The Fifth Ace Part 9

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

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

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

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

"Not if I refuse." Her tone was still quiet, but her breast rose and fell convulsively. "You said awhile ago that no one need know about my being adopted. You meant no one need know about Dad, didn't you? That I'd been brought up by a gambler in an oil-boom town? You thought I'd be ashamed of Dad among all those fine people? Why, I'm proud of him!

Proud that I was known as his girl! He took me when n.o.body else cared whether I lived or died, and he's loved me and been everything to me ever since I can remember. And he was square! It's my own grandfather that I'm ashamed of for his crookedness! He stacked the cards, and that's all I need to know about him. Give that Mrs. Halstead what she was going to get for making me over into a lady, and tell her she needn't bother. I was raised Gentleman Geoff's Billie and that's good enough for me. I'm going to stay right here."

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes." Billie acquiesced. "That was why I asked you, first off, just how old I am. You'll have a tough time trying to get me out of Mexico if I don't want to go, Mr. North. I've seen some law fights over oil leases down here and I know how cases can be strung out. I'll be of age in a year and four months and I reckon I can bluff you till then.

I don't know why you should be so anxious to force that money on me and make me acknowledge myself the granddaughter of a man who didn't play fair!"

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

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

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

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

The girl wheeled upon him, her face darkening.

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

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

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

"We will not discuss the matter of your inheritance, further, for the moment." The lawyer's voice, smooth as oil, came from just behind her.

"You will listen to reason, I know, when you have had time for consideration. Mr. Baggott, here, will agree with me that you must accept the conditions of your grandfather's will----"

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

"Sir----!"

"Never mind, Jim." The girl wheeled quickly. "I've changed my mind.

Mr. North, I'll go with you. I'll accept the conditions and whatever goes with them. When do we start?"

The lawyer gasped.

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

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

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

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

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

There's a joker wild, somewhere, and she's playing to win!"

CHAPTER VI

TIA JUANA'S CAULDRON COOLS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why?" Her clear eyes turned wonderingly on him in the moonlight, and he mentally cursed his dog-in-the-manger mood. "I thought it was real kind of you, kinder than anything that anyone except Dad has ever done.

I didn't even have a name, you know. I was just the daughter of--what did that lawyer call him?--a 'peripatetic gambler', but you--you----"

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

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

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

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

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