"I can't imagine you in the role of a gumshoe!" The other laughed outright, and it was Winnie's turn to gape in amazement.

The change which had come over his companion was too marked to go unnoted; the listless, disheartened mood was gone and in its place the old eager alertness manifested itself, intensified by a sort of half-suppressed excitement.

"I turned the trick, anyway," Winnie remarked complacently after a pause. "You see, old man, I'd heard about the way she'd held on to the money Gentleman Geoff left her and I've caught glimpses of her more than once riding around town in a speedy gray car with a nifty chauffeur. I knew the Halstead bunch didn't know anything about it so I kept quiet. I recognized the chauffeur in the chap she sent to the governor's office for photographic copies of the documents Wiley dug up, but the governor sent me away just when things promised to be interesting.

"I scouted around outside the building and there, sure enough, drawn up at the curb across the way, was the gray car. I slipped over and took its number. Later, when we heard about her going away, I didn't say anything, but I looked up the record of the car. The license had been taken out under a man's name; the chauffeur's, maybe, but I traced it to a garage up on the West Side. I took this car up there two days ago, and whenever he took his own out I was right on the job after him.

"He found out that I was shadowing him, of course, and he tried like blazes to shake me off, but I was foxy and beat him at his own game yesterday. He drove up to a certain house and she came out herself, as if she'd been waiting for him. I jotted down the address, and beat it as hard as I could. It's lucky I found her when I did, because the car was moved to another garage this morning and I lost its trail."

"What are you going to do?" inquired the other. "Call on her to extend your sympathy? That's about the last thing on earth that Gentleman Geoff's Billie wants, under any circumstances."

He uttered the name with an unconscious note of tenderness in his voice which would have been illuminating to Winnie North, but that young man was busied at the moment with embarrassing thoughts of his own. His face at the other's abrupt question had turned a bright pink, but he replied steadily:

"I don't want to intrude upon her, but I'd like to tell her that I'm standing by in case of need.—I'll tell you what I'll do; I'll drop her a line and ask her if I may bring you up to call, shall I? She can tell you all about this thing better than I——"

Thode shook his head decisively.

"No. I am an old friend, as you say, and if she should want to see me she knows how to reach me. I'm going away in a few days, at any rate."

"Away?" Winnie said impulsively. "Why, old man, you're not returning to Mexico, are you? I thought you were going to stay around town for a month or two."

"No!" There was a determined ring, not without a touch of grimness, in his tones. "I'm going to take Horace Greeley's advice once more: 'Young man, go West.' I'll hit the trail for the setting sun——"

"And find your pot of gold, like the old fairy tale of the rainbow's end? By Jove, but you fellows are dreamers!" Winnie laughed, then touched his friend's shoulder persuasively. "Why don't you stay on here where the money is and work this end of the game for a change? You engineer chaps get out and do all the hard work, and the smug brokers who sit tight in their offices down on the Street reap all the profits. Get in on the ground floor, old man, and let the other fellow do the prospecting."

Thode laughed also.

"Without a working capital? Besides, I know nothing and care less about the manipulations of the financial end of it; the prospecting is all I'm cut out for and it's more fascinating than the market game could possibly be! However, I'm not going West for the elusive pot of gold this trip; I'm going for something far more important, on a little private hunch of my own. You'll wish me luck, I know, old man?"

"I will indeed, whatever your hunch is," Winnie responded heartily. "That stab in the back hasn't downed you, after all. I knew it wouldn't, after you got your second wind! You look like a different chap than you were an hour ago——"

"I feel it!" laughed the other, but again that undernote of grimness rang in his tone. "It's done me a lot of good, this little talk with you, Win. You'll never realize just how you've bucked me up."

Winnie puzzled over the significance of the last remark after he had dropped his friend at the Park entrance and turned north again. Could the stab in the back to which Thode referred have come from Starr Wiley, and had their conversation given Thode a clue to a way of striking back at his enemy? Not through Willa and the lost inheritance, of course; that was a bona-fide discovery, even if Wiley had been the instrument in bringing it to light. However, the fact that Wiley had stumbled upon the documents while in Arizona might have given Thode a lead on some ulterior project out there in which Wiley was trying to cut the ground out from under his feet.

In going over their conversation in retrospect, an idea came which Winnie determined impulsively to act upon. Willa's car had been removed from the garage to which he had traced it, but that did not necessarily mean that it had been taken to another. What if she had sold the car, in preparation for a return to Mexico? He felt that she must not go before he had seen her. Heretofore he had not, as he said, intruded upon her retreat, but he could not bear the thought of her departure without at least her knowing what he had to tell her.

He would go to her now, without giving her an opportunity to refuse to see him! She might be angry, and Willa's anger was something to be reckoned with, but he would make her hear him out!

Darkness had already fallen as he drew up before the neat little house with its twin front doors. He rang the bell of the one to the right and when the tall pleasant-faced woman appeared in answer to his summons, he asked without hesitation for Miss Abercrombie.

The woman eyed him somewhat doubtfully, but ushered him into a tiny immaculate parlor.

"Please, tell her it is Mr. Winthrop North. I haven't a card with me, but be sure about the first name. Say that I have an important message for her and no one knows that I have come."

"Yes, Sir." The woman hesitated. "I'm thinking you've made a mistake and got hold of the wrong Miss Abercrombie, but I'll find out."

In a moment, however, there was a rustle of silk on the narrow stairs and Willa entered. Her eyes sought his in a defensive, questioning stare as she held out her hand.

"Your visit is a surprise, Winnie. I thought—I was not aware that any of my friends knew where I was."

"No one does but me. I followed your chauffeur. Please, don't be angry! I was so afraid I should lose you; that you would return to Limasito before I had an opportunity to see you, that I was desperate."

"Why should you want to see me?" Willa demanded, frankly. "I don't mean to be ungracious, Winnie, we've grown to be awfully good friends in these two months, but I've been through so much just lately that the Willa Murdaugh episode seems far away, and all the people I knew then are like dream people. I—I'm starting in all over again, you see, and I meant to do it with a clean, blank sheet."

"But surely you don't mean to put us all behind you? Our friendship, our admiration, all the happy times we've had together—oh, Willa, you can't drop it all like this!" he stammered. "You can't go back now, you belong to us!"

She smiled.

"You're very good to say so, Winnie, but remember I'm not Willa any more! My place is gone, or rather it never was mine. I do believe in your friendship, but how many of the rest bothered with me because of myself alone? It was the Murdaugh position they accepted, the Murdaugh interests. I'm not cynical, but I try to look things squarely in the face. How many would admit within their circle the waif adopted by a gambler?"

Winnie drew a deep breath.

"Then why not make a place for yourself, or rather step into one which is waiting for you? It doesn't carry the prestige of the Murdaugh name or money, but it's solid and substantial and assured, and all that love can bring to make for happiness goes with it, too. Why don't you marry me, dear?"

Willa started up in unutterable amazement. The mild round face of the boy before her seemed all at once to have taken on a deeper, more mature expression, strengthening and ennobling it, and a wistful light which there was no mistaking glowed in his eyes.

"Winnie!"

"Oh, I know it sounds silly and presumptuous of me! You've known real men in your life, men who have fought and accomplished things and I've been just an idler. You couldn't care for me now, but if you'll give me half a chance I'll prove myself! I know I could do big things, too, if I had you with me, and I—I love you most tremendously, dear! I've cared ever since that very first night when you broke into Vernon's game in that splendid fearless way and drove Cal Shirley out as a cheat. I never saw a girl with such spirit and I've worshiped you more and more! Willa, won't you let me go to my father and tell him it's all right, that you will stay? He may not have found the Murdaugh heiress in Limasito, but I'd like to tell him that he found my wife!"

Willa's eyes blurred and a rich color dyed her cheeks as she replied softly:

"Dear Winnie! I'll always love you for this, and respect you, too, even though what you suggest is impossible.—'Presumptuous'? You don't know what a big, fine thing you just proved yourself capable of!" Her voice was not quite steady. "Willa Murdaugh was eligible, even a catch, I suppose, but now, when I am stripped of everything that counts in your world and nothing is left me but a past which would bar me from polite society if I tried to batter down its prejudices alone, you offer to brave its opinion, to give me the greatest thing a man can give to a woman. It's splendid of you! I—I can't tell you how wonderful it seems to feel that there are still men like you in the world. But, Winnie, I couldn't marry you! I'm awfully fond of you, but not in that way and one of the things I couldn't accept in the creed of your world would be to marry a man I didn't love. Even if I did care, I don't believe that I could bring myself to accept your sacrifice, but I shall never forget your generosity."

"Don't, please!" Winnie thrust out his hand in a passionate gesture of negation. "The generosity would have been on your part and the sacrifice, too! What does it matter who your own people were? You are yourself, the bravest, finest, truest girl in all the world! I knew you couldn't care, but, oh, I hoped that if there was no one else you would try to like me enough to give me an opportunity of proving to you that I could make you happy anyway. I would be so awfully good to you, and so proud! It is you who would be giving all, not me, and I should try all the rest of my life to be worthy of you. Willa, dearest, won't you think it over, and let me come again?"

She shook her head with a sad little smile.

"I am leaving to-night, Winnie, and going far away. I may return sometime, quien sabe?—but I have played a lone hand ever since Dad was killed and I've got to go on to the end. You're wonderfully kind, wonderfully dear, but I have a long trail to follow and I must travel it alone."

"You're leaving to-night!" He turned and walked to the window where he stood for some minutes gazing out at the blank darkness before him in silence. When he broke it at length and turned again, his face was very pale but composed.

"You will write and let me know where you are and that all is well with you?"

"Perhaps," Willa said gently. "At any rate you will know that I shall think of you always and value your friendship as the one worth-while thing in all this experience. I wish I could have cared for you, Winnie, in that way, but it couldn't be."

"I understand." His voice was very low. "Remember that I am your friend, if I can be nothing more, and I shall be waiting. If you ever want me, or need me, you will have only to send me a word and I shall come if it is half across the world.—I'm going, now. Don't be afraid that I shall tell anyone where I found you. I can't bear to say it, but it is 'good-bye', Willa. I—I hope, wherever you are, that nothing but happiness will come to you. Good-bye, best and sweetest and dearest——"

His voice broke, and Willa held out both her hands.

"Good-bye, Winnie. You're going to be happy, too, some day. I'll always be proud of your friendship and what you have offered me. Our trails may cross again some day, and if they do I shall be glad, indeed. Till then, good luck and every wish of my heart to you, my pal!"

