for the first time had noted
the inert form stretched upon the couch.

"Dad's hit," Billie responded simply.

"Is he bad?" The foreman's tone was hushed.

"I'm afraid so.  He's dreadfully cold; he's--he's bleeding internally,
I think.  Perhaps, if a surgeon comes in time----"

"A what?" Baggott exploded.  "Gosh almighty, where's a surgeon coming
from?"

"From the barracks," explained Billie, naïvely.  "Mr. Thode's gone for
the troops."

"When?  How?  What do you think of that young----  Hurrah!"

The eager questions from a dozen throats ended in a husky cheer, but it
died as swiftly as it was born.  From across the road a huge dark blur
had detached itself and was moving forward stealthily to the attack.
The fusillade of shots recommenced, but a groan had started and spread
among the watchers at the windows.

"What is it?"  Billie's tone was still steady, but a chill had crept
into her veins.

"They've got a new battering-ram; looks like a telegraph pole!  No door
could hold against it," Baggott muttered.  "It's all up with us now!"

The rifles popped valiantly, but a thunderous impact fairly rocked the
house, and, fascinated, Billie watched the door bulge toward her, then
spring back into place as the topmost bolt snapped like a knife-blade.
One more onslaught, perhaps two----

Billie's hand closed on her revolver and she moved instinctively closer
to her father's couch.  Then all at once she threw up her head, and her
voice rang out.

"Hark!  What is that?  Don't you hear it?"

None heeded as she stood with every muscle and nerve tense, straining
her ears.  The night was no longer dark and a faint rosy light seeping
in at an easterly window reddened the glow of the swinging oil lamps
and transfigured her drawn blanched face.  What sound, distant and far
away, had been borne to her on the wind of the dawn?

Again the giant battering-ram stove at the door and the middle bolt
crashed.  The flimsy impromptu barricade toppled, then swayed back into
place and a shuddering sigh went up from the handful of white-faced
men.  One more drive, and the end would come.

The other women had huddled again behind the bar, but Billie still
stood with uplifted face.  And now she was smiling!  Swift and sure the
rhythmic echo of galloping hoofs reached her consciousness and even as
the third shock came and the door crashed inward carrying the barricade
with it, a ringing shout burst upon the air and the staccato rattle of
a machine-gun sounded the final note in the symphony of battle.

The ragged, wild-eyed horde, sweeping in at the shattered doorway,
brought up standing, then turned madly and scattered like chaff.  In
their stead, through the aperture leaped a tall, unrecognizable figure
caked with dust and clotted blood which reeled to the couch and
collapsed beside it, labored breath hissing from tortured lungs and
blood-shot eyes filmed with exhaustion.

Outside, the tide of conflict raged up and down the street and swept
out over the plaza, but neither the girl nor the man at her feet could
hear it.

"You made it!  Dad said you would play to win!"  There was a new note
of which she was herself unconscious in Billie's tones, and she added
softly, "You were just bound and determined to take care of me right
from the start!  Weren't you, Mr. Duenna?"

The new day dawned and quiet was once more restored to Limasito.  Those
of the bandits who escaped swift justice had fled toward the distant
hills with the troops in full pursuit and the plaza was a humming hive
of survivors, augmented, as the tidings spread, by all the countryside.

The dismantled Blue Chip had been turned into a temporary hospital and
the wounded lay in rows upon the tables and hastily improvised cots,
but Gentleman Geoff was not among them.

He had been moved by his own wish out to a shady corner of the patio
where he lay with a quiet, whimsical smile lifting the drooped ends of
his mustache and his genial eyes, with a curious questioning look in
their depths, stared straight before him.

Billie, huddled on the ground, her head pillowed against the side of
his cot, slumbered deeply, and Gentleman Geoff's slim, delicate fingers
touched her hair in a wistful caress.  On a nearby bench Thode, bathed
and freshly bandaged, slept also.  Jim Baggott had tried in vain to
drag him back to the hotel, for the young engineer had read a mute
desire in the dying man's glance and refused to leave his side.

The army surgeon had done his best, but the end was near and only the
superb vitality of the old gambler glowed still, like a living spark.
Now and then the surgeon paused in his busy round within to glance
speculatively from the doorway and each time Gentleman Geoff nodded
reassuringly to him.  Not yet!

The blaze of noon subsided, and as the shadows lengthened in the patio,
Billie stirred, and Thode stretched and opened his eyes.

"Oh, Dad, I must have fallen asleep!"  The girl's tones were filled
with contrition.  "Do you want anything?  Is the pain very bad?"

It seemed to her that a shadow had crept into her father's eyes, but
his faint voice was steady.

"No, Billie.  No pain--just tired.  Has young Thode gone home?"

"No, Sir, I'm here."  He came eagerly forward.  "Is there anything you
want me to do?"

"Only shake hands with me.  You rode well, last night.  I reckoned
Perry Larkin knew a man when he saw one, but he didn't know all that
was in you.  Billie, girl, go ask the Doc if I can have a drink or a
little shot to pull me together."  As the girl flew to do his bidding,
Gentleman Geoff's thin fingers tightened their grip.  "Thode, the boys
will all stand by her and play square, but I'm leaving her alone.  She
isn't their kind; she doesn't know it, nobody does, but my little
girl's of different blood.  There's no one around here in her class,
except you.  Kind of--look out for her, will you?"

"I will, Sir."  Thode's voice shook with the fervor of his vow.  "You
want her away from Limasito, from this environment?  I have a sister up
North----"

"That's what I mean."  A spasm of pain contorted the pallid face and he
went on hurriedly as if fearful of the inevitable interruption.  "I
couldn't take her myself and couldn't part from her, but the life
hasn't been right for her, though I did all I could.  She's a lady and
she must go back to her own.  I'd like to myself, for an hour, now.
That's a Harvard seal on your cigarette-case, if I'm not mistaken, Mr.
Thode."

Thode leaned forward, a sudden exclamation half halted on his lips.

Gentleman Geoff nodded slowly.

"Name Rendell," he said.  "Class of '84.  I haven't mentioned it this
quarter of a century and I'm going to ask you to forget it now,
but--you'll do what you can for my girl?"

"On my honor, Sir," Thode reaffirmed solemnly.  "It is a sacred charge."

"Jim Baggott will sell out the Blue Chip and give her the proceeds.  It
ought to bring her a comfortable sum and the bank deposits are in her
name already.  I'm not afraid she will throw it away; she has a level
head on her young shoulders, but I want to be sure she will have the
best of everything; all that she has missed.  You'll see to it?"

The reappearance of the doctor precluded other answer on Thode's part
than a long hearty handclasp, but Gentleman Geoff understood.

Later his vigilant mind wandered and the watchers averted their faces.

"Best I could for her, Vi!  Kept her like you--clean and true and
God-Almighty sweet!  Never knew--not my own. . . ."

Still later, when the sun like a glowing ball of fire had sunk beneath
the wall of the patio, his lips moved again.

"Tell the boys I'm not cashing in--just passing this deal.  I'm in on
the next one. . . .  Billie . . . square, always----"

"I'm here, Dad!"  The girl's voice choked with sobs breathed close to
his ear, but Gentleman Geoff did not hear.  He had slipped into the
silence.

