The Fifth Ace Part 45

"They were pretty decent, Sallie, and both Ripley Halstead and Mr.

North were always kind. I couldn't have let them suffer for a mistake.--How is Tia Juana? You must let me see her the next time she comes."

Sallie chuckled.

"She's buildin' a chapel to the lost souls who was drowned in that pool, and she's bought a big, bright-yeller automobile! Jose's learning from Dan how to drive it for her, when Dan gets time enough off from his work with Mr. Thode. Since you gave him that stock in the new Murdaugh-Reyes Company you can't hardly pry Dan Morrissey loose from the oil business to eat.--Say, honey!" Her tone dropped persuasively. "There's something that's not quite clear in my mind yet. I've been bursting to ask you, but you were too sick. Where does young Mr. Thode come in on this and how did you find out that old Rosa Mendez was the one who signed Tia Juana's name to that false deed?"

"I didn't. It was Mr. Thode who found that out for me," Willa explained. "You see, when I met him out in Topaz Gulch I told him I was coming down here and he said he'd be here, too; his presence would have been necessary, anyway, to prove that I was really Willa Murdaugh.

Dan's sister was taking care of Tia Juana and Jose for me in Philadelphia, where those who were fighting me wouldn't think of searching.

"When I settled up my affairs out West, I wired Dan, and he brought Tia Juana and Jose down to Victoria to meet me. There I found Mr. Thode again. He had suspected trickery and fraud in connection with the making over of the lease, and when the Notary Public described the woman who had appeared before him as Tia Juana with--with Starr Wiley----" Her voice sank at mention of the name which had cast such a shadow over her for many days. "Mr. Thode knew it was an impostor. He realized that Wiley would not have selected a woman from either Victoria or Limasito to play the part for she might have been recognized, so he scouted around in the neighborhood of the Lost Souls'

Pool itself, and found that a poor, old, half-witted creature, who had lived all her days in a wretched hovel near the Trevino hacienda, had suddenly come into money from a mysterious source, and moved away.

That was Rosa Mendez.

"When he talked to her closest a.s.sociates in the poor quarter where she lived, Mr. Thode found that Rosa had had a fair education, but all the money she could earn or sc.r.a.pe together went for hootch."

"I remember her from the time we lived out that way," Sallie remarked.

"I hired her to help in the cook-house when we had extra hands on for the pickin', and she stole all the pots she could carry off."

"Mr. Thode found out, too, that for the last few days before she went away she shut herself up in her hut and wouldn't let anybody in, but one of the neighbor women peeped in through a window, and saw her writing something over and over on sc.r.a.ps of paper and burning them carefully in the stove." Willa went on. "That must have been Tia Juana's signature. Then when he heard that she was seen talking to a man who answered to Wiley's description, he was sure. He traced her to Palmillas and when he confronted her she broke down and confessed without a show of fight. He brought her back to Victoria and was waiting for me when I came."

"He's a smart one!" Sallie vociferated admiringly. "You'd go far, Billie, to find a regular he-man in all that crowd you've been traveling with that could beat him! But you might have let me in on that party over to Baggott's! He sent hot-foot for Hen, but little I thought you was in it or I'd have come, invite or no! How'd you fix that up?"

"I sent Tia Juana and Jose and Rosa Mendez on ahead to confront the others if necessary----"

"Yes, and they tried to kill each other all the way down----old Rosa and Tia Juana, I mean," interrupted the other. "Them Federal officers told Hen they'd rather have had charge o' two wild cats! Them and the other government fellers got there while that bunch o' robbers was out on a trip inspecting the oil well."

Willa nodded.

"I knew they'd return that morning, and I arranged the affair with Jim Baggott and the officials. It was a terrible business, Sallie, and I wanted to get it all over with at once."

"Well, you did it!" Sallie chuckled. "You took the wind out o' the sails o' them relatives o' your'n, too. They've been milling around these parts like nothin' was good enough for 'em, and it give 'em a pain to hear your name mentioned, but it was different after you showed up with your powder-blast, I can fell you! When they found you was goin' to let byegones be byegones, and give 'em a chance to get back the money they'd lost, it would have done you good to see the way they came around here, trying to do something for their dear young relation!"

Willa smiled faintly.

"I wish I might have seen my cousins before they went North."

Sallie endeavored to maintain a discreet silence, but the effort proved too much for her.

"Well, if you ask me, you're just as well off! The menfolks may be all right, but that Mrs. Halstead wouldn't have let you call your soul your own; wanted me to put ice-bags on you and all manner of outlandish things, and told me to my face that my house wasn't sanitary! I soon sent her about her business.--There! I declare if that good-for-nothin' Chevalita isn't callin' me again!"

She retired precipitately into the house, and her ruse was apparent; her quick ears had caught, not the voice of her criada, but the sound of a pinto's hoofs on the road, and she recognized its portent as did the girl in the shadows.

A pale young moon had risen, and in its light the drive lay like a curving white ribbon, the approaching figures of pony and man melting together, yet sharply distinct. Willa waited until the rider had dismounted, then bolstered herself upright and held out a thin little hand.

"Willa! It is really you, at last!"

He sank down on the steps beside her and somehow forgot to relinquish her hand.

"Yes, it is really I!" she smiled. "Mrs. Bailey told me of your never-failing calls and inquiries. You have been very kind----"

"Kind? Did you think that I could help myself, that I could have stayed away?" He broke off, his voice hoa.r.s.e with pent-up feeling.

