," she had stammered. "I--I never
heard any other name. Do I have to have one?"

Jim Baggott settled the matter, for the moment at least.

"You do not!" he announced, with emphasis. "Not around here, anyway.
You were Gentleman Geoff's Billie and that's name enough for us. When
you do need a handle to it, I reckon there ain't any law 'gainst you
pickin' out one to suit yourself."

Baggott was the chief executor of the late gambler and mightily puffed
up with the pride and dignity of his office. Gentleman Geoff's private
papers were few and carefully indited, their instructions unmistakably
clear. Under them, Baggott sold the Blue Chip scrupulously to the
highest bidder, although it broke his heart to see Limasito's proudest
institution pass into the hands of a Tampico syndicate. He placed the
two hundred thousand, American, which the establishment brought,
unreservedly to Billie's account.

"If you ain't of age, nobody knows the difference," he announced.
"Gentleman Geoff left word it was to go 'to my daughter, known as
Billie,' and there you are. The money's your'n, and it's up to you to
do what you like with it."

Bewildered and numb in her first contact with poignant grief, the girl
had taken up her temporary abode at Henry Bailey's fruit ranch, a mile
or two out on the Calle Rivera, where his buxom wife, Sallie, mothered
her to her heart's content.

Thode rode out each day to see her, but a new inexplicable shyness in
Billie's attitude toward him made his task still more difficult and he
deferred the question of her future in sheer funk. The magnitude of
her fortune, too, was a stumbling-block. The girl knew nothing of him
save what intuition had taught her. What if she assumed that his
object were to gain control of her estate? The thought maddened him
into action at length and one day as they cantered slowly back from a
visit to the little Jose, he forced the issue.

"Billie, have you thought of the future, of what you will do?" he asked.

"Oh, yes." The reply was prompt and decisive. "I can't tell you, Mr.
Thode, or anyone, but I've got something to do, something big, and I've
made up my mind to see it through. It's just as much an inheritance
from Dad as the money and I mean to let nothing stand in my way."

There was a grim earnestness in her tone which made him glance
curiously at her.

"You are sure you can't tell me, and let me help, whatever it is?" he
asked gently.

Billie shook