Part 7 (2/2)
”Don't look as if this would carry you very far. Where on earth did you get it?”
”It was poor Rufe Terwilliger's.” The girl answered the last question first. ”I bought it from Mrs. Terwilliger for three hundred dollars.
Ben Hallock has got some tires to fit it that he'll let me have and if the engine will only last for about four hundred miles I don't care what happens to it after that.”
”'Four hundred miles!'” repeated Sallie. ”What have you taken into your head now? There's nothing within four hundred miles o' Limasito!”
Billie regarded her with an enigmatic smile.
”There's a dream to bring true!” she said slowly. ”That is Tia Juana's; she's going with me. And there's a start to be made on something I've set out to do, and this journey is the first step of the way. No one must go with me but Tia Juana, no one must even know where I have gone. Someone owes me a debt, Sallie, and they're going to pay!”
There was a grim note in her quiet tones which boded ill for the debtor, and Sallie hastily changed the subject.
”And Mr. Thode? What'll I tell him? Does he know?”
”Not where I'm going, but you can say that I've made the first move in the game I'm playing; I've started on what I've got to do. He'll know what I mean. I can't tell you or anyone, Sallie, because I want to see it through alone.”
When next Thode rode up to the Casa de Limas, Sallie met him with strange news.
”She's gone. Went off this morning in a car she bought from Rufe Terwilliger's widow, and she bundled old Tia Juana along with her. She said to tell you she'd made a start on what she had to do, and you would understand.”
But Kearn Thode didn't. What was this trust, this unknown inheritance from Gentleman Geoff? There had been an ominous note in her voice when she spoke of it, and he remembered what the gambler had told him of her eye-for-an-eye creed of retributive justice. In her splendid, reckless courage could she have pitted herself against El Negrito, the bandit of the hills?
CHAPTER V
A GRINGO CINDERELLA
”Whether you're here for health, pleasure, or business there ain't a more up-and-comin' town this side o' the Rio than Limasito,” Jim Baggott remarked with the air of publicity-promoter as he ”set 'em up”
for a plump, white-mustached stranger, who had drawn up to the hotel an hour before in an impressive car, and whose equally impressive array of luggage was even then distributed about the best suite the establishment afforded.
”I'm here on business, Mr. Baggott,” the stranger replied promptly to his host's tactfully implied question. ”Did you ever hear of a gambler known as 'Gentleman Geoff'? I understand he located somewhere about here ten years ago.”
”Hear of him?” Jim repeated gruffly, and turned his head away. ”He was one of our most prom'nent citizens; ran the Blue Chip over yonder.”
”Indeed?” The stranger tasted his liquor and replaced the gla.s.s with a fastidious shudder upon the bar. ”He is not here now?”
Baggott shook his head.
”You may have heard that Alvarez--El Negrito, they call him--paid us a little visit a few days ago.” He added a profane and heartfelt abjuration of the bandit. ”Most of us were corraled in the Blue Chip, and Geoff, he was shot down along with a lot of others.”
”Dead! How unfortunate! Can you tell me if he left any family; a daughter, for instance?”
”Sa-ay!” Jim folded his arms on the bar and gazed levelly at his guest. ”What's it to you if he did? I happen to be Geoff's executor----”
”Ah, that simplifies matters.” The stranger drew a card-case from his pocket. ”I am Mason North, of the firm of North, Manning and Gilchrist, attorneys. We are looking for a young woman known as the daughter of this Gentleman Geoff, to notify her of something to her advantage. Can you tell me where she may be found?”
”Known as his daughter?” Jim stammered. ”Billie _is_ his daughter, d.a.m.n it! There ain't no other young woman----”
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