In the days that followed, Kearn Thode pondered long and deeply upon
his trust.  The arrangement with his sister would be an easy matter to
adjust, he knew, but the immediate task confronting him was more
difficult of solution.  The suggestion of a guardian thrust upon her
would meet with scant complacency in the girl's independent spirit and
secretly he quailed before the thought of her displeasure.  Her
comrades of a lifetime, the rough, staunch men of Limasito, might well
resent the intrusion of a stranger, an alien, into what was evidently
to them a family affair; still less would they be able to understand
and appreciate the fact that Billie belonged to another world than
theirs.

He decided at length to lay the matter before her frankly in detail,
eliminating only the admission of Gentleman Geoff's identity.  He
respected the dead man's confidence, but it only precipitated him into
a fresh quandary.

Billie's naïve surprise when the question of her surname arose brought
the matter to a crisis in his mind.

"Why, I'm just 'Billie,' I suppose," she had stammered.  "I--I never
heard any other name.  Do I have to have one?"

Jim Baggott settled the matter, for the moment at least.

"You do not!" he announced, with emphasis.  "Not around here, anyway.
You were Gentleman Geoff's Billie and that's name enough for us.  When
you do need a handle to it, I reckon there ain't any law 'gainst you
pickin' out one to suit yourself."

Baggott was the chief executor of the late gambler and mightily puffed
up with the pride and dignity of his office.  Gentleman Geoff's private
papers were few and carefully indited, their instructions unmistakably
clear.  Under them, Baggott sold the Blue Chip scrupulously to the
highest bidder, although it broke his heart to see Limasito's proudest
institution pass into the hands of a Tampico syndicate.  He placed the
two hundred thousand, American, which the establishment brought,
unreservedly to Billie's account.

"If you ain't of age, nobody knows the difference," he announced.
"Gentleman Geoff left word it was to go 'to my daughter, known as
Billie,' and there you are.  The money's your'n, and it's up to you to
do what you like with it."

Bewildered and numb in her first contact with poignant grief, the girl
had taken up her temporary abode at Henry Bailey's fruit ranch, a mile
or two out on the Calle Rivera, where his buxom wife, Sallie, mothered
her to her heart's content.

Thode rode out each day to see her, but a new inexplicable shyness in
Billie's attitude toward him made his task still more difficult and he
deferred the question of her future in sheer funk.  The magnitude of
her fortune, too, was a stumbling-block.  The girl knew nothing of him
save what intuition had taught her.  What if she assumed that his
object were to gain control of her estate?  The thought maddened him
into action at length and one day as they cantered slowly back from a
visit to the little José, he forced the issue.

"Billie, have you thought of the future, of what you will do?" he asked.

"Oh, yes."  The reply was prompt and decisive.  "I can't tell you, Mr.
Thode, or anyone, but I've got something to do, something big, and I've
made up my mind to see it through.  It's just as much an inheritance
from Dad as the money and I mean to let nothing stand in my way."

There was a grim earnestness in her tone which made him glance
curiously at her.

"You are sure you can't tell me, and let me help, whatever it is?" he
asked gently.

Billie shook her head.

"It's my job.  I'll have my work cut out for me, I expect, but nobody
else can share it.  I've got to play a lone hand, but when it's over,
I--I don't know.  I haven't made any plans beyond that."

"But surely you don't intend to remain here in Limasito all your life?"

"Why not?"  She shot a swift glance at him.  "It was good enough for
Dad."

"But not for you.  That's the point.  I--I had a talk with your father
just before he died, and he wants you to go away; to travel and study
and mingle with people of your own kind."

"Aren't these my kind?"  Hot loyalty blazed in her tone.  "They're all
the friends I have in the world, the folks right here in Limasito, and
all I want!  What would I do among a lot of city people; stuck-up snobs
who don't know I'm alive?  I wouldn't even know how to talk to them, or
what fork to eat with, and what's more, I wouldn't care.  Why, I
haven't even got a second name!  'Gentleman Geoff's Billie' would look
well in the society papers, wouldn't it?  No, thanks!  I'll stick to
the folks I know and--and care for!"

"But they're not all snobs, Billie, just because some of their ways are
different from yours.  I have a sister who can play a stiff game of
poker and ride as well as you.  Edna spends most of her time out in the
open, and nothing feazes her.  You would get on beautifully with her
and I thought perhaps you would let me take you to her, sometime."

Billie was silent.  She was staring straight ahead of her, into the
vista above her pinto's ears, and had Thode looked at her he would have
seen a quick flush mantle her face, but he was occupied by his own
problem.

"You are different, you know, from the people about here; or anywhere
else for that matter, Billie.  I--I've never met a girl like you, so
brave and true and wonderful!  I want to take you away from all this
and show you how different the world can be.  What does it matter about
your name?  You are you, and that's all that counts.  Everyone will
love you, they couldn't help it!----"  He rushed on heedlessly,
oblivious to any ulterior construction which might be put upon his
words, intent only on assuring her of her welcome in the place which
her father had said was her rightful one, and in convincing her of his
disinterested friendship.

"I told your father that if you were willing I would gladly take you to
my sister, and we would all do our best to make you happy."  He
reddened, in his turn.  "Please, don't misunderstand; no one will ever
attempt to advise or suggest anything concerning the disposal of your
fortune, it is only that you must have, as your father said, the best
of everything; all that you have missed."

"Oh, don't talk of the money, please!"  She stopped him with a swift
gesture.  "I do understand, but I--I don't want to say anything now.
Maybe you'll change your mind.  You were shocked, you remember, when I
told you Dad ran the Blue Chip, and you might be sorry you--you tried
to make your sister friends with a gambler's daughter, without a family
name.  Besides, I've got a trust to perform, don't forget that.  When
it's finished, perhaps--but let's wait until then."

He was well content to acquiesce, relieved that she had taken his
suggestion in good faith without impugning his motive.  Had he dreamed
of the meaning she had read into his offer, his awakening would have
been illuminating.

On the following day Billie put her newly acquired wealth to its first
use.  She cantered away from the Casa de Limas on her pinto without
taking the Baileys into her confidence, and at sundown careened in at
the gate in a battered touring car, the bewildered pony following on a
rope behind.

"Land alive!"  Sallie ran out in the yard with Chevalita, the criada,
at her heels.  "I didn't know you could run an automobile, Billie!"

"I couldn't this morning," Billie responded through set lips as she
grazed the hitching-post and came to a stop with a grinding jerk which
all but precipitated her through the cracked wind shield.  "I've got to
get the hang of this in a couple of days or die trying.  I'm going on a
little trip."

"Where to?"  Sallie circled slowly around the dilapidated vehicle.
"Don't look as if this would carry you very far.  Where on earth did
you get it?"

"It was poor Rufe Terwilliger's."  The girl answered the last question
first.  "I bought it from Mrs. Terwilliger for three hundred dollars.
Ben Hallock has got some tires to fit it that he'll let me have and if
the engine will only last for about four hundred miles I don't care
what happens to it after that."

