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"Jim Baggott will sell out the Blue Chip and give her the proceeds. It ought to bring her a comfortable sum and the bank deposits are in her name already. I'm not afraid she will throw it away; she has a level head on her young shoulders, but I want to be sure she will have the best of everything; all that she has missed. You'll see to it?"
He adopted her, without legal form, and took her with him on his wanderings." "Then I I " Billie stammered, aghast. "I am not " "You are Willa Murdaugh." "Holy Christopher!" Jim Baggott passed his hand across his dazed forehead, and then all three were silent for a space. The girl sat as if in a dream, her face flushed, her eyes vacant and fixed, and North forebore to intrude upon her reverie.
Thode groaned. "I had counted on finding her here. Could she have returned to Limasito?" "No, I've made inquiries. You see," Winnie explained hastily, "we'd grown to be pretty-good friends and naturally the governor felt responsible for her, in a way. He's been in constant communication with Jim Baggott down there the man who runs the hotel " "I remember."
"When the Blue Chip was sold and Jim Baggott handed over the money to me I knew it wouldn't be enough; if I was to beat the man at his own game I must be able to match finances as well as wits. I thought then of the Pool of the Lost Souls and the fabulous profits to be made from it. "Three days before Mr. North came to Limasito I took Tia Juana away, and she guided me to the Pool.
"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."
Jim Baggott sprang for her, but Thode reached her side first, and for a moment she clung to him. Then she raised herself indomitably upright once more. "It is not easy to hate, after all!" she murmured. "If it were not for the memory of Dad I could find it in my heart to forgive."
How did he know where to search?" Thode hesitated. "I found a map of its location, but I had scarcely got my hands upon it when I was struck down from behind and the paper stolen." Willa uttered a startled exclamation, but he continued, unheeding. "Someone found me, hours later, lying unconscious and carried me into Limasito, where your good friend, Jim Baggott, took care of me.
Jim Baggott waved toward the bar with one hand and openly wiped his eyes with the other. "Gonna make a gosh-almighty swell of her, are they? Well, I wish'm luck, but they'll never change her heart or break her spirit. She's our'n, an' she'll come back if I have to go after her myself, so help me! What you-all have?"
I recall vaguely being lost in the snow and I have often heard Dad speak of Hillery's kindness and care; he used to say that the trapper had saved both our lives. A number of people in Limasito have heard the story from his own lips, Jim Baggott and Henry Bailey and Rufe Terwilliger but Rufe is dead now, he was killed in El Negrito's raid "
He had been hired to burn and rape and slay in order to evoke United States intervention, by a man in this room!" "By God " Jim Baggott leaped to his feet, and Henry Bailey and Ben Hallock emitted a simultaneous roar of rage; but she silenced them. "The government men are here as much to protect him as to see that he does not escape, and hard as it is we must let the law take its course."
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