Rimrock Jones

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"Say, now listen a minute," he began mysteriously, "I'm not telling
this on the street----"

"Well, don't tell it here, then," she interrupted hastily, "they're
listening, most of the time."

She pointed towards the door that led to the hotel lobby and Rimrock
tiptoed towards it. He was just in time, as he snatched it open, to
see McBain bounding up the back stairs; and a woman in a rocker, after
a guilty stare, rose up and moved hastily away.

"Well, well," observed Rimrock as he banged the door. "I don't know
which is worse, these women or peeping Andrew McBain. Are you still
working for that fellow?" he enquired confidentially as he sat down and
spoke low in her 'phone; and for the first time that day the smile came
back and dwelt for a moment in her eyes.

"Yes," she answered, "I still do his work for him. What's the
matter--don't you fully approve?"

Her gaze was a challenge and he let it pass with a grin and a jerk of
the head.

"Just sorry for you," he said. "You'd better take this money and get a
job with a man that's half white."

He drew out his roll and counted out four thousand dollars and laid
them before her on the desk.

"Now listen," he began. "That four hundred then was worth four
thousand to me now. I had to have it, and I sure appreciate it--now
just accept that as a payment in part."

He pushed over the money, but she shook her head and met his gaze with
resolute eyes.

"Not much," she said, "I don't want your money and, what's more, I
won't accept it. I gave you four hundred dollars--all the money I
had--to get me a share in that mine, and now I want it. I don't care
how much, but I want a share in that mine."

Rimrock shoved back his chair and once more the sweat appeared on his
troubled brow. He rose up softly and peeped out the door, then came
back and sat very close.

"What's the idea?" he asked. "Has some one been telling you who I've
got in with me on this deal? Well, what's the matter then? Why won't
you take the money? I'll give you more than you could get for the
stock."

"No, all my life it's been my ambition to own a share in a mine.
That's why I gave you the last of my money--I had confidence in your
mine from the start."

"Well, what did you think, then?" enquired Rimrock sardonically, "when
I jumped out of town without seeing you? You'd have sold out cheap, if
I'd've come to you then, but now everybody knows I've won."

"Never mind what I thought," she answered darkly, "I took a chance, and
I won."

"Say, you're strictly business, now ain't you?" observed Rimrock and
muttered under his breath. "How much of a share do you expect me to
give you?" he asked after a long anxious pause and her eyes lit up and
were veiled.

"Whatever you say," she answered quietly and then: "I believe you
mentioned fifty-fifty--an undivided half."

"My--God!" exclaimed Rimrock starting wildly to his feet. "You
don't--say, you didn't think I meant that?"

"Why, no," she said with a faint flicker of venom, "I didn't, to tell
you the truth. That's why I told you I was talking business; but you
said: 'Well, so am I.'"

"Well, holy Jehosophrats!" cursed Rimrock to himself and turned to look
her straight in the eyes.

"Now let's get down to business," he went on sternly, "what do you
want, and where am I at?"

"I want a share in that mine," she answered evenly, "whatever you think
is right."

"Oh, that's the deal! You don't want fifty-fifty? You leave what it
is to me?"

"That's what I said from the very first. And as for fifty-fifty--no,
certainly I do not."

There were tears, half of anger, gathering back in her eyes, but
Rimrock took no thought of that.

"Oh, you don't like my style, eh?" he came back resentfully. "All you
want out of me is my money."

"No, I don't!" she retorted. "I don't want your money! I want a share
in that mine!"

"Say, who are you, anyway?" burst out Rimrock explosively. "Are you
some wise one that's on the inside?"

"That's none of your business," she answered sharply, "you were
satisfied when you took all my money."

"That's right," agreed Rimrock rubbing his jaw reflectively, "that's
right, it was no questions asked. Now, say, I'm excited--I ought not
to talk that way--I want to explain to you just how I'm fixed. I went
back to New York and organized a company and gave one man forty-nine
per cent. of my stock. He puts up the money and I put up the mine--and
run it, absolutely. If I give you any stock I lose control of my mine;
so I'm going to ask you to let me off."

He drew out his roll--that banded sheaf of yellow notes that he loved
so dearly to flash--and began slowly to count off the bills.

"When you think it's enough," he went on ponderously, "you can say so,
but I need all that stock."