Winnie pressed her hands, then dropped them and stumbled from the room. In the machine, he turned and waved. Willa stood in the window, her slender form outlined against the light behind her, her small head proudly erect, and it seemed to the boy's blurred, exalted gaze as if an aura of golden haze like a halo surrounded it. A passing glance and he was swept along into the darkness ahead, the vision and the memory of her all that remained to him.



CHAPTER XXI

THE RETURN OF TIA JUANA

"I tell you, Starr, it's all very well to play a waiting game, but we've got to start something and start it soon, or we'll be up against the worst fix we've ever struck in our lives, and that will be going some!" Harrington Chase paused in his restless pacing of the private office to regard his partner with troubled eyes. "We've got to make a big killing or we're due to go under, and you know what that'll mean."

Wiley flung himself around in his chair to face the other.

"I've moved heaven and earth to find that old she-devil!" he exclaimed. "The biggest obstacle is out of our path now, as you very well know, and if Tia Juana would only turn up, we could put it all over her. Gentleman Geoff's Billie is no longer in a position to interfere if she wanted to, thanks to my fortunate discovery of the adoption papers in Arizona, and when I get my hands on the old woman——"

"You've been saying that for the last month," Chase observed, adding with a sly smile: "I'm not undervaluing the lucky chance that put those documents in your way, my dear fellow! What has happened, anyway, in regard to that affair? Until the Halsteads and North have proved the validity of the papers they won't make any premature announcement, of course, and I'm only supposed to share the knowledge, common in their circle, that Willa Murdaugh has gone to spend the winter in the South."

"Oh, they'll spring the news about the beginning of Lent, I imagine, when the social calendar is clear and they won't have so many explanations to make," Wiley responded carelessly. "It's bound to be a nine-days' wonder, but things move rapidly in this town and she'll be almost forgotten by Easter."

"What's become of the girl herself?" asked Chase. "Where did she go when she took herself off in that high-handed fashion?"

"Search me!" Wiley shrugged. "She's eliminated, anyway, from the scene."

"Not if we happen to shift the scene to Mexico!" retorted the other. "What if she has gone back to Limasito?"

"Well, she hasn't." Wiley announced briefly. "Our men down there have their instructions to keep a lookout and let us know the minute she appears, but there hasn't been a sign of her. Personally, I didn't expect it."

"Why not? Where else would she go?"

"My dear Harrington, if you had made as close a study of feminine psychology as I have, you would know that she would rather go anywhere else in the world than return to Limasito in defeat. With her pride it would be intolerable after the eclat of her departure as an heiress to slink back as merely Gentleman Geoff's Billie once more."

"That's some satisfaction," Chase muttered, resuming his nervous tread. "But granted that she is finally eliminated, what good will it do us as long as Tia Juana remains under cover? Do you understand the situation? We're overcapitalized right now to the limit; we've watered the stock until it would float a fleet of battle-ships and we're dangerously near the line——"

"Well, what can I do?" Wiley ran his hands through his hair. "I've banked everything on this Lost Souls venture, and God knows I've gone the limit to put it through!"

"Have you?" Chase turned at the window. "Just what did you mean to do, if you had succeeded in locating Tia Juana?"

"I should think that would be obvious." Wiley laughed shortly. "We've threshed that all out; I'd get her signature to a bill of sale of the Trevino hacienda where the Lost Souls' Pool is situated, record the deed with the Notary Public at Victoria, and then proceed to develop and advertise the well. What on earth are you driving at, Harrington?"

"Just this!" His partner strode quickly to the desk and bent down, staring significantly into Wiley's eyes. "That's your program, is it? Well, go ahead and carry it out!"

"Sounds good!" Wiley chuckled, sneeringly. "Perhaps you'll be good enough to produce Tia Juana, so that I can start the ball rolling!"

"I will," Harrington Chase responded quietly.

It was Wiley's turn to stare.

"Hope you'll have better luck than I have had, that's all," he said at last, shrugging. "When you find her——"

Chase interrupted him with a gesture.

"I have found her!"

"What!" Wiley sprang from his chair. "When? Where? Good Lord, why didn't you tell me before? How did you find her?"

"Wait——!"

Chase straightened and tiptoed to the door leading into the outer office. The next instant he had flung it wide, but no eavesdropper was in sight and the whole suite appeared deserted. He closed the door once more and thereafter ensued an earnest and protracted conference.

As a result, Starr Wiley failed to put in an appearance that night at a dinner to which he had been invited and his excuse pleaded a sudden business trip. Days lengthened into weeks, and when he did not return there was a ripple of surprise and conjecture at his abrupt evanescence, but the varied festivities of the approaching holiday season ousted him from his rather negligible place in the thoughts of his acquaintances.

Christmas came and passed, and the New Year was nearing the end of its first month when he reappeared in the city, and simultaneously a sensational rumor spread like wildfire through the financial circles. It concerned a marvelous new oil well, the "Almas Perderse," which had just been discovered in the richest part of the Mexican petroleum fields, and which was reputed to be the greatest potential producer since the famous "Dos Bocas" itself.

Excitement ran high and the offices of Chase and Company were besieged by the curious and speculative among the smaller fry, but the moneyed interests still held aloof in spite of the artfully conservative bait dangled before them, and for a time developments were at a standstill.

It was during this period that one day Winnie North and Vernon Halstead found themselves compulsory room-mates at an overcrowded stag house-party in Westchester. The events of the preceding autumn had chastened and matured both of the genially irresponsible young men and the resultant change edified their immediate relatives even while it caused them to exhibit unflattering astonishment.

Winnie was making a determined effort to learn the intricacies of the brokerage game and Vernon had enrolled himself at the university on the Heights for a post-graduate course in mining and petroleum engineering. It was natural, therefore, that the subject which arose for discussion between them over a night-cap and cigarette was that of the Almas Perderse well.

"It sounds mighty good, I admit," Vernon remarked. "If anybody but Starr Wiley stood sponsor for it I should have more faith in its possibilities, I suppose, but somehow I can't figure him in a bona-fide deal."

"The governor doesn't share your prejudice, nor does your own father," Winnie remarked. "I've heard them talking and I've a hunch that they're both going to invest pretty heavily in the Almas Perderse stock when it is issued. They have faith in Wiley's knowledge of a good thing when he sees it, and I fancy it's sound, at that. He's been more than ordinarily successful in the past with other propositions, you know, and whatever your opinions of him personally, you'll have to admit that Wiley's reputation on the Exchange is second to none as far as judgment and efficiency and a thorough comprehension of the oil game are concerned."

"Yet the big investors are holding off, I understand," Vernon observed thoughtfully. "I wish my father wouldn't monkey with it. What's the game, Winnie? What are Chase and Wiley doing to launch the Almas Perderse?"

"Well, they've recently increased their capitalization to twenty-five million and they told the governor they want to raise ten million more at once. They're offering a million shares at ten dollars, par value, and they claim a jump to one hundred or better is inevitable within a few months, as soon as the development starts. The governor thinks he's being let in on the ground floor."

"It would look like it, if the thing is on the level." Vernon shook his head. "They're liable to bring in a gusher that'll send the price soaring."

"Whatever that means!" Winnie laughed. "You'll be some little petroleum engineer yourself one of these days! I don't know anything about it myself, but it seems to me the figures that Wiley stated to the governor as the initial cost of development were pretty steep; twenty-five million, including an eight-inch pipe line to Limasito and tankage equipment there."

"No, that's not excessive," demurred Vernon. "The pumping stations every ten miles will average fifty thousand alone, and every foot of the pipe must be transported by peons—laborers, you know—on their shoulders through the swamps. Moreover, now that it seems inevitable that we shall get in the war ourselves, it's going to be next to impossible to get tankers at any price to bring the oil up from Mexico.—But I'm only a tyro yet; Kearn Thode can give you the details far better than I can. What's become of him, by the way?"

"He's out West, somewhere." Winnie ground out the stub of his cigarette. "He went soon after your cousin——er——"

"By Jove!" Vernon rose. "I'd give anything to see Willa again! Wasn't she the most wonderful little thoroughbred that ever lived!"

"She was," Winnie responded, his voice very low. "We'll never know a girl just like her, Verne. There's not another in the world."

Vernon glanced with unusual keenness at his friend and when he spoke his tone was roughly sympathetic.

"Hard hit, Winnie? Well, so was I, for that matter. Not that she would ever have looked at me, of course, but if she'd stayed another day I meant to ask her to stay always. She put me on the road to making a man of myself; some day I'll tell you how, maybe. It has a good deal to do with my distrust of Starr and his 'Almas Perderse'."

At an ungodly hour the next morning Winnie North was summoned to the telephone.

"Hello! What the deuce is it?" he demanded sleepily, but the voice which came to him over the wire speedily dispelled his somnolence.

"That you, Win? This is Kearn Thode."

"What! Gad, old man, it's good to hear your voice!" Winnie exclaimed. "When did you get in?"

"Just last night. I tried to get hold of you, but your father told me you were up there at Stoney Crest——"

"Come on out! Jim would have asked you if he'd known where you were. I'll tell him——"

"No," Thode interrupted tersely. "Sorry, but I can't waste a day! I've got to see you at once, this morning if possible."

"All right," Winnie responded. "Tell you what I'll do; I'll grab Jim's speedster and meet you at the Bumble Bee Inn. I can make it in an hour and so can you, as it's about half way out. Nobody'll be around in the morning and it's deserted anyway this time of the year, so we can have it to ourselves. I say, what's the racket, Kearn?"

"Tell you when I see you. Don't fail me, Win. Good-bye."

When Winnie drove up to the road-house an hour later, a lone taxi' stood outside and a familiar figure was seated at one of the tables in the otherwise empty restaurant. As it rose he saw that the two months had brought Kearn Thode back to what he had been before the fever laid him low in Mexico. He glowed with the old health and strength, and in his eyes was the triumphant fire of achievement.

"Hello, old man! You're looking wonderfully fit again, thank the Lord! Did you find that important something or other that was worth more than the pot of gold?"

Thode smiled as they shook hands.

"I found what I went after," he replied quietly. "And you? I hear you're settling into the harness in great shape."

Winnie flushed.

"The governor would boast, I suppose, as long as I succeeded in keeping out of jail," he observed. "It's a horrible responsibility to be an only son! But what's the big idea? You didn't chivvie me out of bed in the cold gray dawn for nothing!"