"'Four hundred miles!'" repeated Sallie.  "What have you taken into
your head now?  There's nothing within four hundred miles o' Limasito!"

Billie regarded her with an enigmatic smile.

"There's a dream to bring true!" she said slowly.  "That is Tia
Juana's; she's going with me.  And there's a start to be made on
something I've set out to do, and this journey is the first step of the
way.  No one must go with me but Tia Juana, no one must even know where
I have gone.  Someone owes me a debt, Sallie, and they're going to pay!"

There was a grim note in her quiet tones which boded ill for the
debtor, and Sallie hastily changed the subject.

"And Mr. Thode?  What'll I tell him?  Does he know?"

"Not where I'm going, but you can say that I've made the first move in
the game I'm playing; I've started on what I've got to do.  He'll know
what I mean.  I can't tell you or anyone, Sallie, because I want to see
it through alone."

When next Thode rode up to the Casa de Limas, Sallie met him with
strange news.

"She's gone.  Went off this morning in a car she bought from Rufe
Terwilliger's widow, and she bundled old Tia Juana along with her.  She
said to tell you she'd made a start on what she had to do, and you
would understand."

But Kearn Thode didn't.  What was this trust, this unknown inheritance
from Gentleman Geoff?  There had been an ominous note in her voice when
she spoke of it, and he remembered what the gambler had told him of her
eye-for-an-eye creed of retributive justice.  In her splendid, reckless
courage could she have pitted herself against El Negrito, the bandit of
the hills?

CHAPTER V

A GRINGO CINDERELLA

"Whether you're here for health, pleasure, or business there ain't a
more up-and-comin' town this side o' the Rio than Limasito," Jim
Baggott remarked with the air of publicity-promoter as he "set 'em up"
for a plump, white-mustached stranger, who had drawn up to the hotel an
hour before in an impressive car, and whose equally impressive array of
luggage was even then distributed about the best suite the
establishment afforded.

"I'm here on business, Mr. Baggott," the stranger replied promptly to
his host's tactfully implied question.  "Did you ever hear of a gambler
known as 'Gentleman Geoff'?  I understand he located somewhere about
here ten years ago."

"Hear of him?" Jim repeated gruffly, and turned his head away.  "He was
one of our most prom'nent citizens; ran the Blue Chip over yonder."

"Indeed?"  The stranger tasted his liquor and replaced the glass with a
fastidious shudder upon the bar.  "He is not here now?"

Baggott shook his head.

"You may have heard that Alvarez--El Negrito, they call him--paid us a
little visit a few days ago."  He added a profane and heartfelt
abjuration of the bandit.  "Most of us were corraled in the Blue Chip,
and Geoff, he was shot down along with a lot of others."

"Dead!  How unfortunate!  Can you tell me if he left any family; a
daughter, for instance?"

"Sa-ay!"  Jim folded his arms on the bar and gazed levelly at his
guest.  "What's it to you if he did?  I happen to be Geoff's
executor----"

"Ah, that simplifies matters."  The stranger drew a card-case from his
pocket.  "I am Mason North, of the firm of North, Manning and
Gilchrist, attorneys.  We are looking for a young woman known as the
daughter of this Gentleman Geoff, to notify her of something to her
advantage.  Can you tell me where she may be found?"

"Known as his daughter?" Jim stammered.  "Billie _is_ his daughter,
damn it!  There ain't no other young woman----"

"'Billie'?" repeated North sharply.  "A derivative, no doubt.  That is
significant.  I should like very much to see this Miss 'Billie'----"

"Then you've only got to turn your head!"  A clear young voice sounded
from the doorway, and the attorney wheeled to confront the object of
his quest.

"Lord, Billie, where'd you vamoose to?  The whole town's been askin'
for you for the last three days!"  Jim remembered his manners.  "This
is Mr. North.  He's a lawyer and he says he's got some news for you."

Billie shook hands gravely.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. North."

"And I to meet you, my dear young lady.  I have had a long search for
you."

"Do you mean----" her eyes were wide--"that you've come all the way
down here just to see me?"

He smiled.

"I have been searching for you for more than two years.  There are some
questions I must ask you.  Can we talk here privately without
interruption, Mr. Baggott?--No, don't go!" as Jim started for the door.
"As the chief executor of--ah, Gentleman Geoff, you are presumably this
young lady's de-facto guardian and your presence is imperative."

Considerably impressed, Jim turned a chair around and seated himself
astride it, folding his arms across the back.

"Fire away.  I'm listening," he said briefly.

"Has this news anything to do with Dad?" asked Billie.

"Partly, my dear.  It concerns you, principally; you, and your
antecedents."  North took a sheaf of papers from his pocket, and
produced a fountain pen.  "Did you ever hear of a place called Topaz
Gulch?"

"Yes.  Dad and I were there when I was a little girl.  There was a big
fire; I can just remember seeing it.  We left soon after, I think."

"And then where did you go?"  The lawyer made rapid notes as he quizzed
her, and Billie stared in growing wonder.

"Oh, we just traveled.  I can recall a lot of places, but not their
names; mining camps, and cattle towns and farming centers.  Then we
came here, when the boom first started, and Dad built the Blue Chip----"

The lawyer nodded as she faltered.

"That will do, I think.  We can go into the details more exhaustively
later, but I am convinced that you are indeed the young woman in the
case.  But first, can you tell me anything of your mother?"

"Dad said she died a long time ago."  Billie's voice was very low.  "I
don't remember her at all, unless----"

"Unless what?" North urged her, not unkindly.  "Think, please."

"It seems to me there was someone, when I was very little, who sang
always.  There was one song; I should know it again if I heard it, but
it won't come to me now."

"Aha!"  The lawyer cleared his throat.  "That confirms it.  I am going
to tell you, and your good friend here, a story.  It goes rather far
back, but I shall ask you to be patient for it concerns you vitally.
Some twenty years ago there lived in New York City a noted financier,
Giles Murdaugh.  You do not recall having heard the name?"

Billie shook her head mutely and North went on:

"Giles Murdaugh was a very wealthy man, a power in the world of
finance.  He was a widower and his only living relatives were his son,
Ralph, and a niece.  At the time I mention, Ralph was a young man, just
out of college.  He fell in love with a--a young person who was not his
equal socially; in fact, she earned her living by singing and dancing
upon the stage of a music-hall.  She was a most respectable, most
exemplary young woman," he added hastily, "but Giles Murdaugh was
violently opposed to the union.  Her name was Violet Ashton."

He paused, but the girl before him made no sign.

"Young Ralph Murdaugh married her, and his father disowned him.  The
boy had no income of his own, no profession, and his father's influence
prevented his obtaining any remunerative position.  He was very bitter,
and hoped to starve his son into submission and force an annulment of
what he considered a disgraceful marriage, but Ralph was as determined
as his father.

"The young couple left New York finally and went out West to make their
way, but it was a most disheartening experience.  Giles Murdaugh's
influence was far-reaching and all doors were closed to them.  They
changed their name and went on, but Ralph had been a student rather
than an athlete; he was not strong enough to attempt the rough work
which was all that presented itself, and their resources were gone.