He laid out the bills, one after another, and the girl settled back in
her chair. "That's ten," he observed, "these are thousand-dollar
bills--well, there's twelve, then--I'll make it thirteen." He glanced
up expectantly, but she gave no sign and Rimrock dealt impassively on.
"Well, fourteen--lots of money. Say, how much do you want? Fifteen
thousand--you only gave me four hundred. Sixteen, seventeen--well, you
get the whole roll; but say, girl, I can't give you that stock."

He threw down the last bill and faced her appealingly, but she answered
with a hard little laugh.

"You've got to," she said. "I don't want your money. I want one per
cent. of your stock."

"What, of what I've got left? Oh, of the whole capital stock! Well,
that only leaves me fifty per cent."

"That's one way of looking at it. Now look at it another way. Don't
you think I'm entitled to that? Don't you think if I'd said when I
gave you that money: 'All I want is one per cent. of your mine'--don't
you think now, honestly, that you'd have said: 'All right!' and agreed
to it on the spot?"

She looked at him squarely and the fair-fighting Rimrock had to agree,
though reluctantly, that she was right.

"Well, now that you've won when nobody expected you to, now that you've
got money enough to get the whole town drunk, is that any reason why
you should come to a poor typist and ask her to give up her rights?
I'm putting it frankly and unless you can answer me I want you to give
me that stock."

"Well, all right, I'll do it," answered Rimrock impulsively. "I
promised you, and that's enough. But you've got to agree not to sell
that stock--and to vote it with me, every time."

"Very well," she said, "I'll agree not to sell it--at least not to any
one but you. And as far as the voting goes, I think we can arrange
that; I'll vote for whatever seems right."

"No, right or wrong!" challenged Rimrock instantly. "I'm not going to
be beat out of my mine!"

"What do you mean?" she demanded. "I hope you don't think----"

"Never mind what I think," answered Rimrock grimly, "I got bit once,
and that's enough. I lost the old Gunsight just by trusting my
friends, and this time I'm not trusting anybody."

"Oh, you're one of these cynics, these worldly-wise fellows that have
lost all their faith in mankind? I've seen them before, but it wasn't
much trouble to find somebody else that _they'd_ wronged!"

She said the words bitterly with a lash to her tongue that cut Rimrock
Jones to the quick. It had always been his boast that there was no man
or woman that could claim he had done them a wrong, and he answered
back sharply, while the anger was upon him, that he was not and there
was no such thing.

"Well, if that's the case, then," she suggested delicately but with a
touch of malice in her smile, "it seems rather personal to begin now
with me, and take away my right to vote. Did this man in New York,
when he bought into your company, agree to vote with you, right or
wrong? Well then, why should I? Wasn't my money just as necessary,
when I gave it to you, as his was when he gave it, later?"

"Oh--" Rimrock choked back an oath and then fell back on personalities
to refute her maddening logic.

"Say, your father was a judge," he burst out insultingly. "Was he a
promoted lawyer, too; or did you learn that line of talk from McBain?"

"Never mind about that. You haven't answered my question. Wasn't my
money just as necessary as his? It was! Yes, you know it. Well,
then, why should you choose me for the very first person that you ever
intentionally wronged?"

"Well, by grab," moaned Rimrock, slumping down in his chair as he saw
his last argument gone, "it was a black day for me when I took that
four hundred from you. I'd have done a heap better to have held up
some Chinaman or made old L. W. come through. And to be trimmed by a
woman! Well, gimme your paper and I'll sign whatever you write!"

She drew in her lips and gazed at him resentfully; then, sitting down
at her typewriter, she thought for a minute and rattled off a single
sentence. Rimrock took the paper and signed it blindly, then stopped
and read what it was.

"I, Henry (Rimrock) Jones, for value received, hereby agree to give to
Mary Roget Fortune, one per cent. of the total capital stock of the
Tecolote Mining Company."

"Yes, all right," he said. "You'll get your stock just as soon as I
get it from the East. And now I hope, by the Lord, you're satisfied."

"Yes, I am," she answered and smiled cryptically.

"Well, I pass!" he exploded and, struggling to his feet, he lurched out
upon the street.

CHAPTER VII

BUT COMES BACK FOR MORE

From the highest pinnacle of success to the black depths of despair is
a long way to drop in one hour and if Rimrock Jones went the way of all
flesh it is only another argument for prohibition. All the rest of the
town had got a good start before he appeared on the scene and to drown
that black thought--defeated by a woman--he drank deep with the crowd
at the Alamo. At the end of the bout when, his thoughts coming
haphazard, he philosophized on the disasters of the day, his brain
slipped a cog and brought two ideas together that piled Pelion on the
Ossa of his discontent.

