tense, straining
her ears. The night was no longer dark and a faint rosy light seeping
in at an easterly window reddened the glow of the swinging oil lamps
and transfigured her drawn blanched face. What sound, distant and far
away, had been borne to her on the wind of the dawn?

Again the giant battering-ram stove at the door and the middle bolt
crashed. The flimsy impromptu barricade toppled, then swayed back into
place and a shuddering sigh went up from the handful of white-faced
men. One more drive, and the end would come.

The other women had huddled again behind the bar, but Billie still
stood with uplifted face. And now she was smiling! Swift and sure the
rhythmic echo of galloping hoofs reached her consciousness and even as
the third shock came and the door crashed inward carrying the barricade
with it, a ringing shout burst upon the air and the staccato rattle of
a machine-gun sounded the final note in the symphony of battle.

The ragged, wild-eyed horde, sweeping in at the shattered doorway,
brought up standing, then turned madly and scattered like chaff. In
their stead, through the aperture leaped a tall, unrecognizable figure
caked with dust and clotted blood which reeled to the couch and
collapsed beside it, labored breath hissing from tortured lungs and
blood-shot eyes filmed with exhaustion.

Outside, the tide of conflict raged up and down the street and swept
out over the plaza, but neither the girl nor the man at her feet could
hear it.

"You made it! Dad said you would play to win!" There was a new note
of which she was herself unconscious in Billie's tones, and she added
softly, "You were just bound and determined to take care of me right
from the start! Weren't you, Mr. Duenna?"

The new day dawned and quiet was once more restored to Limasito. Those
of the bandits who escaped swift justice had fled toward the distant
hills with the troops in full pursuit and the plaza was a humming hive
of survivors, augmented, as the tidings spread, by all the countryside.

The dismantled Blue Chip had been turned into a temporary hospital and
the wounded lay in rows upon the tables and hastily improvised cots,
but Gentleman Geoff was not among them.

He had been moved by his own wish out to a shady corner of the patio
where he lay with a quiet, whimsical smile lifting the drooped ends of
his mustache and his genial eyes, with a curious questioning look in
their depths, stared straight before him.