"They drifted at last into Topaz Gulch, Nevada, where Ralph obtained a
position as time-keeper at the Yellow Streak gold mine, and where a
little daughter was born to them, whom they named 'Willa'."

Billie started, and her lips opened, but no words came.  Jim Baggott,
too, was silent, his jaw agape and honest eyes almost popping from
their sockets.

"When the baby was two years old, Ralph Murdaugh died, after a long
illness which ate up the little they had been able to save.  His wife,
destitute and unable to support the child in any other fashion, turned
to her old profession; she became what was known as a song-and-dance
artiste at a hall named for its owner, 'Jake's'.

"Two years later, the dance-hall burned and Violet Ashton, as she
called herself once more, was lost in the holocaust.  As a thoroughly
good woman, she had always been held in the utmost esteem by the
community, rough as it was, and the child, Willa, had become a great
favorite, but on her mother's death the problem of caring for her
arose.  There were no women in the town of the proper character to be
trusted with her future, and the camp was in a quandary.

"Among what might be called the shifting population, was a
peripatetic--ah, gambler, who traveled under the sobriquet of
'Gentleman Geoff'.  He had set up a shack where he operated a
roulette-wheel and faro-bank, and was very much attached to the child.
Can you not surmise the rest?  He adopted her, without legal form, and
took her with him on his wanderings."

"Then I--I----" Billie stammered, aghast.  "I am not----"

"You are Willa Murdaugh."

"Holy Christopher!"  Jim Baggott passed his hand across his dazed
forehead, and then all three were silent for a space.

The girl sat as if in a dream, her face flushed, her eyes vacant and
fixed, and North forebore to intrude upon her reverie.  At length she
roused herself and turned to him with quick decision.

"If I am what you say, you must know my age.  How old am I?"

"Nineteen.  You will be twenty on the sixth of January, next."

"And now," she drew a deep breath, "will you tell me, please, why you
have taken the trouble to find me?"

"I was about to explain.  Your grandfather, Giles Murdaugh, nursed his
resentment for a long time, but at last, finding himself in failing
health and alone, remorse came to him, and the desire for a
reconciliation with his son and daughter-in-law.  This change in his
sentiments took place about five years ago.  We had been Mr. Murdaugh's
attorneys for ten years or more and he instructed us to institute the
search.

"It was a very difficult one, after the lapse of so long a period of
time.  In three years, however, we were able to establish the fact of
Ralph Murdaugh's death, the supposition of his wife's and the fact that
the child had been taken away by the gambler known only as Gentleman
Geoff.

"We were inaugurating a new investigation, when Mr. Murdaugh died very
suddenly.  His will, which we had drawn up, directed that a large
reward be offered for trace of his granddaughter, but not through the
medium of the press.  The entire search was conducted in a most
discreet manner, I can assure you, and none of your future associates
save the immediate family need know the details of this later episode,
my dear young lady.  I refer, of course, to the--ah, adoption.

"In the event of your being found, your late grandfather has made you
his chief beneficiary, but with an absolutely irrevocable condition;
that you make your home with your father's cousin--the niece whom I
mentioned previously--Mrs. Ripley Halstead, and submit to being
educated and trained befitting your station.  A generous bequest is
made also to Mrs. Halstead, providing that she agrees to undertake this
charge.  I may add that she has been most anxious for the conclusion of
our search, and will welcome you with all her heart.  I must
congratulate you, my dear, on your great good fortune."

The erstwhile Billie eyed him steadily.

"Thank you, Mr. North.  You were very kind to spend all that time
searching for me, and to have come this long journey to tell me the
truth about myself----"

"Not at all, my dear Miss Murdaugh!"  The lawyer beamed.  "It was a
matter of business, you know, and I am gratified to have brought it to
a successful conclusion, but aside from that I assure you that I am
delighted to be of service."

"I can't just believe it yet; it seems as if it must be someone else
that all this has happened to."  She glanced at the still dumfounded
Jim in an instinctive appeal.  "Mr. North, if I really am awake and
this is all true----"

"Yes?" he encouraged her, smiling.

"Then--" her little teeth snapped together, and a cold light flashed in
her eyes--"I am sorry you have had your journey for nothing."

"You--I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Please go back, Mr. North, and tell them that Gentleman Geoff's Billie
refuses to become Miss Willa Murdaugh.  I don't want that wicked old
man's money, I don't want anything to do with any of that breed!  If
those two poor young folks you tell me about were really my father and
mother, he was as guilty of their deaths as if he'd shot them down in
cold blood!  Of course, he did not need to help them if they defied his
wishes, but to starve them, to drive them from pillar to post and deny
them the right to earn the money with which to live, to force other
people to close their doors--oh, he wasn't square!"

"But, my dear young lady!  All that was long ago, and he is dead.  He
regretted the past, he tried to make restitution.  As an evidence of
that he has made you his heiress----"

"Not if I refuse."  Her tone was still quiet, but her breast rose and
fell convulsively.  "You said awhile ago that no one need know about my
being adopted.  You meant no one need know about Dad, didn't you?  That
I'd been brought up by a gambler in an oil-boom town?  You thought I'd
be ashamed of Dad among all those fine people?  Why, I'm proud of him!
Proud that I was known as his girl!  He took me when nobody else cared
whether I lived or died, and he's loved me and been everything to me
ever since I can remember.  And he was square!  It's my own grandfather
that I'm ashamed of for his crookedness!  He stacked the cards, and
that's all I need to know about him.  Give that Mrs. Halstead what she
was going to get for making me over into a lady, and tell her she
needn't bother.  I was raised Gentleman Geoff's Billie and that's good
enough for me.  I'm going to stay right here."

"You cannot realize what you are saying!"  Mr. North betrayed symptoms
of imminent apoplexy.  "You can have no conception now of what this
will mean to you in the future.  Millions are involved, I tell you,
millions!"

"I don't want them," she reiterated doggedly.  "I don't want even the
name.  If I've got to have another, I'll take my mother's--Ashton,
wasn't it?"

The rotund little lawyer bounced from his chair and strode up and down
before the bar, his hands clenched behind his back and his mustache
bristling.  The girl watched him curiously, after a brief glance at
Jim, who was sitting very straight, obviously fighting back the words
which choked him.

There was a pause, and then North halted before her.

"I trust that you will not complicate matters by adhering to this hasty
resolution, Miss Murdaugh.  It is perhaps natural that you should
resent the treatment accorded your parents, but the past is dead and I
am convinced that when you will have had time for calm, sober
reflection you will realize the absurdity of attempting to maintain
your present attitude.  Fortunately the decision does not rest with
you.  You cannot know your own mind, you are still a minor----"

"Yes."  Billie acquiesced.  "That was why I asked you, first off, just
how old I am.  You'll have a tough time trying to get me out of Mexico
if I don't want to go, Mr. North.  I've seen some law fights over oil
leases down here and I know how cases can be strung out.  I'll be of
age in a year and four months and I reckon I can bluff you till then.
I don't know why you should be so anxious to force that money on me and
make me acknowledge myself the granddaughter of a man who didn't play
fair!"

