siastically forthcoming.

"The Blue Chip?" Jim Baggott tilted his chair back restfully against
the wall. "Finest place in the country; square as a die and the sky's
the limit to a regular hombre. Gentleman Geoff's just about one
hundred per cent. man, and don't you forget it. Everything's on the
level at his place."

"Got a daughter, hasn't he?" Thode asked, proffering a cigar.

"You're on. Fine gal, too. Ain't afraid of nothing, Billie ain't.
When the Yellow Jack hit us, two years ago, and not another woman in
town--and damn' few o' the men, fur that matter--but cleared out,
Billie went right in under the flag with the old Doc, and stayed till
the fever was stamped out. Thin as a wisp o' cotton she was, when it
was all over; face no wider'n this----" he measured with a burly thumb
and forefinger--"and eyes clean gone into the back of her head, but she
only grinned and said it had been fun while it lasted, to fight the
thing. First day she was out o' quarantine, she rode thirty miles to
Dan Willoughby's 'cienda 'cause she heard he was on a tear and
mistreating his kids and she brought him to terms, too. There ain't an
hombre in town that don't worship her and even the women like her."

"I saw her to-day," remarked Thode. "She's a remarkably pretty girl."

Jim bit the end off his cigar and spat it forth with emphasis.

"Wal, we 'uns that've watched her grow up from a rangy, long-legged,
stringy-haired leetle colt think more o' what she is than what she
looks like, but now that you mention it, I'll lay there ain't a Jane
this side o' the border and mighty few above it that can give her odds
on looks. And there ain't a man in these parts but has his trigger set
for the guy that'd look cross-eyed at her."

There was a friendly but unmistakable hint in the concluding words and
the young engineer went to bed in a curious reversal of sentiment.
Gentleman Geoff had evidently earned his title; and from the tawdry,
fevered atmosphere of the Blue Chip his daughter, miraculously enough,
seemed to have drawn only strength and a warm-hearted abiding faith in
human nature.

The still heat of mid-afternoon lay like a stifling veil upon the
little weather-beaten shack among the zapote trees, when Gentleman
Geoff's Billie lifted the latch next day. The single room was empty
save for the boy who tossed restlessly upon his pallet, but the
movement ceased and the sunken eyes glowed in the thin brown face, as
she bent ov