Rimrock Jones. Coolidge Dane

gazed intently at the hard-visaged L. W. whose face slowly turned brick red.

      "Now to get down to business," went on Rimrock quietly, "I tell you that ore is there. If you'll loan me the money to haul in that rock I'll pay you back from my check. And I'll give you my note at one per cent. a month, compounded monthly and all that. I guess a man that can show title to twenty claims that turn out picked ore like that—well, he's entitled, perhaps, to a little more consideration than you boys have been showing me of late."

      L. W. sat silent, his burning eyes on the gold, the cigar clutched fiercely in his teeth—then without a word he wrote a check and threw it across the desk.

      "Much obliged," said Rimrock and without further words he stepped out and cashed the check. And then Rimrock Jones disappeared.

      The last person in Gunsight to hear what had happened was Mary Fortune. She worked at her desk that day in a fever of expectation, now stopping to wonder at the strange madness that possessed her, now pounding harder to still her tumultuous thoughts. She did not know what it was that she expected, only something great and new and wonderful, something to lift her at last from the drudgery of her work and make her feel young and gay. Something to rouse her up to the wild joy of living and make her forget her misfortunes. To be poor, and deaf, and alone—all these were new things to Mary Fortune; but she was none of them when he was near. What need had she to hear when she could read in his eyes that instant admiration that a woman values most? And poor? The money she had given had helped him, perhaps, to gain millions!

      She worked late, that afternoon; and again, in the evening, she made an excuse to keep her office lit up. Still he did not come and she paced up the street, even listened as she passed by the saloons—then, overwhelmed with shame that she had seemed to seek him, she fled to her room and wept. The next day, and the next, she watched and listened and at last she overheard the truth. It was Andrew McBain, the hard, fighting Scotchman, who told the dreadful news—and she hated him for it, always.

      "Well, I'm glad he's gone," he had replied to L. W., who had beckoned him out to the door. "He's a dangerous man—I've been afraid of him—you're lucky to get off at that."

      "Lucky!" yelled L. W., suddenly forgetting his caution, "he touched me for two thousand dollars! Do you call that lucky? And here's the latest—he hasn't got a pound of picked ore! Even took away what he had; and that old, whiskered Mexican says he up and borrowed that from him!"

      "That's a criminal act," explained McBain exultantly, as he signaled L. W. to be calm. "Shh, not so loud, the girl might hear you. Let him go, and hold it over his head."

      "No, I'll kill the dastard!" howled L. W. rebelliously and slammed the door in a rage.

      A swooning sickness came over Mary Fortune as she sat, waiting stonily, at her desk; but when McBain came back and sat down beside her she typed on, automatically, as he spoke. Then she woke at last, as if from a dream, to hear his harsh, discordant voice; and a sudden resentment, a fierce, passionate hatred, swept over her as he shouted in her ear. A hundred times she had informed him politely that she was not deaf when she wore her ear-'phone, and a hundred times he had listened impatiently and gone on in his sharp, rasping snarl. She drew away shuddering as he looked over some papers and cleared his throat for a fresh start; and then, without reason that he could ever divine, she burst into tears and fled.

      She came back later, but the moment he began dictating she pushed back her chair and rose up.

      "Mr. McBain," she said tremulously, "you don't need to shout at me. I give you notice—I shall leave on the first."

      It was plainly a tantrum, such as he had observed in women, a case, pure and simple, of nerves; but Andrew McBain let it pass. She could spell—a rare quality in typists—and was familiar with legal forms.

      "Ah, my dear Miss Fortune," he began propitiatingly, "I hope you will reconsider, I'm sure. It's a habit I have, when dictating a brief, to speak as though addressing the court. Perhaps, under the circumstances, you could take off your instrument and my voice would be—ahem—just about right."

      "No! It drives me crazy!" she cried in a passion. "It makes everybody think I'm so deaf!"

      She broke down at that and McBain discreetly withdrew and was gone for the rest of the day. It was best, he had learned, when young women became emotional, to absent himself for a time. And the next day, sure enough, she came back, smiling cheerfully, and said no more of leaving her job. She was, in fact, more obliging than before and he judged that the tantrum had passed.

      With L. W., however, the case was different. He claimed to be an Indian in his hates; and a mining engineer, dropping in from New York, told a story that staggered belief. Rimrock Jones was there, the talk of the town, reputed to be enormously rich. He smoked fifty-cent cigars, wore an enormous black hat and put up at the Waldorf Hotel. Not only that but he was in all the papers as associating with the kings of finance. So great was his prestige that the engineer, in fact, had been requested to report on his mine.

      "A report?" shouted L. W., "what, a report on the Tecolotes? Well, I can save you a long, dusty trip. In the first place Rimrock Jones is a thorough-paced scoundrel, not only a liar but a crook; and in the second place these claims are forty miles across the desert with just two sunk wells on the road. I wouldn't own his mines if you would make me a present of them and a million dollars to boot. I wouldn't take them for a gift if that mountain was pure gold—how's he going to haul the ore to the railroad? Now listen, my friend, I've known that boy since he stood knee-high to a toad and of all the liars in Arizona he stands out, preëminently, as the worst."

      "You question his veracity, then?" enquired the engineer as he fumbled for some papers in his coat.

      "Question nothing!" raved L. W. "I'm making a statement! He's not only a liar—he's a thief! He robbed me, the dastard; he got two thousand dollars of my money without giving me the scratch of a pen. Oh, I tell you——"

      "Well, that's curious," broke in the engineer as he stared at a paper, "he's got your name down here as a reference."

      CHAPTER V

       THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN

       Table of Contents

      It is an engineer's duty, when he is sent out to examine a mine, to make a report on the property, regardless. The fact that the owner is a liar and a thief does not necessarily invalidate his claims; and an all-wise Providence has, on several occasions, allowed such creatures to discover bonanzas. So the engineer hired a team and disappeared on the horizon and L. W. went off buying cattle.

      A month passed by in which the derelictions of Rimrock were capped by the machinations of a rival cattle buyer, who beat L. W. out of a buy that would have netted him up into the thousands. Disgusted with everything, L. W. boarded the west-bound at Bowie Junction and flung himself into a seat in the half-empty smoker without looking to the right or left. He was mad—mad clear through—and the last of his cigars was mashed to a pulp in his vest. He had just made this discovery when another cigar was thrust under his nose and a familiar voice said:

      "Try one of mine!"

      L. W. looked at the cigar, which was undoubtedly expensive, and then glanced hastily across the aisle. There, smiling sociably, was Rimrock Jones.

      L. W. squinted his eyes. Yes, Rimrock Jones, in a large, black hat; a checked suit, rather loud, and high boots. His legs were crossed and with an air of elegant enjoyment he was smoking a similar cigar.

      "Don't want it!" snarled L. W. and, rising up in a fury, he moved off towards the far end of the car.

      "Oh, all right," observed Rimrock, "I'll smoke it myself, then." And L. W. grunted contemptuously.

      They rode for some hours across a flat, joyless country without either man making a move, but as the train neared Gunsight Rimrock rose up and went forward to where L. W. sat.

      "Well, what're you all bowed up about?" he enquired bluffly. "Has your girl gone