Thode beckoned to the solitary waiter, hovering in the pantry doorway, before responding.

"We'd better have some coffee and a bite first. Then I want the news; remember I've been out in the wild and woolly since before the holidays."

When their order had been given, Winnie observed:

"I suppose you've heard about Wiley. He's been down in Mexico and grabbed off a new oil well, the Almas Perderse——"

"The Lost Souls!" Thode's hands clenched, and he drew a deep breath between set teeth. "So he pulled it off, did he? By Jove, I wonder——"

"What?" asked the other after a pause. "Did you know about the well, too?"

Kearn Thode laughed.

"I'd heard of it," he acknowledged. "I wish him joy of his discovery! Is he making headway while the going is good?"

"Rather! I say, it isn't bunk, is it? I mean, this Almas Perderse is the real thing, a good financial proposition?"

"If it is really the Almas Perderse and he holds a clear title, it's the greatest prize in the oil fields to-day." Thode's face sobered. "Why do you ask?"

"Because the governor and Ripley Halstead are going into it heavily," explained Winnie. "I don't know how much stock Halstead's subscribed for, but the governor is going to take about fifty thousand shares at par, ten dollars. He's bugs about it; thinks he's going to make his everlasting fortune."

"Win, tell him to drop it!" Thode said earnestly. "I can't explain now for there's more at stake than the Lost Souls, but I know what I'm talking about. He might as profitably sink his money in a bottomless pit as in that oil well!"

"Look here, I don't understand!" Winnie's voice shook. "You said just now it was the greatest prize in the oil fields to-day. What's wrong with it?"

"I told you I couldn't explain," Thode responded doggedly. "You've simply got to take my word for it, that's all. I'm not sure enough of my ground to make a definite statement yet or I would warn your father myself, but I'm so far convinced of coming trouble that I wouldn't see a friend of mine put a dollar in it if I could persuade him not to. I don't mind admitting that my own trip to Mexico last fall was made in the hope of locating that well myself, but it isn't sour grapes now with me. I give you my word of honor, Win, that whatever your father invests in the Almas Perderse well under the present conditions will be irretrievably lost."

"I wish to the Lord you would go to the governor yourself!" exploded Winnie. "He wouldn't listen to me in a million years, and even you would have to show him! He has looked thoroughly into the proposition according to his judgment and he has the utmost faith in it or he wouldn't plan to back it at all. Are you sure, Kearn?"

"Which means that you are not; I haven't succeeded in convincing you." Thode shrugged. "What chance would I have of convincing your father? I'm warning you, Win, I can't do any more. It's up to you now; remember that I am as earnest in this as I have ever been in my life, and it is only because of our old friendship that I have dropped you a hint. Whether your father acts upon it or not, beg him to respect my confidence, at any rate for the time being. I asked you to meet me to-day——"

"Yes?" Winnie's tone was absent, his mind still grappling with the quandary into which the other's warning had plunged him. "What is it, Kearn?"

"Do you remember our last meeting before I went away, when you picked me up in the Park?" Thode pushed his cup aside and leaned forward over the table. "You told me you knew where Miss Murdaugh went when she left the Halsteads. I want you to take me to her at once, without delay."

Winnie shook his head.

"Sorry, old man. I saw her within an hour after dropping you at the Park entrance and found her on the eve of departure. She told me she was leaving New York that night, but she wouldn't tell me her destination. I called again the next day and found she had gone; I haven't heard anything of her since."

"That's a facer!" Thode groaned. "I had counted on finding her here. Could she have returned to Limasito?"

"No, I've made inquiries. You see," Winnie explained hastily, "we'd grown to be pretty-good friends and naturally the governor felt responsible for her, in a way. He's been in constant communication with Jim Baggott down there—the man who runs the hotel——"

"I remember."

"The governor located her first through him, you know, and he seems to have been the one she trusted most after her foster father died, but even he has heard nothing from her, or pretends he hasn't." Winnie paused. "The governor has done everything possible to find her and satisfy himself that she was all right, but she has dropped completely from sight. He has aged over the whole thing, I can tell you! I think he would give half he possesses to know that all was well with her."

Thode beckoned once more to the waiter, and, throwing a bill upon the table, rose.

"If Miss Murdaugh has gone, I'm off to-night," he announced. "It was to see her that I returned to New York, but since there's no chance of that now I must take the trail again."

"I say, you haven't stumbled upon anything that would be to her advantage, have you?" Winnie demanded suddenly as he followed his friend to the door. "Anything about the past, I mean——?"

"No, Win." Thode spoke without turning. "It was just a—a little private matter."

"And you're really off to-night? When are we going to see you again, old man?"

"I don't know." He wheeled about swiftly, then held out his hand. "Don't forget to repeat what I have told you to your father and make it as strong as you can. I'm playing a game of my own, and when we meet again it will be cards on the table. Good-bye, Win."

"Good luck!" The other hesitated wistfully. "If—if you should happen by any chance to run across Willa in your wanderings, will you tell her for me that I'm still waiting, as I said I should be; that I am still, as always, at her service?"



CHAPTER XXII

WHERE TRAILS MEET

A long, narrow valley between snow-capped mountains glistening under the January sun; a cluster of ramshackle, weather-beaten wooden houses elbowing each other on either side of a single straggling street, with here and there a newer concrete building planted firmly like respectable citizens in a disreputable mob. Stray dogs sniffing at heaps of refuse, a group of tethered horses shivering under thin blankets in the hotel shed, a battered jitney or two stalled before shop and saloon. A Chinaman with a huge bundle upon his head, a slatternly woman brushing the dry, powdered snow from the path, a tawdry one pattering along, her rouged face pitiful in the clear merciless light; red-shirted miners crawling like ants to the yawning shaft-mouths half way up the mountainside.—This was Topaz Gulch on a certain wintry morning.

In the office of the Palace Hotel, the proprietor tossed aside his week-old Chicago newspaper and rose with alacrity as a slender, girlish figure, clad in a great fur coat, came lightly down the stairs.

"Everything all right, Ma'am? Did the missus make you comfortable?"

"Yes, thank you." The girl nodded, smiling. Then her face sobered. "I wonder if you could tell me—may I ask how long you have been here in Topaz Gulch?"

"Five years, Ma'am," he returned promptly. "For a boom town that didn't grow as was expected, nor yet peter out entirely, Topaz is holding her own and business ain't so bad; besides, the air is good for the missus. That's why we come in the first place."

The girl had paused at the window, gazing up the western slope.

"That is the Yellow Streak?"

"Yes'm, that's the mine. Folks thought at first that she was going to pan out another bonanza, I guess, but now she's just about profitable enough to make it worth while to keep her going. Great town, this must have been when she was first opened up."

The girl scarcely heard. She was thinking of the weary, consumptive young time-keeper who had struggled up that gray slope with daily weakening tread and of the girl who, with her baby in her arms, watched him perhaps from the door of one of those dilapidated, weather-worn shacks upon which she herself now gazed. With blurred eyes, the erstwhile Willa Murdaugh turned to her informant.

"Have there been many changes since you came?" she asked.

"Well, no," he considered. "Once in a while some hustler from the Coast lands here and runs up a concrete store, but usually he don't stay long; there ain't enough doing. The population's always shifting; there's been a whole new outfit up at the mine since we come, but everything seems to go on just the same, so you couldn't rightly call it much of a change. The moving-picture houses are about all that's marked any difference in things here, I guess."

"I wonder if there is anyone left in the town who was here fifteen years ago." Willa spoke with ill-concealed eagerness. "Who is the oldest inhabitant you know of?"

The proprietor looked his surprise.

"Well," he began at last, "there's Bill Ryder; he come in with the first rush, they tell me, and he still runs the Red Dog Cafe. Then there's Pete Haines, a half-witted old cuss—begging your pardon, Ma'am!—that's got enough dust cached somewhere to keep himself drunk perpetual; and the Widow Atkinson, and Big Olaf, and—and Klondike Kate."

He hesitated at the last name, and a brick-red flush suffused his stolid face, but Willa paid no heed.

"Who are they?"

"The Widow Atkinson runs the eating-house for miners at the end of the street; hard-shell temperance, she is, and they say Atkinson used to wait on table with her apron tied round him and dassent even smoke indoors." He paused. "Big Olaf is a Swede who got hurt in the mine years ago and the company gives him an annuity. Kind of cracked he is, too, but harmless. You see, Ma'am, when the big boom died down gradual and the town settled into a one-horse gait, the young folks naturally pushed on to the next strike that promised a fortune, and the old ones drifted back to where they come from."

"And Klondike Kate; who is she?" Willa persisted.

Her host shifted from one foot to the other in an agony of embarrassment.

"She—she's just a woman that stays on here because there ain't any other place for her to go, Ma'am. She does odd jobs when she can find any to do and the missus helps her out now and then, but she ain't the kind you'd want anything to do with. The missus'll tell you if you ask her."

"I understand," said Willa quickly. "Is that the Red Dog over there, where the man is sweeping sawdust out to the road?"

She had crossed to the door and opened it, and her host approached, peering over her shoulder.

"Yes'm, that's Bill Ryder himself."

"I would like to talk to him," Willa announced. "I want to ask him some questions about the early days here."

"I'll fetch him for you!" her host offered, recovering hastily from his astonishment. "You just wait here, he'll be right pleased to come——"

"No, thank you. I will go over, myself." Willa fastened her cloak with a decisive air. "He came with the first rush, you tell me? Then he should be able to remember what I want to learn."

She picked her way across the hummocks of frozen mud powdered with snow in the road, and approached the rotund, jovial-faced little man who was swinging his worn broom energetically in a cloud of sawdust.

He paused as she neared him, his jaw sagging at the apparition of a dainty, richly dressed, strange female alone on the street of Topaz.

"Good-morning. You're Mr. Ryder, aren't you?" she smiled.

"That's me, Ma'am." He pulled off his soft-brimmed hat, revealing a wide expanse of shining pink scalp, fringed with a scanty growth of grizzled hair.

"The proprietor of the Palace Hotel tells me that you are one of the oldest inhabitants left, Mr. Ryder, and I wonder if you would mind telling me something of the people who used to live in Topaz Gulch years ago. I am trying to locate some lost relatives."

"I'll be glad to tell you anything I can, Ma'am." His round face quickened with interest. "I keep bachelor house, but if you don't object to walking through the bar—it's empty now—there's a room back where we can talk."