The first vision to rise was that of the lady typist, exacting her full
pound of flesh; and then, groping back to that other catastrophe, his
mind fetched up--Andrew McBain! And then he remembered. She worked
for McBain. He straightened up in the bar-room chair and gusty curses
swept from his lips.

"You're stung, you sucker!" he cried in a fury. "You're sold out to
Andrew McBain! Oh, you dad-burned idiot--you ignorant baboon--you were
drunk, that's why you signed up!"

Rimrock's pitiful rage at that other personality that had marred his
fair hopes in his mine--that perverse, impulsive, overweening inner
spirit that took the helm at each crisis of his life--was a rage to
make the gods above weep if they did not laugh at the jest. And this
blind, drunken self that rose up within him to sit leeringly in
judgment on his acts, it judged not so ill, if the truth must be
spoken. He had gone to Mary Fortune with the bouquet of Bourbon subtly
blended with the aroma of his cigar and the fine edge of his reason had
been dulled by so much when he matched his boy's wit against hers. His
mind had not sought out the hidden motive that lay behind what she had
said; he had followed where she led and, finding her logic impregnable,
had yielded like a child, in a pique. Yes, yielded out of spite
without ever once thinking that she worked, day by day, for McBain.

A dull rage came over him and when he roused up next morning that fixed
idea was still in his brain. But in the morning it was different.
Those two personalities that had been so exalted, and differentiated,
by drink, snapped back into one substantial I Am; and his tumultuous,
fighting ego took command. Rimrock rose up thinking and the first hour
after breakfast found him working feverishly to build up a defense. He
had been jumped once before by Andrew McBain--it must not happen again.
No technicality must be left to serve as a handle for this
lawyer-robber to seize. Before noon that day Rimrock had two gangs of
surveyors on their way to his Tecolote claims; and for a full week they
labored, running side-lines, erecting monuments and taking angles on
every landmark for miles. The final blue-prints, duly certified and
witnessed, he took to the Recorder himself and then, still obsessed by
his premonition of evil, he came back to serve notice on McBain.

For every man there is always some person instinctively associated with
trouble; some person that he hates beyond all bounds and reason, and
intuitively fears and distrusts. In the jumping of the Gunsight there
had been others just as active, but Rimrock had forgiven them all but
McBain. Even the piratical L. W., for all his treachery, was still
within the pale of his friendship. But this tall, lanky Scotchman,
always lurking within the law as a spider hides for safety in its hole,
invoked nothing but his anger and contempt.

Rimrock dropped off the train that had brought him from the County
seat, and went straight up the street to the hotel. McBain was in his
office, stalking nervously up and down as he dictated to Mary Fortune,
when the door opened suddenly and Rimrock Jones stepped in and stood
gazing at him insolently.

"Good morning," he said with affected nicety of speech. "I hope that I
don't intrude. Yes, it is lovely weather, but I came here on a matter
of business. We've had our difficulties, Mr. Apex McBain, but all that
is in the past. What I came to say is: I've got my eye on you and I
don't want you out at my mine. Those claims are my property and, I
give you fair notice, if you trespass on my ground you'll get shot.
That's all for the present; but, because you've cleaned me once, don't
think you can do it again."

He bowed with mock politeness, taking off his hat with a flourish, and
as he backed out Mary Fortune turned pale. There was something in that
bow and the affected accents that referred indirectly to her. She knew
it intuitively and the hot blood rushed back and mantled her cheeks
with red. Then she straightened up proudly and when McBain began to
dictate her machine went on clacking defiantly.

There followed long days in which Rimrock idled about town or rode back
and forth to his mine, and then the gossips began to talk. A change,
over night, had taken place in Rimrock the day after his return from
New York. On the first great day he had been his old self--boasting,
drinking, giving away his money and calling the whole town in on his
joy. The next day he had been sober and from that day forth he had not
taken even a drink. It was noted also that nothing was doing in the
direction of developing his mine; and another quality, the rare gift of
reticence, had taken the place of his brag. He sat off by himself,
absent-minded and brooding, which was not like the Rimrock of old.

The first man to break loose from the spell he cast by the flash of his
big roll of bills was L. W. Lockhart, the banker. For some reason best
known to himself Rimrock still carried his roll in his pocket, whereas
any good business man will tell you that he should have deposited it in
the bank. And one thing more--not a man in Gunsight knew the first
thing about his associates in the mine.