"It is entirely for your own benefit.  Surely you can see that?"  The
lawyer spoke almost pleadingly.  "It would be idiocy, madness to throw
away such a fortune for a quixotic idea!  You have never come into
contact with young people of the class to which you really belong or
you would realize all that circumstances have deprived you of
heretofore."

"Oh, I've met one or two."  The girl's lip curled.  "There's a rich
young New Yorker down here now, named Wiley----"

"Indeed?  Starr Wiley?"  Mr. North bit his mustache.  "H'm!  That is
awkward, for you will inevitably encounter him again in the circle to
which your cousins belong.  I had hoped--ah, that you would not be
hampered by associations or reminders of your former circumstances, but
Mr. Wiley is a friend and I will see him----"

"Not here, you won't!" growled Jim.  "He's gone."

The girl wheeled upon him, her face darkening.

"Gone where?" she demanded.  "What do you mean, Jim?"

"How should I know where?"  The hotel-keeper shrugged.  "His hacienda
is shut up tight, except for the caretaker.  Reckon he's gone home for
good.  It wasn't none too healthy for him around here."

Billie rose and stumbled to the window.  Across the plaza beyond the
flower-market, the Blue Chip could be discerned in an unfamiliar aspect
of transformation.  Scaffolding had been erected against its walls and
their cerulean expanse was being rapidly hidden beneath a coating of
brick red.  Her eyes blurred for a moment, then a swift hardness came
into them and her small fists clenched at her sides.

"We will not discuss the matter of your inheritance, further, for the
moment."  The lawyer's voice, smooth as oil, came from just behind her.
"You will listen to reason, I know, when you have had time for
consideration.  Mr. Baggott, here, will agree with me that you must
accept the conditions of your grandfather's will----"

"Mr. Baggott will do nothing of the kind," vociferated that gentleman,
suddenly.  "I've listened to all you had to say, and kept my mouth
shet, but since you're bringing me into this, you might as well know
where I stand.  Billie's going to do just what she damn' pleases about
this.  She don't need the old scoundrel's money--she's got plenty of
her own, and she's not going to be shanghaied across the border while
I'm here to prevent it!"

"Sir----!"

"Never mind, Jim."  The girl wheeled quickly.  "I've changed my mind.
Mr. North, I'll go with you.  I'll accept the conditions and whatever
goes with them.  When do we start?"

The lawyer gasped.

"Why--ah, as soon as you can arrange your affairs here.  Allow me to
say, my dear Miss Murdaugh, that I am delighted----"

"That's all right, Mr. North," she cut him short with a weary little
gesture.  "I--I guess I was kind of hasty.  I've got a lot to learn,
and a lot to do, and I may as well begin right away.  If you don't
mind, I'll ride back to the Casa de Limas now, and I'll be ready to
start to-morrow morning.  So long, Jim."

Avoiding the bewildered reproach in Jim Baggott's honest eyes, and
unmindful of the lawyer's congratulatory hand, Gentleman Geoff's Billie
turned and went out of the door.  A moment later, the wild scramble of
her pinto's hoofs echoed back to them from the hard-packed road.

"Women, my dear Baggott!"  North shrugged expressively.  "They are the
curse of the law courts; they never know their own minds."

"Don't you believe it."  Jim awoke from his stupor.  "Billie knows
her'n, all right.  She's got something up her sleeve, you can bank on
that, and its an ace card in whatever game she's playing.  But what in
tarnation the stakes are that she's after is more'n I know.  I don't
envy you, Mr. North, you and that lady that's going to make our Billie
over.  You'd better take off your coat and spit on your hands, for
you've got the stiffest job ahead of you that you ever tackled.
There's a joker wild, somewhere, and she's playing to win!"

CHAPTER VI

TIA JUANA'S CAULDRON COOLS

Limasito received the tidings of the amazing turn in the affairs of
Gentleman Geoff's Billie with mingled emotions in which pride and
respectful awe predominated, but to Kearn Thode it came as an
uncomprehended disaster.

In vain he told himself that he should rejoice at her change of
fortune; that he had divined from the moment of their first meeting the
subtle shade of difference in caste between the young girl and those
who surrounded her, and strove to exult that she had indeed come into
her own.

A strange, unacknowledged depression assailed him.  His proffered aid
had once more proved superfluous; the young relative of the Ripley
Halsteads and heiress of Giles Murdaugh would have no need of the good
offices of his sister, nor in their reversed positions would his
friendship be as instrumental in her future as he had hoped.

She was quick-witted and adaptable; she would be a tremendous social
success with a little expert coaching, and he----?  A petroleum
engineer, a mere cog in the wheel of a great corporation, without
prospects other than might lie in the success of his present doubtful
mission, could be of no future interest to Willa Murdaugh.

Decency demanded that he congratulate her on her good fortune, he
assured himself as he rode out that evening to the Casa de Limas.  But
decency did not explain or defend the fact that he roweled his willing
pinto all the way, and arrived in a state of mind that was the reverse
of felicitation.

She received his forced greeting with the matter-of-fact directness
which was characteristic of her.

"Yes.  It's a pretty big thing to have come to me all of a sudden," she
remarked, "but I reckon it isn't going to carry me off my feet.  Dad
always told me never to start anything I couldn't finish, and although
this seems to have been kind of started for me before I was born, I
reckon I can see it through.  I never guessed I wasn't Dad's own girl
and I'd just as lief never have known, but it's going to work in with
what I want to do."

"Of course!"  He essayed to speak lightly.  "Your future is assured
now, the future your--Gentleman Geoff wanted you to have.  It sounds
like presumption now; my offer to take you to my sister----"

"Why?"  Her clear eyes turned wonderingly on him in the moonlight, and
he mentally cursed his dog-in-the-manger mood.  "I thought it was real
kind of you, kinder than anything that anyone except Dad has ever done.
I didn't even have a name, you know.  I was just the daughter of--what
did that lawyer call him?--a 'peripatetic gambler', but you--you----"

She broke off in sudden confusion, and he drew a swift breath.

"You were yourself, and I told you that nothing else mattered."  His
tone was very low.

"But I'm something else, now."  There was a note of shy, wistful
eagerness in her voice.  "I--I'm Willa Murdaugh and that seems to mean
a lot, up in New York.  I'm not just Gentleman Geoff's Billie, I'm
going to be a lady, like your sister----"

"You will be a much more important one, with a highly exalted social
position and hosts of influential friends," he responded slowly.  "You
will meet her, she is an acquaintance of the Halsteads and their set,
but you will find her a simple, unfashionable girl, compared to the
rest.  If you had gone to make your home with her, as I suggested, you
would not have known the smart crowd that will flock about you now, but
clever people who have done or are doing big things.  I wonder how the
social life will strike you?"

"All of a heap, I expect," she replied, absently.  Her voice was
colorless, stunned.  "That was what you meant, that I should go and
live with your sister?  And you, would you have been there, too?"