He led the way and Willa followed him. Bare and ramshackle as it was, the sight of the bar and the little tables fronting it brought acutely to her memory a like room, larger and more resplendent, with baize-covered tables and flaring oil lamps; a tall, spare figure inexpressibly dear to her memory replaced for a moment the rotund one before her and the veil of the past seemed lifted. She was back once more in the Blue Chip.

The vision was dispelled, however, when she found herself in the little back room, scarcely more than a closet, with room enough only for the rusty stove, table and chairs.

"Private poker-room," Mr. Ryder announced with pride. "Enough coin's changed hands here to buy the greatest gold-mine in Nevada! Make yourself comfortable, Ma'am. Now, who was it you was looking for?"

"Do you recall Jake's place, the dance-hall that was burned down?" Willa began.

"Like as if it was yesterday!" The little man seated himself in the chair opposite and put his hat on the floor beside him. "Topaz was a roaring gehenna in them days and one night Red-Eye Pete started in to shoot out the lamps at Jake's. One of 'em exploded and it was all over in no time. Red-Eye himself and Ray Clancy, the pianner-player, and two o' the girls was lost. I got a busted arm and most o' my hair singed off going in after 'em, but 'twarn't no use."

"You knew the—the girls?" Willa had difficulty in controlling her voice.

"Sure I did! Blonde Annie and Miss Violet. Annie was just a—a girl like you'd expect, Ma'am, but Miss Violet, she was a regular lady. Young widder with a toddling baby and a voice like an angel.—Say, that's funny!" He broke off, staring at her. "It ain't about her that you've come, is it?"

Willa nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

"Well, don't that beat—beat everything!" Mr. Ryder recovered himself in some confusion. "Two or three years ago a lawyer shark from New York City—a man named North, I remember—come here asking an all-fired lot o' questions, and only last fall another feller turned up on the same game. I told 'em all I knew, which warn't much. They called themselves Murphy, Miss Vi and her husband did, but I guess that warn't their right name. Nice young feller he was, but quiet and sickly. When he died we wanted to pass round the hat for the widder, like we always do, but she wouldn't have it; she got work instead at Jake's, singing and dancing, but she kept everyone in their place and there warn't a man here that wouldn't have stood up for her till the last gun fired."

"And the baby—do you remember it at all?"

"Little Billie?" Mr. Ryder laughed. "There ain't enough babies around a mining camp to make you forget any one of 'em, and you couldn't rightly forget Billie if you tried. Fat and curly-headed she was, and the spunkiest little critter you ever see, always falling down hard and scrambling up again by herself and laughing to beat four of a kind. Her ma tried to keep her home, but there warn't a chance; she went wherever her little legs would carry her, and the whole town looked out for her. She must be a woman grown, now."

"I don't suppose you would recognize her if you should see her," Willa observed wistfully.

"Me? Lord, no!" he exclaimed. "Babies grow up into most anything, as far as looks go! She was about four when her ma was burned, and Gentleman Geoff, the gambler, adopted her and took her away. The whole town wanted to keep her, but in them days Topaz was no place for a girl to grow up in and there wasn't a woman here of her mother's kind."

"It is possible that a woman might remember her where a man wouldn't." Willa was following her own train of thought. "The proprietor of the Palace spoke of two women left who were here at that time; a Mrs. Atkinson and Klondike Kate. Would they be able to tell me anything more, do you think?"

"Not the widder!" Mr. Ryder responded with emphasis. "She put Miss Vi to work in her hash-house for a week when young Murphy died; starved her, slammed the kid around and drove her till she fainted. She warn't used to hard work, Miss Vi warn't, and the Widder Atkinson would have killed a horse. When Miss Vi took to doing turns at Jake's instead, the Widder 'lowed she was no better than she'd ought to've been, and near got lynched in consequence. You've only got to mention Miss Vi to her even now to have her r'ar right up on her hind legs. She wouldn't tell you nothing if she could."

"The other one, Klondike Kate. Did she know this Miss Violet?"

"Sure. She was one o' the girls at Jake's, like Blonde Annie and the rest. I guess you ain't ever come in contact with that kind, Ma'am, but it wouldn't hurt you to talk to her once and if anyone could help you maybe she could. That kind don't get much forbearance from other women, but Miss Vi was good to her and nursed her through a spell o' sickness and Klondike Kate just about worshiped her and the baby. 'Twas Kate saved little Billie when Jake's burned. She was the first after poor Miss Violet to remember the baby and she turned back and got her."

"She—she saved the child!" Willa's voice trembled, and she rose quickly. "Where can I find her? It is good of you to have told me what you could, Mr. Ryder. You don't remember anything else about this Miss Violet and her baby; she left no papers with anyone?"

"No, not that I know of. The lawyer asked me that, too, and the young feller who came last fall. Riley, his name was, or something like that."

"Starr Wiley?" Willa smiled. "Did he ask you anything else, Mr. Ryder?"

"He was trying most particular to find out Gentleman Geoff's last name, but nobody ever heard it here. You'll find Klondike Kate living in the last shack on the west side o' the street before you come to the coal-yard. She ain't a pleasant sight to look at, poor old Kate! The fire caught her, too, when she rescued the baby, and though she was a fine-appearing girl before then, her own mother wouldn't know her now, or want to, I guess, for that matter. She's square, I'll say that for her; whatever she tells you, you can bank on."

Willa took leave of Mr. Ryder and departed upon her quest. He followed to the cafe door and stood looking perplexedly after her as she made her way down the rambling street. He was trying to fix in his mind the vagrant, subtle sensation of familiarity which possessed him when he had first caught sight of her face. Stolid and slow of wit as he was, the conviction grew that she or someone very like her had crossed his path before. Then the face of the song-and-dance artiste at Jake's flashed across his memory and the next minute he was pounding heavily after the girl.

"Hey, Ma'am! Wait a second!" he panted.

Willa turned.

"Excuse me, Ma'am, but it come to me that you might be little Billie, yourself! Are you? I'd like powerful well to see her again!"

"Look at me!" commanded Willa. "Could you swear, Mr. Ryder, that I was the child you call 'Billie'? Could you take your oath on it?"

He looked long and searchingly while she waited in breathless suspense. At last he drew back, shaking his head.

"No'm, I couldn't. Meaning no disrespect, there's a look about you of Miss Vi, but fifteen or sixteen years is a long time to trust your memory and I couldn't swear to nothing."

Willa sighed and turned away.

"My name is Abercrombie," she said. "You are right, Mr. Ryder. Fifteen years are a very long time."

The shack next the coal-yard was more forlorn even than the others, though the sagging porch was swept clean, and ineffectual attempts had been made to mend the breaks in roof and walls with fresher slabs of unpainted wood which stood out against the gray weathered boards like patches on an old coat.

There was no bell, but Willa knocked patiently on the panel until there came a slow tread within and the door opened. A thin, angular woman stood there, her dark hair streaked with gray, and Willa glanced at her, then swiftly averted her gaze in pity. The face before her was drawn and scarred as if the hot hand of wrath had clawed it, searing and distorting it to the hideous, grinning semblance of a mask.

"I beg your pardon." Willa's voice was very gentle. "I am looking for someone known as Klondike Kate. If you are she, I have a great favor to ask of you."

She had sounded the right note; the woman, who for so long had been the recipient of grudging, half-contemptuous favor herself, gasped and flung wide the door.

"Come in, Miss. I'm Kate, right enough. Sit down close to the stove; I ain't got much of a fire." The voice was singularly clear and sweet.

Willa glanced about her and then back at the woman who had dropped into a low rocker beside a table heaped with red flannels, which she had evidently been mending. The room was tiny and pitifully bare, but scrubbed clean, and pathetic bows of faded ribbon strove to conceal the worn spots on the coarse snowy curtains. A small pot bubbled on the stove and two cold potatoes and half a stale loaf on the shelf betrayed the meagerness of the larder.

The woman had given an impression of age at first, but Willa saw now that she could be scarcely more than forty and her eyes were rather fine despite their hint of tragedy.

"I'm looking for someone who can tell me about Violet, the girl who used to dance at Jake's." Willa chose her words deliberately. "Mr. Ryder says you were a friend of hers, years ago."

"Bill Ryder said that?" Klondike Kate drew a deep breath. "A friend? She was the best friend a body could ever have! But you could hardly have known her; she died fifteen years past."

"I know. I was wondering if you knew her story; if she left any papers with you?"

"Who are you?" the woman asked suddenly, bending forward. "If I knew Vi's story, would I repay her for all her kindness by telling it to a stranger? Why should I show you her papers if she did leave any with me, when that lawyer could get nothing out of me two years ago, for all his blustering?"

"Would you do it if you could help her baby to claim what is her own?" Willa asked earnestly. "My name is Abercrombie, but I happen to know that the girl your friend left behind her is trying to prove her identity. I thought that you would want to help."

"Oh, if I could!" Klondike Kate clasped her toil-worn hands. "Vi told me about the rich father-in-law who hadn't ever forgiven her. Where is Billie, Miss Abercrombie? Is she well and happy? She was such a pretty thing!"

"She is well," Willa responded slowly. "She never knew that it was you who saved her from the fire."

The scarred face flushed.

"I forgot her first, that was the awful part. She'd been ailing and her mother couldn't leave her home, so while she did her turn I sat in her dressing-room, mending my skirt and talking to the kid. When I heard the shots and the lamp exploded and the blaze flared up, I just made a jump for the door. Then I remembered Billie and went back, and the flames caught us both."

"But—but she isn't scarred!" Willa cried.

"No. I—I tore off my skirt and wrapped her in it. Only her little bare feet stuck out and one of them got burned real bad."

"One—of—her—feet!" repeated Willa breathlessly. "Did it leave a scar? Oh, think—think!"

"Why, I guess it must have, Miss Abercrombie." The woman stared at her. "The right foot it was, and there was a bad burn on the inside of the ankle right up from the heel, like a tongue of flame had licked it. It wasn't hardly well when Gentleman Geoff took her away."

For a moment Willa sat as if stunned, then she bent swiftly, and, whipping off her shoe and stocking, thrust out a slender pink foot. The inner side was seared with a tiny forked red line, slight but unmistakable.

"You!" Klondike Kate rose slowly. "You are Billie!"

With a little sob Willa went to meet her, and in an instant the two were crying in each other's arms.

The older woman was the first to recover herself.