"I'll tell you the truth," said the overbearing L. W. as he stood
arguing with Rimrock in front of the Alamo, "I don't believe you've got
any company. I believe you went East with that two thousand dollars
and won a stake at gentleman's poker; and then you come back, with your
chest all throwed out, and get mysterious as hell over nothing."

"Well, what do you care?" answered Rimrock scornfully. "You don't
stand to win or lose, either way!"

"Nope! Nope!" pronounced Hassayamp positively, "he's got a company--I
know that. I reckon that's what worries him. Anyhow, they's something
the matter; he ain't took a drink in a week. Seems like when he was
broke he was round hyer all the time, jest a-carousin' and invitin' in
the whole town; and now when he's flush and could buy me out with that
little wad right there in his jeans, he sits here, by George, like a
Keeley graduate, and won't even drink when he's asked."

"Well, laugh," grumbled Rimrock as Old Hassayamp began to whoop, "I
reckon I know what I'm doing. When you've got nothing to lose except
your reputation it don't make much difference what you do; but when
you're fixed like I am, with important affairs to handle, a man can't
afford to get drunk. He might sign some paper, or make some agreement,
and euchre himself out of millions."

"Aw! Millions! Millions!" mocked L. W., "your mine ain't worth a
million cents. A bunch of low-grade copper on the Papago Desert, forty
miles on a line from the railroad and everything packed in by burros.
Who's going to buy it? That's what I ask and I'm waiting to hear the
answer."

He paused and waited while Rimrock smiled and felt thoughtfully through
his clothes for a match.

"Well, don't let it worry you," he said at last. "I'm not telling
everything I know. If I did, by grab, there'd be a string of men from
here to the Tecolote Hills."

"Yes--coming back!" jeered the provocative L. W.; but Rimrock only
smiled again and gazed away through a thin veil of smoke.

"You just keep your shirt on, Mr. Know-it-all Lockhart, and remember
that large bodies move slowly. You'll wake up some morning and read
the answer written in letters ten feet high."

"Yes--For Rent!" grunted L. W., and shutting down on his cigar, he
stumped off up the street; but Old Hassayamp Hicks nodded and winked at
Rimrock, though at that he was no wiser than L. W.

Rimrock kept his own counsel, sitting soberly by himself and mulling
over what was on his mind; and at last he went to see Mary Fortune. It
was of her he had been thinking, though in no sentimental way, during
the long hours that he sat alone. Who was this woman, he asked
himself, and what did she want with that stock? And should he give it
to her? That was the one big question and it took him two weeks to
decide.

He came into her office while she was running her typewriter and nodded
briefly as he glanced out the rear door; then without any preliminaries
he drew out an engraved certificate and laid it down on her desk.

"There's your stock," he said. "I've just endorsed it over to you.
And now you can give me back that paper."

He did not sit down, did not even take off his hat; and he studiously
avoided her eyes.

"Oh, thank you," she replied, glancing hurriedly at the certificate,
"won't you sit down while I write out a receipt?"

She picked up the paper, a beautiful piece of engraving, and looked it
over carefully.

"Oh, _two_ thousand shares?" she murmured questioningly. "Yes, I see;
there are two hundred thousand in all. 'Par value, one hundred
dollars.' I suppose that's just nominal. How much are they really
worth?"

"A hundred dollars a share," he answered grimly and as she cried out he
picked up a pen and fumbled idly with its point.

"Oh, surely they aren't worth so much as that?" she exclaimed, but he
continued his attentions to the pen.

"No?" he enquired and then he waited with an almost bovine calm.

"Why, no," she ran on, "why, I'd----"

"You'd what?" he asked, but the trap he had set had been sprung without
catching its prey.

"Why, it seems so much," she evaded rather lamely.

"Oh, I thought you were going to say you'd like to sell."

"No, I wouldn't sell," she answered quickly as her breath came back
with a gasp.

"Because if you would," he went on cautiously, "I'm in the market to
buy. It'll be a long time before that stock pays any dividend. How'd
you like to sell a few shares?"

"No, I'd rather not--not now, at least. I'll have to think it over
first. But won't you sit down? Really, I'm quite overcome! It's so
much more than I had a right to expect."