"I?" he laughed with a trace of bitterness.  "I am a rolling stone,
Miss Murdaugh.  My work calls me to the ends of the earth, but I would
probably have looked in on you every few years to say 'hello.'
However, you would scarcely have been with my sister as long as that.
Some lucky fellow would have persuaded you to make him happy.  You will
be a great social success----"

"As if I cared!"  She stopped him with her familiar little gesture.
"I--I didn't just understand what you meant.  I thought--but it doesn't
matter anyway, does it?  I've got to get in the game anyway, but you
don't suppose I want to, do you?  You don't suppose I want the money of
that old man who stacked the cards against my poor father, or care
about these Halstead people that never knew I was alive?  I am doing it
because I think Dad would want me to, and because it will help me in
something else I've set out to do."

"The thing you spoke of, that you could not let me or anyone in on?" he
asked in surprise.  "Haven't you relinquished it, whatever it was?
You'll be too much taken up with your new life to remember old plans
and ideas when you plunge into the society game."

"'Relinquish'?" she repeated, and he saw her whole form grow tense and
rigid.  "Why, it's what I'm living for--what I'm going through with
this inheritance outfit for!  Dad said the Indians were right, they
never forget a kindness or an injury.  I'm like them, in that.  I'll
never forget, never, until the score is wiped clean!"

"Someone has hurt you?" he demanded.  "You have another trouble, aside
from your grief?  The government will take care of El Negrito, it must
be something else.  Won't you tell me?  It may be that I can help, in
some way.  I--I would do anything for you!"

"Nobody can help me."  She shook her head gently.  "I told you once,
Mr. Thode, that I must play a lone hand."

"But you can trust me," he urged.  "If I could only make you believe
that!  If I could only make you see how much it would mean to me to be
of the slightest service----"

He halted abruptly, and she waited, scarcely breathing, for there was
an impetuous fervent ring in his tones which made her heart leap
suddenly and then almost cease to beat.  But the young man did not
continue.

"Thank you," she said at last, very quietly.  "I am sure that I could
trust you, Mr. Thode, but there is nothing you or anyone could do; it
is just that I owe a debt to someone, and I mean to pay it.  But don't
let us talk of that any more.  Shall I see you, sometime, up in New
York?"

"Perhaps, when my work here is finished."  He turned his head away from
her.  "You will have so many new friends that you will scarcely
remember those you leave behind down here."

"How unjust you are!"  She faced him hotly.  "Do you think I could ever
forget what you did when El Negrito came; how you rode to the barracks
at the risk of your life?"

"I had small choice," he reminded her.  "Had I stayed I would have been
killed."

"So would we all.  But it was not for yourself you took the chance, it
was for us."  She laid her hand upon his arm.  "I--I don't want you to
think that I will ever forget and I hope that we shall be friends."

"Always that!"  He took her small hand in both of his.  "It doesn't
seem likely, but if there is ever anything that I can do for you, any
service that I can render, I would like to feel, in spite of the little
time you have known me, that you would call on me before anyone else
you may meet.  After all, Gentleman Geoff laid a charge upon me, you
know, and I want to be worthy of it.  When I return, if I may, I will
come to you."

"Oh, will you?"  She flushed and gently withdrew her hand.  "That is,
unless you will be ashamed of me.  I reckon I'll be kind of a shock to
city folks, the same as they'll be to me."

"Now it is you who are unjust!" he cried.  "I shall always be proud of
your friendship, and remember these days in Limasito as the most
wonderful I have ever known----"

Thode checked himself once more.

"Good-bye, Billie.  When next I see you, it will be Miss Willa Murdaugh
who will greet me, but it is Gentleman Geoff's Billie who will linger
in my thoughts always.  Will you say once again what you said to me in
the lane: 'Buena suerte'?"

"Good luck, with all my heart, but not good-bye."  She hesitated.  "I
sha'n't see you to-morrow before we start?"

He shook his head.

"The whole town will be on hand to give you a send-off.  I would not
intrude on the leave-taking of all your old friends, and besides I must
ride far out to-morrow," he prevaricated.  "There is a lease I must
look into for the company over near La Roda.  So it must be good-bye,
now."

"Not that, but hasta la vista!"  She lifted her chin valiantly,
although her smile was a trifle wan.  "That means 'until we meet
again', you know, and I feel somehow that it will be soon."

"I hope so, with all my heart!"  With a swift, impetuous movement he
bent and kissed her hand.  "Hasta la vista!"

Billie watched him until he disappeared down the avenue of flowering
trees, then, brushing her hand across her eyes, she turned and went
into the house.

Sallie Bailey looked up with a twinkle from the shirt she was patching.

"Well, carita, did he?" she demanded with much interest.

"Did he what?"  Billie paused at the foot of the stairs.

"Did he--say anything?"

"Oh, a heap.  I'm going to be a hit in society and forget all my
friends and everything down here and roll in that money like a pinto in
the pasture.  I wish to goodness that I was dead!"

"No, you don't," Sallie retorted comfortably.  "You're just beginning
to take notice, that's all, and so's he.  He ain't saddle-broke yet and
he's gun-shy, but he'll get used to the report o' that money o' yours
in time.  Men are a good deal like pintos; some you can coax and some
you can bully, but they all of 'em buck at the first gate.  Don't you
worry your head about Mr. Kearn Thode, honey; wait till the next
round-up, and you'll have him roped, tied, and branded before he knows
where he's at."

Billie mounted three steps and halted, her head held high.

"Him?" she queried with infinite scorn.  "I don't want him!  Dad asked
him to look out for me, you see, and he thinks I'm kind of on his
hands, but I'll show him!  I'm liable to make some big mistakes, and I
reckon that Mrs. Halstead will earn all the money my grandfather left
her to teach me the rules of the game, but I'll sit tight and learn if
it breaks me and when it comes my turn to play, I'll show them all I'm
not a piker, anyway!"

"You wasn't ever that, Billie," the older woman observed gently, for
the girl's hurt heart was on her sleeve.  "I reckon he only meant to be
kind."

"I don't want kindness!" the ungrateful Billie responded savagely.  "I
don't want condescension and duty-friendship.  I want, I want--oh, I
want Dad!"

Limasito was indeed out in full force to speed her on her way the
following morning.  The news had traveled quickly over the countryside
and every style of conveyance, from a mule-team to the latest improved
jitney, lined the plaza.  White, Mex', and Mongolian, from the richest
oil operator to the lowliest peon, her friends had gathered to say
farewell.

They stampeded her on the Calle Rivera and unceremoniously held up Mr.
North's impressive car before the hotel, while Jim Baggott, in an
ancient silk hat and bibulously primed for the occasion, read an
ungrammatical but fervent valediction.

Billie could only throw both hands out to them, laughing and sobbing in
one breath as the car moved off down a lane of solidly packed humanity
and disappeared in a whirl of dust.

"'S on the house!"  Jim Baggott waved toward the bar with one hand and
openly wiped his eyes with the other.  "Gonna make a gosh-almighty
swell of her, are they?  Well, I wish'm luck, but they'll never change
her heart or break her spirit.  She's our'n, an' she'll come back if I
have to go after her myself, so help me!  What you-all have?"