"Oh, my dear, to think that I didn't know you! I ought to have seen from the first—your mother's hair and eyes——"

"But you know me now!" Willa smiled through her tears. "You could swear to me by that scar, couldn't you? You see, there is someone trying to claim I'm not the girl you knew as Billie, and I have no other proof. I never fancied that little scar meant anything; I haven't thought of it in years. You saved my life once, at the risk of your own—will you help me now?"

"Will I?" Klondike Kate wiped her eyes. "I'll go to the last ditch for you! I've lived right for fifteen years, and I guess my word is as good as the next one's. You just take me to whoever says you're not little Billie and I'll prove their lie before any court on earth.—That reminds me; I have something for you. It won't help make good your claim, for they might say an impostor got it from me, but it's yours and you ought to have it."

She mounted the rickety stairs to the loft, and in her absence Willa slowly put on her stocking and shoe once more. Her own inner conviction had been justified and an elation almost solemn in its intensity filled her heart. She was Willa Murdaugh! She could prove her right to the name which had been wrested from her!

When Klondike Kate descended she bore in her hands a folded paper, yellowed and worn, and a tarnished locket on a bit of faded, scorched blue ribbon.

"I was sick when Gentleman Geoff left town with you or I'd have tied the locket on you myself," she said. "It's got both their pictures in it, mother and father. See!"

She opened the case, and Willa gazed through renewed tears at the two young faces vibrant with life which smiled back at her: the man's thin and intellectual with the eyes of a dreamer and the chiseled lips of a poet; the woman's stronger and more practical, her gaze sweet and level, her dark hair in a soft cloud about her low, broad forehead.

Willa pressed the locket convulsively to her breast in the first overwhelming tide of possession which had ever swept over her. These were her own people, flesh of her flesh! They had dared to love against insuperable odds, and, succumbing at last, had left her as the pledge of that love! She would prove worthy of them!

"It was taken from her neck when they found her after the fire," Klondike Kate said softly. "Jake gave it to me to keep for you.—Here's what she prized most of anything she had; she put it in my hands herself to keep for her."

The yellowed paper, unfolded, proved to be the certificate of marriage of Violet Ashton and Ralph Murdaugh, dated January 2, 1896.

The two talked long within the little shack, and when Willa emerged at last the sun had disappeared behind a bank of level, leaden cloud and the still cold which precedes a snowfall had settled down upon the valley.

Since her arrival the night before Willa had fought resolutely against the vague memories which seemed to assail her at every turn, fearing the snare of mental suggestion, but now she strove wistfully to foster a sense of nearness and familiarity with the dreary scene.

The reaction from her triumphant hour had come, and with it a forlorn hopelessness of spirit. What did it matter, after all? Outcast or reinstated in the empty pomp and circumstance of society, no one had really cared save Winnie, and he had not counted.

The tragedy of utter isolation from all human ties descended upon her and in the depths of her desolation she was oblivious to the sound of footsteps approaching on the frosty, hard-packed road. It was only when they halted that she glanced up—and found herself looking into the eyes of Kearn Thode.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE SLIPPER OF CINDERELLA

Forgetting for a moment all else but the joy of his presence, she held out both hands with a glad little cry.

"Kearn!"

He took her hands in his, but released them after the merest touch, and in the hungry wistfulness of his gaze there was no answering gladness.

"Miss Murdaugh, I have an explanation to make for my disobedience of your injunction," he said stiffly. "I have deliberately followed you here, but it is only that I may put you in possession of certain facts which are of moment to you. Will you forgive me if I intrude upon you for an hour?"

The brightness faded, and she bowed her head in silence. She had forgotten his duplicity and the cold-blooded mercenary game he had played, but the memory of it returned with his first words. Passionately she wished that she might never have learned the truth! He would have played the game to the last round, he would have been kind at least, and she might have lived on in her fool's paradise. Then a wave of contempt swept over her for her own cowardice and she straightened.

"I am very glad to see you." Her tones were gravely conventional. "If you have followed me out here, as you say, to render me a service it must be one for which I shall be deeply grateful, Mr. Thode. I am staying at the Palace Hotel and if you will walk there with me we can talk, secure from intrusion. How did you know I was here?"

"Winthrop North told me of the sudden change in your plans for the future, and that he knew where you had gone when you left the Halsteads. I made a hurried trip West and there discovered what I have now to tell you." He spoke slowly as if weighing each word. "I went back to New York to see you, but could only learn that you had disappeared. However, since you had not gone to Limasito, it occurred to me that you must be here, in an attempt possibly to prove your identity."

"And what you have to tell me bears on that?" Willa asked.

"It does, most conclusively. Starr Wiley must have had a very vital motive in getting you out of the way, for his story was a lie from start to finish; his papers a deliberate forgery!"

"If you have proof of that, Mr. Thode, you have indeed rendered me a service I can never repay!" she cried. "Once more I am in your debt!"

"My news does not surprise you?" he asked, with a quick glance at her face.

"No. I have suspected it from the moment Starr Wiley announced his discovery, for he had threatened me with it in advance; had tried to bargain with me, in fact." Willa paused. "I had intended to go on from here to the Flathead Lake country in Montana and then to Arizona in an effort to establish what you have discovered. I am anxious to know how you stumbled upon the truth."

It was only when they had reached the little hotel sitting-room and established themselves before the replenished stove that Kearn Thode enlightened her.

"You may remember, Miss Murdaugh, that I knew Starr Wiley before I met him again in Limasito, and that knowledge alone would have impelled me to distrust at sight any claims which he might produce, no matter what their nature," he began. "When Winthrop North told me that our friend had been the means of proving you were not the granddaughter of Giles Murdaugh, I doubted, and when I learned the name which Gentleman Geoff was supposed to have signed to the adoption papers with the trapper, I knew the whole thing was a frame-up. Gentleman Geoff's name was not Abercrombie."

"How do you know that?" Willa asked, amazed.

"He told me the truth himself, just a little while before he died," Thode responded. "I gave him my word to keep his confidence, but now in your interest I know that he would have me speak. He was Geoffrey Rendell, of a fine old family, university bred and with a brilliant future before him, if he had so chosen. I have traced as much of his career as anyone can ever know now and I will never betray the reason for his ultimate choice, but you may rest assured that his nickname was no label of chance or whim. He was a gentleman always in the truest, finest sense of the word."

"Nothing could ever make me doubt that for an instant," Willa said with glowing eyes. "There could have been nothing discreditable in his past and he was a clean sportsman in the life he chose, square and philosophical; a game loser, a generous winner! Poor Dad! Mr. Thode, tell me how you succeeded in learning the truth."

"When I was convinced that trickery was at work I persuaded Winthrop to let me see and photograph the adoption agreement. With that as a basis I went straight to Pima, in Graham County, Arizona, where Frank Hillery, the trapper, had died and Wiley professed to have run across his papers. Hillery died only seven or eight months ago, you know, and it wasn't difficult to find out all about him.

"He landed there in the spring of nineteen four, and opened a little store with general merchandise. He was still keeping it when he was stricken with typhoid last year and died. I readily found the widow who had kept house for him all those years and interviewed his friends. His long sojourn in the wilds evidently had their reaction when he settled down in civilization once more, for he became exceedingly garrulous, and his friends were familiar with every detail of his past life. His favorite narrative was of the coming of Gentleman Geoff with you to his cabin; of the death of his own little daughter and of Gentleman Geoff's long illness and subsequent gratitude and generosity to him. Your foster father, in recognition of his hospitality and care, had given him sufficient money to start in business, and Hillery never forgot it. When he died he left no papers except a brief will, and his old trunks and boxes remained undisturbed in the attic, until about three months ago when a strange young man appeared in Pima."

Thode paused and Willa caught her breath. She had momentarily forgotten the narrator himself in her interest in his story, and the quick color came and went in her cheeks. It seemed to the young engineer that she bloomed like a splendid rose in the homely, bare little room and the wistfulness deepened in his eyes, but he went on in a sternly impersonal voice:

"The man was Wiley, under an assumed name, of course. He posed as a nephew of the dead man, and when the beneficiaries found he had no intention of attempting to dispute the will, being wealthy himself, they gladly made friends with him and told him all they knew of his late uncle.

"Wiley went to board with the widow, and it seemed only natural that he should want to go through his uncle's effects. The widow gave him free access to the attic, and it was there, in one of those boxes, that he professed to find the packet of papers which he afterward produced. Undoubtedly the marriage-certificate and the maps were genuine; only the article of adoption had been added. He left soon after, and nothing further was known of him there.

"When I learned that much, I, too, went to board with the widow and learned every detail of Wiley's stay. One of Hillery's oldest friends had a son who had gone to the bad and was serving a term for highway robbery in a prison near Phoenix. I found that Wiley had taken a great interest in the lad and paid him more than one visit, promising to use his influence to have him pardoned. I went to Phoenix, talked with this prisoner and a few others, and incidentally looked over the records.

"I discovered that Wiley had interested himself particularly in an ex-forger whose term had expired at about that period, and it was understood that Wiley had provided him with a new start in life. I hunted up this man—it wasn't hard for he had bought a ranch and was trying to go straight—and under threat of arrest obtained his written confession.

"The money for the fresh start was the price Wiley had paid for the execution of the false document. I have the confession here in my bag, and I will show it to you later. It is absolutely conclusive proof. Miss Murdaugh, I may be an accessory after the fact, but I felt sure you would not want the forger punished, and I gave him time to sell out his ranch and disappear. I am under the impression that he has gone to Canada to enlist, and if so——"

Willa shook her head.

"No. I don't believe he had any idea of the purpose to which the document would be put, or its far-reaching effects, and if he has gone to war, his punishment is on the knees of the gods."

"Exactly. He did not know. The name of Murdaugh wasn't mentioned in it if you remember, only those of Hillery and the supposed Abercrombie."

"'Abercrombie!'" repeated Willa meditatively. "I wonder how Wiley came to add that?"

"I finally solved that. Wiley wanted to add clinching verisimilitude to the document and took a long shot. Like many another amateur criminal, he overreached himself, and that one fact, you see, led to the whole discovery. He must have followed Gentleman Geoff's trail through his wanderings from Topaz Gulch, seeking a loop-hole to prove you were not the baby originally adopted, and when he came upon the story which was told to him in Missoula, Montana, of Gentleman Geoff's illness in the trapper's cabin on Flathead Lake, one can easily see how the whole scheme popped into his head. There were the two men and two little girls of the same age, isolated far from civilization for a long winter. One child dies, the other departs with Gentleman Geoff. What more simple than to arrange for a plausible substitution of the children? Gentleman Geoff being dead, the only possible obstacle could be in the person of the other member of that lonely quartette, Frank Hillery, the trapper. We know now how Wiley traced him and overcame that difficulty.

