The Fifth Ace Part 6

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

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

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

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

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

The eager questions from a dozen throats ended in a husky cheer, but it died as swiftly as it was born. From across the road a huge dark blur had detached itself and was moving forward stealthily to the attack.

The fusillade of shots recommenced, but a groan had started and spread among the watchers at the windows.

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

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

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

One more onslaught, perhaps two----

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The army surgeon had done his best, but the end was near and only the superb vitality of the old gambler glowed still, like a living spark.

Now and then the surgeon paused in his busy round within to glance speculatively from the doorway and each time Gentleman Geoff nodded rea.s.suringly to him. Not yet!

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

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

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

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

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

"Only shake hands with me. You rode well, last night. I reckoned Perry Larkin knew a man when he saw one, but he didn't know all that was in you. Billie, girl, go ask the Doc if I can have a drink or a little shot to pull me together." As the girl flew to do his bidding, Gentleman Geoff's thin fingers tightened their grip. "Thode, the boys will all stand by her and play square, but I'm leaving her alone. She isn't their kind; she doesn't know it, n.o.body does, but my little girl's of different blood. There's no one around here in her cla.s.s, except you. Kind of--look out for her, will you?"

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

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

That's a Harvard seal on your cigarette-case, if I'm not mistaken, Mr.

Thode."

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

Gentleman Geoff nodded slowly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Tell the boys I'm not cas.h.i.+ng in--just pa.s.sing this deal. I'm in on the next one. . . . Billie . . . square, always----"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You do not!" he announced, with emphasis. "Not around here, anyway.

You were Gentleman Geoff's Billie and that's name enough for us. When you do need a handle to it, I reckon there ain't any law 'gainst you pickin' out one to suit yourself."