True to his word, Kearn Thode had ridden out at daybreak and ridden
hard, but only the pinto knew where they were going and he was too
jaded to care.  A sleepless night of bewilderment and self-disgust at
his own surly, unaccountable mood had brought a revelation that stunned
and humbled him.

He loved her!  In a blinding flash of realization, he saw that from the
moment of their first meeting she had possessed him, body and soul.  It
was that which had stirred his resentment to berserk rage when Starr
Wiley had laid insolent hands upon her in the lane; it was for her and
her alone that he had run the gantlet of El Negrito's forces and dared
the desperate ride.

And she?  Immeasurably removed from him now, impenetrably walled in
from his presumptuous gaze by the newly-gained inheritance, there was
yet a golden key which he might find here in this flower-grown
wilderness which would grant him entrance to her world on an equal
footing with all men.  She could not have learned to care for him in
their few hours of companionship, but at least no one else held claim
to her.  There was still a chance!

It was characteristic of him that, having worked out his problem, he
wasted no thought on futile regret or selfish repining at the fortune
which had smiled on her.  It should smile on him, too, and then, and
not till then, he would go to her.

The Pool of the Lost Souls!  That was the solution, that the golden key
to the future!  That others had been before him in the fruitless search
of weary generations past was of no moment in the fire of his
enthusiasm.

The noontide blaze of heat found him many miles upon an unfamiliar
road, and, heedless of lurking enemies in the undergrowth, he flung
himself down in the shade of a mighty orchid-laden tree, while the
puzzled but equable pinto grazed nearby.

Worn with the emotional conflict through which he had passed, and the
sleepless night preceding the hard-ridden hours, his day-dream faded
into deep slumber and the shadows were slanting across the road when he
awoke with a sudden start.  No living thing was in sight save the pinto
tethered close at hand; the road ran level and white and deserted as
far as the eye could see and only the afternoon breeze rustled the
dense foliage above and about him, yet Thode could have sworn that he
was under observation.

He flung the thought from him with a laugh as he picked himself up, but
it persisted in spite of his efforts to exorcise it.  Something
unexplained but almost tangible rode at his shoulder on the homeward
way, and he caught himself more than once straining his ears for a
betraying sound behind him.  So acute was the sensation of surveillance
that he pulled up abruptly around a sharp turn in the road and
listened, but no following hoof-beats broke the stillness, and mentally
deriding the notion, he cantered on into town.

His mid-day reverie had carried him back over every detail of the
legend Ben Hallock had related of the Pool, and one chance remark
returned to him with the force of an inspiration.  Hallock himself had
learned the story from a hunchbacked Mexican who had it from his
grandmother, and the little José, the crippled victim of Starr Wiley's
heedless brutality, had been hunchbacked; the old crone in the shack by
the zapote trees, his grandmother, looked as if many mysteries and
legends might be hidden behind her fierce, inscrutable eyes.

This was slender foundation on which to build a theory, but how else
had the little lad awakened the vengeful antipathy of Wiley?  What was
it that he refused to tell him?

Thode had more than a suspicion that Wiley's objective in Limasito was
closely allied to his own.  If José had indeed been Hallock's
informant, and the unscrupulous promoter had traced the legend to this
latest source, his anger at being unable to bully the boy into further
disclosures would be easily understood.

That night, when the moon had risen, Thode crossed the plaza and
started out on foot for the shack.  He would not allow himself a glance
in the direction of the metamorphosed Blue Chip, but resolutely held
his thoughts to the immediate issue.  José had accepted him not only as
a benefactor but as the friend of his adored señorita; would he be
induced to speak?

The shack was dark when he finally reached it and only silence greeted
his knock upon the sagging door.  It yielded to his touch, and after a
moment's hesitation he stepped inside, and groping, found the lamp.

Touching a match to the wick, he replaced the cracked chimney and
looked about him.  Gone!

The little one-room dwelling was in chaos, the chest of drawers
ransacked and even the two poor beds had been pulled violently apart.
Everything spoke of hasty and frenzied flight.  What could it mean?

As the young engineer stood bewildered at this unexpected scene, there
came over his senses once more the inexplicable intuition of the
afternoon.  Someone, something was spying upon him!

He thrust it into the back of his mind, however, striving to recall a
memory which eluded him.  What had Billie told him of a witch's
cauldron in the grove of zapote trees, where the old crone had wrought
magic which to her, at least, was very real?  Could the explanation of
this amazing evanescence be found there?

Shading the lamp with his hand, he stumbled out the door and followed
the weed-choked path to the little clearing.  A huge battered kettle
lay on its side in a heap of ashes which looked as though they had
recently been alight.  Thode stirred them with his foot, then bent
hastily; they were still warm, and from their midst protruded a gleam
of something white.

Kneeling, he set the lamp carefully upon the ground beside him and
pulled the scrap of paper from its hiding-place.  It was partially
burned, but some freak of air-current or flame had left its destruction
incomplete, and he saw that a rude plan or map had been drawn upon it.

He had only time to note that an irregular oval was traced in its
center, with a crooked, wavering cross at one end.  Then as he bent
closer to the light a twig snapped treacherously behind him and a
crushing blow upon his head blotted out consciousness.

CHAPTER VII

ALIEN KIN

Mr. Mason North's elation at the culmination of his protracted search
gave way to vague but undeniable misgiving before the end of the return
journey.  Miss Murdaugh was utterly unlike anything he could have
preconceived.  His trained legal mind, unburdened with imagination, had
nevertheless presented possibilities, during the two years of his
previous investigation, from which his fastidious soul shrank.  What
could a creature brought up by a wandering card-sharp in mining-camps
and frontier towns offer for rescue and redemption?

His fears had vanished at first sight of her, however, Here was a girl,
untutored and unconventional, to be sure, but singularly free from any
corruption and with distinct social possibilities.

He patronized her in bland condescension at their journey's start and
found her gratifyingly amenable, but they had scarcely crossed the
border, before he found to his stupefaction that he was confronted by a
will as serenely implacable as his own.

Willa listened to his didactic suggestions with an open mind and a
direct unwavering gaze which he found mildly disconcerting, but she
acted upon them only after due and independent consideration and those
that did not meet with her approval she rejected in a quiet finality of
manner which, while it left their surface cordiality undisturbed,
nevertheless brooked no further argument.

His idea of engaging a maid or chaperon for the trip she had vetoed
promptly.

"I've always looked out for myself, and I reckon I can now, so long as
you're around to see that the train don't get uncoupled while you're in
the smoker or I'm in the observation car," she informed him.  "I have
to kind of get on to myself, after all that's been happening to me, and
I couldn't with some nosey Jane at my heels every minute.  I suppose
there will have to be someone to shine up my nails and fix my hair and
cinch my clothes on me, but that can wait till Mrs. Halstead picks one
out."

Mr. North shrank from such unfeminine candor, but he made no further
reference to a duenna, although as the journey progressed he regretted
his weakness.  Willa had an inexplicable penchant for disappearing at
intervals, suddenly and without warning.  Where she could get to on a
train or station platform, from under his very eyes, and what errand
prompted her were beyond his comprehension; but she eluded him with the
utmost ease and sang-froid whenever the spirit moved her, and her
matter-of-fact explanations when she returned were obviously and
designedly open to question.