"Wiley's efforts culminated in Arizona, but mine only began there. I traced him back step by step on the trail he had come, following Hillery, and in Missoula I learned more of Gentleman Geoff. Wiley must have learned there what I did, that Gentleman Geoff's last name was known to be Abercrombie, but Wiley didn't investigate deeply enough.

"I did. I found that Gentleman Geoff Abercrombie had a most unsavory name there as a crooked gambler and card-sharp—— No, Miss Murdaugh, please don't protest!"

Willa had turned upon him with flashing eyes.

"He had operated several gambling-casinos for brief, abruptly terminated periods in Idaho and Montana, keeping about two jumps ahead of a lynching posse most of the time and was last heard of in New Mexico five years ago, when the Blue Chip was in full blast in Limasito. In other words, there were two Gentleman Geoffs! The second must have been a cheap swindler and card-sharp, who learned of your foster father's fame as a square gambler throughout the West and sought to profit by it. His operations were on such a small, petty scale, however, that it is no wonder the story of his exploits never reached the ears of the real Gentleman Geoff. Your title to your name is assured now, Miss Murdaugh."

"And you have done all this for me!" Willa mused, then turned her level direct gaze upon him. "Why, Mr. Thode?"

"Because I promised the man who brought you up and cared for you always that I would do what I could to further the duty he had assumed and so splendidly carried on," Thode responded simply. "When he lay dying, he told me that, although you yourself did not know it, you were of different blood and caste from your associates in Limasito. His own words were that you were born a lady and must go back to your own."

"Dad said that?" Willa's lips quivered. "I learned to-day that he was in love with my mother always, and she had told him her whole story. I have found a friend here, too, Mr. Thode, a poor woman who is frightfully maimed from saving my life in the fire which killed my mother. I—I have a scar from it which she recognized and so there is another witness to my identity, but without the valuable proof you have brought me I would still have found it almost impossible to offset the evidence of that false document. I cannot thank you for all that you have done and I still cannot quite understand——"

"It was for Gentleman Geoff," he reminded her courteously but coldly. "I had given him my word and I meant to keep it to the utmost of my ability. My task, I think, is almost completed."

Willa drew back, in wretched indecision. If only it had not been for that hideously betraying letter which Angie had put in her hands how clear the way would be before her! If the testimony offered of his mercenary motives in making love to her had been verbal she would have scorned it, no matter who swore to its truth, but his intent was made plain in his own writing and could not be gainsaid.

"You will not let me offer you my thanks," she murmured. "But I am indeed grateful. Can we not at least be friends, Mr. Thode? I—I regret that bitter, angry letter I sent to you, but I had learned something which hurt me deeply. Won't you be magnanimous enough to forget it and let us go on as if nothing had occurred?"

"I shall be glad to be your friend and serve you in any way that I can, Miss Murdaugh," he responded dryly. "I have something further to tell you which I think concerns you closely. Are you aware that Starr Wiley and his partner, Harrington Chase, have purchased from Tia Juana Reyes the property known as the Lost Souls lease and are already issuing stock and developing the well?"

Willa rose slowly to her feet, staring at him as if she could not believe the evidence of her own ears.

"You—you cannot mean it!" she gasped. "It cannot be true; there is a mistake somewhere! Please, say that again, Mr. Thode!"

He told her all that he had learned in New York, and she listened breathlessly, her varying color concentrated in two vivid burning spots upon her cheeks. A steady light deepened, too, in her eyes, and when he had finished his story he looked at her in unconcealed amazement. Far from being down-cast and distressed, she seemed to his half-incredulous gaze to be triumphant, but she only remarked quietly:

"This is news indeed, Mr. Thode, but it simplifies everything. The stakes I have played for since I left Limasito are in my hands at last. I cannot explain now, but you will learn the whole truth very soon. Starr Wiley and his partner are still in New York?"

"No. They have both gone down to Limasito, to inspect developments on the well. In the society column of a belated newspaper which reached me yesterday, I read that two of the principal stock-holders, Mason North and your cousin, Ripley Halstead, together with their families, had gone also in a private car to Mexico. You will return to New York now, will you not?"

Willa's eyes sparkled dangerously and she clenched her little hands.

"I—I have some arrangements to make here; I must provide for Klondike Kate's future, and obtain her deposition. She was my mother's friend, who recognized me. Then, Mr. Thode, I shall leave, but not for New York. I, too, am going to Mexico! I want to see the Lost Souls well and learn from Tia Juana's own lips the story of its transfer."

"I shall be down there myself," Thode announced, rising. "If you recall our conversation when we met again in New York you will remember that I told you of my own ambition to find Tia Juana and try to obtain possession of the Lost Souls lease. You know how the map was stolen from me in the beginning, but I am not sure yet that I have been beaten?"

"What do you mean?" Willa asked. "And why do you think that your news about the sale of the well concerns me closely?"

"I have only one answer to both questions," rejoined Thode. "Knowing Starr Wiley, I believe that trickery and fraud are at the bottom of his acquisition of the well, and it concerns you because your cousin, Ripley Halstead, has invested a large part of your inheritance in it. If fraud is connected with the transaction by which Wiley gained possession of it, I mean to expose him on this count as well as his conspiracy against you. I had set my heart on the Lost Souls venture, like an over-confident young fool! I even wrote to my employer after you had gone and I discovered that Tia Juana was Juana Reyes, the owner of the Pool, that I had only to find her to win her consent——"

"You wrote——what?" Willa rose slowly to her feet, her rich color ebbing.

"I wrote that except for Trevino, the Mexican who sold her the lease, no one there knew her real name, and it wouldn't matter to them if they did.—They wouldn't have connected old Tia Juana, of that tumble-down shack in the zapote grove, with the Juana Reyes who could afford to buy the Trevino hacienda, you see. I also said, if I remember, that she was the undoubted owner of almost boundless wealth and when I had gone after her and won her consent to selling a half-interest in the Pool itself——"

"Oh!" Willa cried, wincing as if he had struck her a blow. "You wrote that about Tia Juana! And I—I—oh, how blind I was! How wickedly, cruelly blind!"

"Now it is I who do not understand." He shrugged. "What does it matter, anyway? I never succeeded in finding Tia Juana or in something else which was of even more moment to me. Gentleman Geoff trusted me, however, and I have fulfilled that trust. Now I am free to take up my own fight again."

Willa held out her hand timidly.

"You will allow me to wish you luck, even if I may not thank you?" she asked. "I—I have much to explain and you much to forgive, but we shall meet again in Mexico."

He bowed formally.

"It appears to be inevitable. Fate seems to compel me to ignore your request that I obliterate myself from the scene," he added whimsically. "I will try not to intrude upon you more than I must, however, Miss Murdaugh."

"Yes!" she responded softly. "In spite of my blindness and your pride, fate seems to have appointed you to the permanent job of knight-errant to the maiden in distress, hasn't it, Mr. Duenna?"

When the door had closed behind him, she stood quite still in the middle of the floor where he had left her. That letter, that portentous letter which Angie had spitefully put into her willing, credulous hands had referred to Tia Juana, not to herself. How plain it all was, now, and how ruthlessly, unjustly she had driven him from her! And he? He had repaid her flouting of him by tireless devotion and a measureless service! Ah, but she would make amends!

Then a whimsical, tender light flooded her face. Cinderella had come into her own again; the prince had found her and fitted on the slipper just when she had been most sure that he had gone from her forever! He was a very haughty and hurt and angry prince, to be sure, but there had been that in his eyes which told her that she might win him back despite the bitter misunderstanding. The old fairy tale was coming true, after all!



CHAPTER XXIV

THE LOST SOULS' TREASURE

On a certain bright February morning Ben Hallock puffed up the Calle Rivera and across the plaza of Limasito as fast as his battered jitney could carry him and rushed into Baggott's hotel with an anticipatory gleam in his heavy eyes.

"Hey, Jim! I got your message and I come a-hummin'!" he announced. "What is it? Vigilance Committee?"

"Sort of!" Jim Baggott fairly pranced from behind the bar, his round face shining with excitement. "Here's a gentleman from New York, old friend of yours."

Ben Hallock turned to find himself facing an elderly personage with an impressively pointed gray beard and keen eyes behind gold-rimmed pince-nez.

"Jumping Jehosaphet! If it ain't Perry Larkin!" Ben pumped the stranger's hand energetically. "Mighty glad to see you, Sir! Your engineer, Kearn Thode, called on me last fall; fine young feller he is, too! You heard about what he did when El Negrito came?"

"Yes, Hallock, but I'm even more proud of him to-day!" The keen eyes sparkled. "I want you to meet a—er—a confrere of mine, Mr. Morrissey."

Honest Dan, late taxi'-driver and amateur detective, purpled with embarrassment as he rose and shook hands, but his eyes, too, were dancing.

Ben nodded to Henry Bailey, his ranch neighbor and the only other occupant of the bar, and then turned again to Jim Baggott.

"Now perhaps you'll tell me what in thunder the racket is about! I'd have come to meet Mr. Larkin without you hinting at a lynchin' party!"

"Just you say what you'll have and hold your horses!" Jim chuckled. "I'm acting under instructions, the same that brought Mr. Larkin and this-here young man down from New York, and Hen Bailey in from his hacienda; the orders of Gentleman Geoff's Billie, by God!"

"Billie! She ain't—you don't mean she's comin' back?" Ben cried joyfully. "I told you she wasn't the kind to forget her old friends in spite of the grand life she's walked into! I knew she'd come back to see us——"

"It is business which brings her now, Hallock, and grim business, too," Mr. Larkin interposed. "She wanted you and Henry here as her friends and witnesses, and there's apt to be a rather ugly scene."

"Do you mean she's coming right now, that she's here?" Ben Hallock touched his hip significantly. "I've come heeled for any kind of a little party that's liable to be sprung, but I little thought Billie'd be mixed up in it. What's the matter? Anybody been tryin' to stack the cards on her?"

"The dirtiest, crookedest game that was ever pulled!" Jim smote the bar a blow which made the glasses tinkle. "But she'll beat 'em to it yet, or she wouldn't be Gentleman Geoff's girl! She ain't here now, but we expect her any minute and when she comes the fun'll start."

