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 assailed 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
friendship 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
assured 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 assured
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 i