He could feel himself aging beneath the strain and he heartily wished
his charge in Mrs. Halstead's capable hands.  His wife had been dead so
long that the paths of feminine idiosyncrasies were an untrodden maze
to him, and his condescension turned to consternation and an awed
respect.

In spite of his anxiety, the girl proved a fascinating study.  She
showed no interest in the outside world and rarely glanced from the car
window, but her naïve curiosity concerning their fellow passengers and
friendly familiarity toward them kept him constantly on the qui vive.

It was only when at last their journey drew to a close that she evinced
the slightest desire for information concerning the family of which she
was to be a member.

"Mrs. Halstead is my father's cousin, isn't she?" she asked.  "Has she
any children?"

"A son and daughter."  Mr. North laid aside the newspaper from behind
which he had been furtively watching her.  "Vernon is twenty-three, and
a friend of my boy, Winthrop.  Angelica is two years his junior, a most
accomplished young woman and quite a leader in the more youthful set.
You will be able to learn a great deal from her."

Willa pondered this in silence for a minute or two.

"What does she do?" she queried, finally.

"Why--ah, she drives her own car, and goes in for all the latest fads
and diversions.  I am not familiar with them myself.  She sings and
dances----"

"My mother did that," Willa remarked, with a quizzical glance at him.

Mr. North reddened.

"Oh, not----not in that fashion!  I mean for charity; war relief and
that sort of thing.  Quite respectable and praiseworthy."

"I see," said Willa slowly.  "It's only proper when you do it for
nothing, just because you like it.  If it's work, it isn't nice."

Her interlocutor writhed, but cannily forbore argument.  He had learned
more valuable pointers in the past few days on the matter of rebuttal
than Blackstone ever revealed to him.

"And the boy, Vernon.  What does he do?" Willa resumed.

"He motors and plays golf and tennis."  Mr. North cast wildly about in
his mind for an inspiration.  What did the young beggar do, anyway,
that would meet with the approval of this socialistic Amazon?  "Cards,
too.  He's an inveterate--I mean, enthusiastic, card-player."

Willa rewarded his efforts with a wriggle of interest.

"Monte, stud or blackjack?" she demanded.  "What's his limit?  Good
loser?"

"Very!"  The family lawyer was on solid ground here.  "In fact I may
say the best and most consistent loser I have knowledge of.  It has not
been decided yet what--ah, field of industry he will enter.  He is just
out of the university."

"There's a Mr. Halstead, I suppose?"

"Yes, of course.  He is the first vice-president of the Vitality and
Casualty Insurance Company, and director in several banks and
corporations.  A very busy man and an important, influential one."

"What does he do that he likes?" Willa persisted, unimpressed.

"Bless me, I haven't an idea!  I've known him for a quarter of a
century, but I've never heard him discuss anything except finance."

"And Mrs. Halstead?"

"Ah, my dear, there is a character for you!"  Mr. North beamed.  "She's
chairman of a dozen charity organizations, leader in every new movement
that appears, and manages to find ample time for her social duties,
besides.  A wonderful woman!  You are fortunate in having her for your
sponsor and mentor, and I--ah, I trust that you will follow her
directions in all things.  You must show your appreciation of her
kindness in taking you into her home and making you one of themselves
by obeying her without question.  Her experience and knowledge of the
world will be invaluable to you."

The swift roar of the train into the tunnel precluded comment from his
charge, and in the vast station she vanished once more.  This time she
remained absent for so long that the distracted attorney was on the
point of despatching a battalion of porters to search for her when she
reappeared, slightly flushed but serene.

"In heaven's name, where have you been?" Mr. North demanded testily.
"How many times have I instructed you to remain close at my side when
we alight!"

"I knew where you were, you see," she exclaimed calmly.  "There was
something I had to attend to."

"Telegrams to your friends?  Surely they might have waited until a more
suitable time!  You have caused me great anxiety----"

"I'm sorry if I worried you, Mr. North."  Her tone was chastened, but
there was an undernote of warning.  "I've been free so long that I kind
of forget I'm under extradition."

A wave of contrition swept over his ill-humor as her slim-clad figure
preceded him out to the waiting motor.  She had been coolly
insubordinate, of course, but she was young and very much alone in a
strange environment.  She could be led, perhaps, but she would never be
driven.

Cesare, the Halsteads' chauffeur, touched the brim of his cap smartly,
and Willa bestowed upon him a dazzling smile.  Only the snap of the
limousine door prevented her shaking hands.

"He looks like a right-nice boy," she remarked naïvely.  "Do you
suppose he'll teach me how to drive a car of my own?"

"If he is told to do so," Mr. North replied with dignity, "and it is
decided that you are to have a car."

She darted an appraising glance at him, but he vaguely felt a certain
ambiguous quality in the silence which followed, and congratulated
himself that they had reached their journey's end.

Mrs. Ripley Halstead awaited them in the drawing-room.  She was a tall,
commanding woman in the indefinite forties, with a high, thin nose and
cold, slightly protruding eyes.  Her dark hair, still untouched by
gray, was arranged in a modishly severe fashion and her smile extended
no farther than her straight lips.

"So this is our little cousin?"  She brushed the girl's cheek with a
light kiss.  "My dear Willa, words cannot express our pleasure that you
have been found at last, we have doubted and feared for so long.  I
hope that you will be very happy here with us, and I am sure that we
shall all manage famously."

"Thank you," Willa murmured, through stiffened lips.  "This situation
has been kind of thrust on both of us, but I reckon we can make the
best of it."

The lady gasped and turned to the attorney, who was watching with a
gleam of speculation in his eye.

"Mason, we have much to thank you for in restoring our young relative
to us, but I must defer that now.  You will dine with us?"

"Thank you, no."  He bowed over her hand.  "To tell you the truth, I am
rather fagged out from my trip, and I am anxious to get on up-town.
Please, tell Ripley that I will see him to-morrow, and transfer the
necessary papers to him.--Au revoir, my dear.  Try to remember what I
have told you."

Willa stared with dazed eyes about the pretty room to which she was
ushered.  The furniture was of ivory and dull gold, the walls,
draperies and floor a soft French blue, and delicate rose-shaded lights
glowed delicately in many brackets.

The drawing-room she had taken as a matter of course; it impressed her
as being not unlike that of the big hotel at Tampico, but to be
expected to live and move around and sleep in this fragile, stifling,
cluttered doll's house of a room was unthinkable.  It was hers, the
maid had said so; therefore, she would make the best of it, in her own
fashion.

A half-hour later the house-maid presented herself at Mrs. Halstead's
door in a state bordering on hysteria.

"If you please, Madame, the young lady, Miss Murdaugh, has taken her
room all to pieces.  The draperies' are down from the windows and piled
in a corner with the cushions from the chaise longue, and the bed is
moved over to the windows and stripped down to the blanket.  All the
rose shades are off the lights and the furniture is pushed back against