As if in answer the hum and whirr of two high-powered motors chugging in unison stole upon the air and rapidly increased in volume. Ben craned his neck from the window and then turned disappointedly.

"It's only that Lost Souls crowd!" he grunted. "Jim, if anything in the line of a fracas starts here, you'll lose that passel of swell boarders of yours! Can you see them women when the shootin' commences?"

"They're in on it, too!" Jim grinned. "Not the women-folk, but the men, and more especially our fine young friend, Starr Wiley."

"Something to do with the Lost Souls——"

"Shut up, quick!" Jim advanced from behind the bar with an almost comic air of ceremony as the motor party trooped in at the door and headed for the stairs. Perry Larkin squared his pince-nez and recognized Mrs. Ripley Halstead and her daughter, Angelica, while behind them appeared seven men; Halstead himself, his son, Vernon, Starr Wiley, Harrington Chase, Mason North and his son, Winthrop, and a stranger whom a second glance revealed as Cranmore, the Mexican representative of the Chase-Wiley interests.

"Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but we've been waiting for you!" Jim Baggott began in the voice of a showman. "I'll have to ask you gentlemen to step this way, all of you. It's a real-pressing little matter of business you're all concerned in, and the ladies can come, too, if they feel like it. There'll be more ladies present shortly."

Wondering, the whole party crowded into the room, and, recognizing Perry Larkin, greeted him with varying degrees of cordiality. Jim bustled about, setting chairs for them, and in the general confusion none noted that a little group of men in uniform had issued from a door behind the bar and taken up their stations at the windows and entrance. The last comers were in two divisions; the ornate ones, stocky and swarthy for the most part, the soberly attired, taller and stalwart with the paler hue of the North.

Starr Wiley was the first to observe their presence, and he uttered a stifled oath.

"These are just extra witnesses," Jim explained blandly. "They're here to represent the United States Federal Government and also Mexico. You see, this-here little matter has what you might call an international aspect.—Did you speak, Mr. Wiley?"

"I should like to, when you've finished shooting off fireworks!" that gentleman blustered. "What's the meaning of this, anyway? What sort of trumped-up game are you——?"

"Steady, Starr." Ripley Halstead interposed quietly, and turned to the proprietor. "Will you state the nature of this meeting to which you have called us, Mr. Baggott? We are waiting to learn."

"I'm waiting, too!" confessed Jim. "I've got my orders—gosh almighty! Here she comes!"

Unheard, a single touring-car had slipped across the plaza and halted before the entrance. A slim, girlish, heavily-veiled figure alighted, and at sight of the men who accompanied her, Starr Wiley emitted a second oath.

They paused in the doorway and with a sudden movement the girl tore off her veil. There was a moment of electrified silence, broken by a little cry from Angie.

"It's Willa!—That impostor, I mean——"

"No!" Kearn Thode, the second of the newcomers, advanced to Mason North. "You were appointed the guardian of Willa Murdaugh, were you not, Mr. North? I have brought her back to you, with proof of her absolute identity."

"Bless my soul!" The rotund little man advanced with shining eyes, and seized the girl's hands. "I am overwhelmed, my dear girl, delighted! And you have proof, you say? What an amazingly fortunate turn of affairs!"

No one echoed him for a moment. The Halsteads sat stunned, and Harrington Chase, his face a greenish gray, had slumped in his chair. Only Starr Wiley, his eyes glittering and a sinister sneer curling his thin lips, looked on imperturbably. Winthrop North gasped. Then he hurried forward.

"Good work, Kearn! Oh, Willa!" His voice broke as he took her hands from his father's and wrung them hard. "Our trails have crossed again, and it has been 'good luck' indeed!"

Ripley Halstead had risen, and his wife made a tentative movement to follow his example. Vernon, too, recovered himself and advanced eagerly, but Willa waved them back and took her place before the bar.

"This is quite a reunion, isn't it?" She smiled, but there was a grim menace behind it. "I'm glad you're all here, for I've got a story to tell you that I shouldn't care to tell twice. It goes back to before a lot of you ever knew me, but you'll find it interesting enough, for it concerns you all as well as me; you, and the Pool of the Lost Souls."

She leaned back with one elbow resting upon the bar and her other hand in the pocket of her traveling-coat and surveyed them one by one, her expression unchanging. No one stirred and after a moment she went on:

"I have asked my old friends, my real friends, to meet me here that they, too, may learn the truth. Most of you have heard the legend of the Lost Souls' Pool; Mr. Larkin heard it from Ben Hallock and sent Kearn Thode down here to find it, if he could. Mr. Chase also learned it, and his partner came on the same errand, but I had the story from the lineal descendant of the first Spanish owner, and the one person in the world who knew where it was located, Juana Reyes. In her youth she married a cousin of the same name, and her only relative living now is her crippled grandson, Jose. My foster father scoffed at the truth of the legend, but I had faith in Tia Juana's knowledge.

"When El Negrito, the butcher, came down from the hills on his murderous raid and killed Dad among the rest, I learned that his visit had been prearranged and paid for by a white man. He had been hired to burn and rape and slay in order to evoke United States intervention, by a man in this room!"

"By God——" Jim Baggott leaped to his feet, and Henry Bailey and Ben Hallock emitted a simultaneous roar of rage; but she silenced them.

"The government men are here as much to protect him as to see that he does not escape, and hard as it is we must let the law take its course." She spoke with frank regret, but her steady, significant smile never wavered. "In Dad's name I dedicated my life to getting that man. I had a witness to prove his conspiracy, but I wanted to play a lone hand. Nothing else mattered, nothing else has ever mattered!

"When the Blue Chip was sold and Jim Baggott handed over the money to me I knew it wouldn't be enough; if I was to beat the man at his own game I must be able to match finances as well as wits. I thought then of the Pool of the Lost Souls and the fabulous profits to be made from it.

"Three days before Mr. North came to Limasito I took Tia Juana away, and she guided me to the Pool. It had been passed over by the searchers for generations, but she possessed an old map of its true location. I bought the Pool with the money from the sale of the Blue Chip, recorded it in her name with the Notary at Victoria and gave her a half interest. All she cared about, anyway, was the home of her ancestors.

"Then Mr. North brought the news of my inheritance. I didn't want it at first, as he can tell you. The name and the money meant little to me until I realized that they would be useful to my plan. They mean less to me now that my purpose has been achieved, but since they are mine and have been wrested from me by fraud I claim them—if only to trample them under my feet, if I choose.

"I realized that the name would carry me into the very inner circle of the man I was after, the man who had murdered Dad, and the money would help when I could exercise unlimited control of it. That was the only reason I consented to go to New York, and my ultimate purpose never wavered.

"I had no detailed plan, but I meant to keep Tia Juana and the fact that I possessed the Lost Souls' Pool under cover until I had come into my full inheritance, when I would return and fight the man to the finish. Mr. North never knew that Tia Juana and Jose accompanied us to New York, although he did complain of my frequent disappearances en route, I remember."

Mason North sputtered.

"So do I! But why did you not tell me all, my dear? I might have helped you——"

"And taken the whole thing out of my hands?" Willa shook her head, still smiling. "The man was my meat, Mr. North! Vengeance may be the Lord's, but it was sweet to me, too, and I meant to taste it to the last morsel!

"The man was one of those who were still searching for the Lost Souls' Pool. After our departure he possessed himself by violence of the map which Tia Juana had only partly destroyed, located the Pool, learned of its new owner and started out to find her. He knew that I was her one friend, and suspected that I was back of the purchase. Before following me to New York, therefore, he made a journey West, of which I'll tell you more later, or rather Mr. Thode will.

"When he did finally appear in New York, he tried by every means in his power to force me to a confession of my knowledge of Tia Juana's whereabouts; he spied upon me and I removed her to new quarters just in time. He flattered and cajoled me, and, when that failed, resorted to vague threats.

"Then Tia Juana disappeared. She vanished from the home I had found for her, leaving no trace, and I feared that the man had abducted her, to coerce her into making the Pool over to him, until I met him outside the house from which she had gone. He accused me of having spirited her away to keep her out of his reach and demanded that I produce her in three days, or he would strip me of my position and name and inheritance, seeing me driven forth as an impostor! That man is Starr Wiley, and you know how he carried out his threat!"

Wiley made a sudden convulsive leap for the window, but paused transfixed at her significant gesture. The government officials had closed in about him, but he saw only the girl before the bar and the pointed bulge in her cloak, beneath her hidden hand.

"Better not try it, Starr Wiley, although I almost wish you would!" Her voice rang out in the suddenly stayed tumult. "I've had you covered from the first, and I'll drop you with a shot through my pocket if you make another move! The rest of you know only what he has done to me, but you shall hear how he has served you, too!

"I left the Halstead house, and then by a miracle Tia Juana was restored to me. After her disappearance little Jose remembered her interest in a conversation between her landlady and a friend concerning some Spanish gypsies who had settled in squatters' cabins north of the city, and conceiving the idea that she had joined them, he slipped away to find her. He succeeded, although how she ever reached her destination we cannot know, for she was bewildered and lost her mind, temporarily enfeebled. Jose, as a vender of tomales, established himself near the garage where I kept my car, hoping to attract the attention of my chauffeur, Dan Morrissey here, who had helped me all through that trying time and whom Jose knew he could trust.

"Once he was frightened away, but the second time he succeeded and Dan brought him to me. I took Tia Juana away to another city, but she was ill for a long time. When I could leave her, I placed her and Jose in the care of Dan's sister whom I summoned from New York, and went West myself to disprove Starr Wiley's story if I could.

"I found a witness who can swear to my identity as the daughter of Ralph and Violet Murdaugh and prove it by a scar I bear from the fire which cost my mother her life, but Mr. Thode, unknown to me, had gone West also in my interest and his efforts were even more successful than mine.—Will you show them, please, what you obtained in Arizona?"

She turned to Kearn Thode, who drew forth a folded paper which he handed to Mason North.

"It is a confession, signed and witnessed, from the forger Starr Wiley employed to manufacture that false article of adoption," he announced. "The child who died in the trapper's cabin was his own daughter and it was Willa Murdaugh who went on with Gentleman Geoff. I did not know until this morning the whole story of the Lost Souls' Pool transaction, but I suspected it. Starr Wiley had a strong motive for getting Miss Murdaugh out of the way if she did not prove amenable to his schemes, and he provided himself with a strong weapon, but he overlooked one salient point. I happened to know Gentleman Geoff's last name, I learned it from his own lips as he lay dying, and it was not Abercrombie."

