_ 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 naive, fearless manner, the product of a gambling-house and associate of its habitues? 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, Jose! I have brought you broth and wine."
He stammered his gratitude with weak but fervent voice, then the elfin face darkened.
"The Senor 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 Senor 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, Jose?"
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, Senorita."
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 Jose or a curse for the evil which has befallen him?"
The swaying ceased and the arms dropped as the old woman turned swiftly.
"Neither, Senorita, 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 Senor Wiley." The old woman announced simply. "He had harmed my Jose, 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, Senorita, 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, Senorita." 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 Senor 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, Senorita; 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 Senor 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 Jose." Tia Juana chuckled mirthlessly. "My vengeance can wait. The Senor Wiley is a fool, and the son of fools! It was not to the boy he should have gone for knowledge of the Pool; Jose knows no more than the idle words he repeated one evil day to the Senor 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 Jose 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 Senor 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, Senorita 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, Senor 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 Senor 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? _