dumped him back into it. The team took
him home, all right, but you can't very well expect that of a motor."

Billie eyed him curiously.

"But you've only just come, and he hasn't driven any team around here."

"We've met before." Thode's face had darkened and his tone was terse.
"His car's drawn well up on the side of the road. I'll just put him in
it and he can find his way when he wakes."

The girl watched as he hauled the limp body out of the ditch and thrust
it unceremoniously into the seat behind the wheel. Wiley stirred,
grunted and then slumped forward, his head resting upon his arms.

"He'll do." Billie gave the unconscious figure a last contemptuous
glance. "I like the way you play when you do get into a little game,
and unless you want the whole town to be calling you 'Mr. Duenna'
inside of three days, you'd better tell me your name."

He complied, and quite naturally they swung off down the road together.

Thode stole a glance at her in utter bewilderment. A girl who could
watch a fight without timidity or squeamishness but in impartial,
impersonal joy of the conflict was unique in his experience. She had
been angry, contemptuous of them both; would she as heartily have
congratulated his adversary, had the tables been turned?

"You are still angry with me for my interference, Miss----?" he began,
but she stopped him with a gesture.

"I've been just 'Billie' to all Limasito since the first well was
spudded in; you don't want the boys to think you're putting notions
into my head, do you?" She smiled, frankly. "I hated you because I'd
bragged to you that I could take care of myself and nobody would molest
me in these parts, and then you had to come along just when it looked
as though I was a maiden in distress. You see, I hadn't reckoned on
Wiley showing yellow; we don't have many like him in Limasito; at least
not long."

"If I thought you a maiden in distress, I proved to be a very
superfluous knight-errant," he retorted. "You were well able to take
care of yourself, so your boast was no idle one."

"Dad taught me that," she responded simply. "He runs the Blue Chip on
the square, but there are times when an extra ace appears in the
show-down, and then it isn't a question of who produced it, but which
one is quickest on the draw. Five aces never grew in a straight deck,
and I sometimes think I can see the fifth ace in an hombre's eye. I
saw it in Senor Wiley's."

"I'm going to loo