"Forgive me! I did not mean to annoy you again, but the sight of you after so many days, lying here so white and frail and crushed----"

"I'm not!" She laughed nervously. "But you don't annoy me! I love to hear you say that you have wanted to see me, that you could not stay away!"

"Oh, don't, please!" He turned away with a gesture of pain. "Don't play with me again, Willa, girl! I can't quite bear it!"

"Kearn!" her voice thrilled, low and surpa.s.singly sweet in his ears.

"I never played with you, never! I told you in Topaz Gulch that I had much to explain and you much to forgive. I was deliberately misled, my mind poisoned against you, but the fault was mine, in being so easily influenced against the real truth. I knew it in my heart, but I was in such a maze of difficulties and cross-purposes that I did not know which way to turn, and I shut my ears to the dictates of my own belief.

Do you remember that night in the conservatory?"

"I am not likely to forget it." His tones were shaking and he had turned his head away.

"Someone was listening, someone who hated us both, and acting under the impulse of a blind infatuation, had become a tool in stronger, more ruthless hands. When I reached home that night, a letter in your handwriting was put before me; a letter which seemed to prove that you--you had known before ever Mr. North came to Limasito who I was and that you had planned to marry me.--Oh, can't you understand?"

"A letter in my handwriting?" he repeated slowly. "It could not be----"

"But it was!" Willa laughed, but there was a little running sob through her words. "You told me the truth about it yourself, out in Topaz Gulch."

"I?" Thode turned to her, amazed.

"Yes. Don't you remember the letter you wrote to Mr. Larkin, telling him you had found Tia Juana, but n.o.body knew who she really was--her last name, I mean--and it wouldn't matter if they did? A page of that very letter with the top torn off was put in my hands and as you didn't mention Tia Juana by name I thought it referred to me. That was the inference I was supposed to gather from it, and like a credulous little fool I believed! The bottom of the page ended with: 'She is the undoubted owner of almost boundless wealth and when I have gone after her, and won her consent----'"

"Good heavens, of course!" Thode jumped to his feet. "I remember it all now. That was one of the letters that was stolen from Larkin's desk by a clerk we found to be in the secret employ of Chase and Wiley!

They'd corrupted him in an effort to keep tabs on the progress we were making down here. We didn't prosecute him because of the notoriety, but we made him leave the East when we discovered his operations. It never occurred to me that any of the stolen letters could be put to such a use!"

"Or that I could be so ready to believe the worst of you?" she asked sadly.

"You! My poor little Willa!" He dropped on his knees beside her chair and gathered her hands again in his. "I thought you were heartless, intoxicated with admiration and trying your power wilfully on everyone who came within your reach. Half the men in your set were at your feet, and it drove me a little mad, I think! And all the time you were beset by enemies, making your brave fight alone, and even our friendship turned to something low and base! Oh, my dear, I have nothing to forgive, but there is much that I must teach you to forget."

"Unworthy things are soon forgotten!" She gazed with shining eyes into his. "Only the real, true, beautiful things remain, Kearn, and they--why, they are all before us!"

He looked away, straight ahead of him into the moon-lit darkness.

"When I come back," he said. "Much has happened while you lay ill, dear. We've gone into the big fight at last, we're going to help set the world free from barbarism, and I must do my share. I ran up to New York long enough to get a commission again in my old regiment, and I'm listed to sail for France with the first army the government sends. I couldn't stay behind, Willa; I'm sure you wouldn't have me wait when the call has come."

"No," Willa responded quietly; "I wouldn't. Not for all the world must you miss your chance to help. It's a sacred privilege, Kearn. I shouldn't wonder if all of us, men and women, will have to put our shoulder to the wheel, but if we can only help to get the world out of this hideous rut of wholesale oppression and savagery it will be gloriously worth it all. No, I wouldn't keep you back if I could, but I'm glad, somehow, to feel that I couldn't, anyway."

"And you will be with my sister," he reminded her. "She's coming to-morrow, you know, to take you back with her as soon as you are able to travel. She liked you from the start, dear, and when I tell her what is going to be, some day, she will take you quite to her heart."

"I shall be so glad to see her again!" Willa sighed happily. "It is dear of her to offer to take me into her home. The Ripley Halsteads suggested, of course, that I should go back to them, but I couldn't think of it! It would recall too much that I must try to forget, and poor Angie's face would give me no peace. I know that in her heart she must blame me still for the tragic end of her romance."

"Angie is no longer there," Kearn remarked. "She is taking a nursing-course in some hospital, preparatory for work in France, and Vernon writes me that she seems earnest and sincere for the first time in her life. Verne himself is off for Plattsburg, and Winthrop North is already across the water, driving an ambulance on the western front.

My sister will put you to rolling bandages as soon as you can lift your hands. Life is getting pretty serious for all of us."

"And wonderful, too," Willa amended. "It is as if we were all just finding ourselves, isn't it? As if this supreme struggle were to bring out all our hidden strength, the deepest, most-enduring, best part of us!--And isn't it strange, too, that I should be going to make my home with your sister, after all? That was what you first suggested to me--do you remember?--when you thought me just Gentleman Geoff's Billie, before ever Mr. North came."

"Yes, dear." He pressed his lips to her hand. "Everything works out all right in time. And when I come back----"