"After I left New York," Willa took up the story, "Starr Wiley came down here, registered a deed of sale, signed by Tia Juana, giving him possession of the Lost Souls' Pool and proceeded with his partner to develop it and float it on the market. I believe Mr. Thode tried to warn Mr. North through his son not to go into it, but unfortunately for him, Mr. North would not heed, and he and Mr. Halstead invested heavily. I say 'unfortunately,' for the money is lost! Gentlemen, Juana Reyes and I still own that property. Starr Wiley—and in this his partner, Harrington Chase, is equally guilty with him—had induced a poor ignorant old Mexican woman, Rosa Mendez, to sign the name of Juana Reyes to the bill of sale, copying it from the original signature in the registry. He thought the trick which had served him so well in Arizona could be safely repeated, but I have Rosa Mendez upstairs at this moment, together with the real Juana Reyes and Jose. Shall I call them?"

"No, no!" shrieked Starr Wiley. "I will not face that old hag! What's the use? You've got the goods on me! It's all true, all of it except that I instigated El Negrito's raid! That I never——"

"It was Tia Juana herself who witnessed your secret negotiations with Juan de Soria, El Negrito's agent!" Willa interposed swiftly. "It's been a fair fight, Starr Wiley, for I warned you once, but you have played directly into my hands. I've paid my debt to Dad, but you have yet to meet the penalty. For your crime against me, and those you have victimized in the Lost Souls venture you will not live to make restitution; you know what awaits you for summoning El Negrito down from the hills!"

For an instant Wiley cowered, shuddering. Then with a supreme effort he straightened and turned to his guards.

"Take me out of this!" he demanded hoarsely, through white lips. "I'm through! Take me away!"

With a scream Angie flung herself forward, but he put her aside as if in a dream and marched out with his guards on either side and his eyes fixed straight ahead over the abyss of the future. Muttering and cursing, Harrington Chase was led after him from the room, and for a space there was silence.

Ripley Halstead sat as though turned to stone, his wife had collapsed in her chair and Mason North's head was buried in his hands. Winthrop with his arm across his father's shoulders met Vernon's dazed eyes and with one accord they turned to Willa.

Her quiet, set, terrible smile was unchanged, but her face had blanched and with an effort she motioned to Jim Baggott.

"Jim, do you remember what happened in Manzanillo away over on the West Coast ten years ago when you were pay clerk for the Colima-Zamora Company and a man stuck you up in broad daylight?"

"I sure do!" Jim returned. "I shot him in the head!"

"Not in but across," observed Willa. "You left your mark on him from brow to ear, only you didn't recognize it while he was here under your own roof."

"What!" Jim's eyes were fairly starting from his head. "That feller was a swindling promoter down on his luck; he broke jail afterward, I heard. His name was Harry Carter."

"It used to be, but now it is Harrington Chase."

The smile faded at last, and Willa swayed suddenly, catching at the bar for support. Jim Baggott sprang for her, but Thode reached her side first, and for a moment she clung to him. Then she raised herself indomitably upright once more.

"It is not easy to hate, after all!" she murmured. "If it were not for the memory of Dad I could find it in my heart to forgive."



CHAPTER XXV

INTO HER OWN

Spring was well advanced and the Casa de Limas was a veritable paradise of tender virginal green and delicate mystically perfumed blossoms, when Willa, a frail shadow of herself, ventured for the first time to the veranda, on Sallie Bailey's sturdy arm.

The protracted strain and final tragedy of her triumph had proved too much for even her robust vitality, and when the news came that Starr Wiley had killed himself in his garrison prison rather than face the firing squad, the inevitable collapse occurred.

For weeks she had lain helpless and inert with a low fever sapping her last ounce of strength and no incentive to take up her life again, until one day she had chanced to overhear a remark of Sallie Bailey's which brought a new light and glow to her world.

"I declare!" announced Sallie to her husband. "I don't know what to say to that young Thode every day when he comes ridin' in with his heart in his eyes to ask if she's better. I never see such devotion in my born days! He's worn to a shadder with the worry over her, and it hurts, I can tell you, to send him away lookin' like I'd hit him a blow when I tell him there's no change. Love's a pretty-fierce thing sometimes, ain't it?"

Love! Willa buried her face in the pillow and a little creeping warmth stole through her veins. It was good to be alive, after all.

But he was still ignorant of the truth about that letter! At the thought Willa's heart contracted and the quick, scalding tears of weakness came to her eyes. He still believed that she had wantonly led him on and trampled him beneath her feet in sheer joy of conquest. Oh, she must become strong enough to tell him how sorry she was, to make amends!

Now as she lay back in her chair, awaiting his coming in the cool of the soft spring evening, the events of the past few months seemed very far away and unreal, almost as though they might have been a dream born of her fever. She could scarcely believe that she had ever left Limasito; the climacteric weeks in New York, the trip to Topaz Gulch and the later scene in Jim Baggott's hotel had alike faded into a vague, nebulous shadow without substance or coherence, and she herself seemed drifting. . . .

Again it was Sallie who brought her back to earth with a matter-of-fact remark.

"I don't s'pose you know, or care either, that the Lost Souls is producin' thousands of barrels a day since they struck that gusher. You'll never miss the stock now that you gave to Mr. North and them Halsteads to make up for what they lost on their own hook in the fake company, though I did think you were a little fool at the time, Billie. Served 'em good and right after the way they treated you."

Willa shook her head wearily.

"They were pretty decent, Sallie, and both Ripley Halstead and Mr. North were always kind. I couldn't have let them suffer for a mistake.—How is Tia Juana? You must let me see her the next time she comes."

Sallie chuckled.

"She's buildin' a chapel to the lost souls who was drowned in that pool, and she's bought a big, bright-yeller automobile! Jose's learning from Dan how to drive it for her, when Dan gets time enough off from his work with Mr. Thode. Since you gave him that stock in the new Murdaugh-Reyes Company you can't hardly pry Dan Morrissey loose from the oil business to eat.—Say, honey!" Her tone dropped persuasively. "There's something that's not quite clear in my mind yet. I've been bursting to ask you, but you were too sick. Where does young Mr. Thode come in on this and how did you find out that old Rosa Mendez was the one who signed Tia Juana's name to that false deed?"

"I didn't. It was Mr. Thode who found that out for me," Willa explained. "You see, when I met him out in Topaz Gulch I told him I was coming down here and he said he'd be here, too; his presence would have been necessary, anyway, to prove that I was really Willa Murdaugh. Dan's sister was taking care of Tia Juana and Jose for me in Philadelphia, where those who were fighting me wouldn't think of searching.

"When I settled up my affairs out West, I wired Dan, and he brought Tia Juana and Jose down to Victoria to meet me. There I found Mr. Thode again. He had suspected trickery and fraud in connection with the making over of the lease, and when the Notary Public described the woman who had appeared before him as Tia Juana with—with Starr Wiley——" Her voice sank at mention of the name which had cast such a shadow over her for many days. "Mr. Thode knew it was an impostor. He realized that Wiley would not have selected a woman from either Victoria or Limasito to play the part for she might have been recognized, so he scouted around in the neighborhood of the Lost Souls' Pool itself, and found that a poor, old, half-witted creature, who had lived all her days in a wretched hovel near the Trevino hacienda, had suddenly come into money from a mysterious source, and moved away. That was Rosa Mendez.

"When he talked to her closest associates in the poor quarter where she lived, Mr. Thode found that Rosa had had a fair education, but all the money she could earn or scrape together went for hootch."

"I remember her from the time we lived out that way," Sallie remarked. "I hired her to help in the cook-house when we had extra hands on for the pickin', and she stole all the pots she could carry off."

"Mr. Thode found out, too, that for the last few days before she went away she shut herself up in her hut and wouldn't let anybody in, but one of the neighbor women peeped in through a window, and saw her writing something over and over on scraps of paper and burning them carefully in the stove." Willa went on. "That must have been Tia Juana's signature. Then when he heard that she was seen talking to a man who answered to Wiley's description, he was sure. He traced her to Palmillas and when he confronted her she broke down and confessed without a show of fight. He brought her back to Victoria and was waiting for me when I came."

"He's a smart one!" Sallie vociferated admiringly. "You'd go far, Billie, to find a regular he-man in all that crowd you've been traveling with that could beat him! But you might have let me in on that party over to Baggott's! He sent hot-foot for Hen, but little I thought you was in it or I'd have come, invite or no! How'd you fix that up?"

"I sent Tia Juana and Jose and Rosa Mendez on ahead to confront the others if necessary——"

"Yes, and they tried to kill each other all the way down——old Rosa and Tia Juana, I mean," interrupted the other. "Them Federal officers told Hen they'd rather have had charge o' two wild cats! Them and the other government fellers got there while that bunch o' robbers was out on a trip inspecting the oil well."

Willa nodded.

"I knew they'd return that morning, and I arranged the affair with Jim Baggott and the officials. It was a terrible business, Sallie, and I wanted to get it all over with at once."

"Well, you did it!" Sallie chuckled. "You took the wind out o' the sails o' them relatives o' your'n, too. They've been milling around these parts like nothin' was good enough for 'em, and it give 'em a pain to hear your name mentioned, but it was different after you showed up with your powder-blast, I can fell you! When they found you was goin' to let byegones be byegones, and give 'em a chance to get back the money they'd lost, it would have done you good to see the way they came around here, trying to do something for their dear young relation!"

Willa smiled faintly.

"I wish I might have seen my cousins before they went North."

Sallie endeavored to maintain a discreet silence, but the effort proved too much for her.

"Well, if you ask me, you're just as well off! The menfolks may be all right, but that Mrs. Halstead wouldn't have let you call your soul your own; wanted me to put ice-bags on you and all manner of outlandish things, and told me to my face that my house wasn't sanitary! I soon sent her about her business.—There! I declare if that good-for-nothin' Chevalita isn't callin' me again!"

She retired precipitately into the house, and her ruse was apparent; her quick ears had caught, not the voice of her criada, but the sound of a pinto's hoofs on the road, and she recognized its portent as did the girl in the shadows.

A pale young moon had risen, and in its light the drive lay like a curving white ribbon, the approaching figures of pony and man melting together, yet sharply distinct. Willa waited until the rider had dismounted, then bolstered herself upright and held out a thin little hand.