"If you'd sell me a few shares," went on Rimrock without finesse, "you
wouldn't have to work any more. Just name your price and----"

"Oh, I like to work," she countered gaily as she ran off a formal
receipt; and, signing her name, she handed it back to him with a
twinkle of amusement in her eyes. "And then there's another
reason--sit down, I want to talk to you--I think it will be better for
you. Oh, I know how you feel about it; but did you ever consider that
other people like their own way, too? Well, when you're off by
yourself just think that over, it will help you understand life."

Rimrock Jones sat down with a thud and took off his hat as he gazed at
this astonishing woman. She was giving him advice in a most superior
manner; and yet she was only a typist.

"You said something one time," she went on seriously, "that hurt my
feelings very much--something about being trimmed, and by a woman! I
resolved right there that you needed to be educated. Do you mind if I
tell you why? Well, in the first place, Mr. Jones, I admire you very
much for the way you've kept your word. You are absolutely honest and
I won't forget it when it comes to voting my stock. But that cynical
attitude that you chose to affect when you came to see me before--that
calm way of saying that you couldn't trust anybody, not even the person
addressed--that won't get you very far, where a woman is concerned.
That is, not very far with me."

She looked him over with a masterful smile and Rimrock began to fumble
his hat.

"You took it for granted," she went on accusingly, "that I had set out
from the first to trim you but--and here's the thing that makes me
furious--you said: 'Trimmed, by grab, by a _woman_!' Now I'd like to
enquire if in your experience you have found women less honest than
men; and in the second place I'd like to inform you that I'm just as
intelligent as you are. It was no disgrace, as I look at the matter,
for you to be bested by me; and as for being trimmed, I'd like to know
what grounds you have for that remark? Did I ever ask more than you
yourself had promised, or than would be awarded in a court of law? And
couldn't I have said, when you went off without seeing me or writing a
single word; couldn't I have said, when you went off with my money and
were enjoying yourself in New York, that _I_ had been trimmed--by a
_man_?"

She spat out the word with such obvious resentment that Rimrock jumped
and looked towards the door. It came over him suddenly that this mild,
handsome woman was at heart strictly anti-man. That was putting it
mildly, she was anti-Jones and might easily be tempted too far; for
right there in her hand she held two thousand shares of stock that
could be used most effectively as a club.

"Well, just let me explain," he stammered abjectly. "I want you to
know how that came about. When I came back from the claims I'd spent
all that money and I had to have two thousand more. I had to have it,
to get back to New York, or our mine wouldn't have been worth anything.
Well, I went to L. W., the banker up here, and bluffed him out of the
money. But I know him too well--he'd think it over and if he caught me
in town he'd renig. Demand back his money, you understand; so I ran
out and swung up on the freight. Never stopped for nothing, and that
was the reason I never came around to call."

"And your right hand?" she asked sweetly, "the one that you write with?
It was injured, I suppose, in the mine. I saw it wrapped up when you
rode past the window, so everything is nicely explained."

She kept on smiling and Rimrock squirmed in his chair, until he gave
way to a sickly grin.

"Well, I guess you've got me," he acknowledged sheepishly, "never was
much of a hand to write."

"Oh, that's all right," she answered gamely, "don't think I mean to
complain. I'm just telling you the facts so you'll know how I felt
when you suggested that you had been trimmed. Now suppose, for
example, that you were a woman who had lost all the money she had. And
suppose, furthermore, that you had an affliction that an expensive
operation might cure. And suppose you had worked for a year and a half
to save up four hundred dollars, and then a man came along who needed
that money ten times as badly as you did. Well, you know the rest. I
loaned you the money. Don't you think I'm entitled to this?"

She picked up the certificate of stock and readjusted the 'phone
receiver to her ear; and Rimrock Jones, after staring a minute, settled
back and nodded his head.

"Yes, you are," he said. "And furthermore----" He reached impulsively
for the roll of bills but she checked him by a look.

"No," she said, "I'm not asking for sympathy nor anything else of the
kind. I just want you to know that I've earned this stock and that
nobody here has been trimmed."

"That's right," he agreed and his eyes opened wider as he took her all
in, once more. "Say, was that the reason you were saving your money?"
he asked as he glanced at the ear-'phone. "Because if I'd a-known it,"
he burst out repentantly, "I'd never touched it--no, honest, I never
would."

"Well, that's all right," she answered frankly, "we all take a chance
of some kind. But now, Mr. Jones, since we understand each other,
don't you think we can afford to be friends?"

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