"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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 att.i.tude 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 ent.i.tled 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 n.o.body 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?"

She rose smiling and back into her eye came that look he had missed once before. It came only for a moment--the old, friendly twinkle that had haunted his memory for months--and as Rimrock caught it he leapt to his feet and thrust out his great, awkward hand.

"W'y, sure," he said, "and I'm proud to know you. Say, I'm coming around again."

CHAPTER VIII

A FLIER IN STOCKS

It was as dazzling to Rimrock as a burst of sunshine to a man just come up from a mine--that look in Mary Fortune's eyes. He went out of her office like a man in a dream and wandered off by himself to think. But that was the one thing he could not negotiate, his brain refused to work. It was a whirl of weird flashes and forms and colors, like a futurist painting gone mad, but above it all when the turmoil had subsided was the thought of going back. He had told her when he left her that he would come around again, and that fixed idea had held to the end. But how? Under what pretext? And would she break down his pretense with that smile?

Rimrock thought it over and it seemed best at the end to invite her to take a ride. There were certain things in connection with their mine which he wished very much to discuss, but how could he do it in the hotel lobby with the Gunsight women looking on? Since his rise to affluence one of them had dared to speak to him, but she would never do it again. He remembered too well the averted glances with which they had pa.s.sed him, poor and ragged, on the street. No, he hated them pa.s.sionately as the living symbols of Gunsight fraud and greed; the soft, idle women of those despicable parasites who now battened on what he had earned.

But Mary Fortune, how else was he to meet her without envious eyes looking on; or stealthy ears of prying women, listening at keyholes to catch every word? And out on the desert, gliding smoothly along in the best hired automobile in town, where better could he give expression to those surging confidences which he was impelled against his judgment to make? It was that same inner spirit that made all his troubles, now urging him he knew not where. All he knew for certain was that the shy woman-look had crept back for a moment into her eyes; and after that the fate of empires was as nothing to the import of her smile. Did she feel, as he felt, the mystic bond between them, the appeal of his young man's strength; or was that smile a mask, a provocative weapon, to veil her own thoughts while she read through his like a book? He gave it up; but there was a way of knowing--he could call out that smile again.

The idle women of the Gunsight Hotel, sitting in their rockers on the upper porch, were rewarded on that day for many a wasted hour. For long months they had watched McBain's typist, with her proud way of ignoring them all; and at last they had something to talk about.

Rimrock Jones in his best, and with a hired automobile, came gliding up to her office; and as he went tramping in every ear on the veranda was strained to catch his words.

"Aw, don't mind those old hens," he said after a silence, roaring it out that all could hear. "They're going to talk anyway so let's take a ride; and make 'em guess, for once, what I say."

There was nothing, after that, for the ladies to do but retire in the best form they could; but as Mary Fortune came out in an auto' bonnet with a veil and coat to match they tore her character to shreds from behind the Venetian blinds. So that was her game--she had thrown over McBain and was setting her cap for Rimrock Jones. And automobile clothes! Well, if that wasn't proof that she was living down a past the ladies would like to know. A typewriter girl, earning less that seventy dollars a month, and with a trunk full of joy-riding clothes!

With such women about her it called for some courage for Mary Fortune to make the plunge; but the air was still fragrant, spring was on the wind and the ground dove crooned in his tree. She was tired, worn out with the deadly monotony of working on day by day; and she had besides that soul-stirring elation of having won in the great game for her stock.

"It'll be a stockholders' meeting," Rimrock had explained in her ear.

"We represent a majority of the stock. I want to tell you something big, where n.o.body else will hear. Come on, let your typewriting slide!"

And Mary Fortune had laughed and run scampering up the stairs and come down with her gloves and veil, and as the automobile moved off she had that joyous sensation of something about to happen. They drove out of town on the one straight road that led to the Gunsight mine and Rimrock was so busy with the mechanics of his driving that she had a chance to view the landscape by herself. The white, silty desert, stretching off to blue mountains, was set as regularly as a vineyard with the waxy, dark-green creosote bushes; and at uncertain intervals the fluted giant cactus rose up like sentinels on the plain. All the desert trees that grew near the town--the iron-woods and palo verdes and cat-claws and mesquite and salt-bushes--had been uprooted by the Mexicans in their search for wood; but in every low swale the gra.s.s was still green and the cactus was crowned with gorgeous blossoms.

"Isn't it glorious?" she sighed as she breathed the warm air and Rimrock looked up from studying his clutches.

"The finest G.o.d ever made!" he said as his engine chugged smoothly along. "By George, I was glad to get home. Ever been in New York?

Well, you know what it's like then; give me Arizona, every time. But say, that's some town; I stayed at the Waldorf, where the tips are a dollar a throw. Every time you turn around, or the boy grabs your hat, you give him a dollar bill. Say, I put up a front--they all thought I was a millionaire--have you ever been down to the curb market? Oh, don't you know what that is? Why, it's the place near Wall street where they sell stock in the middle of the street."

He negotiated a sand wash and nearly stripped a gear as he threw in the low by mistake.

"You bet, quite a country!" he went on unconcernedly. "I thought I knew sign language, but those curb brokers have got me beat. I can sit down with an Indian and by signs and sand-pictures I can generally make him savvy what I want, but those fellers back there could buy and sell me while I was asking the price of a horse. I was down there on Broad street and a man in the crowd jumped up and let out a yell.

"'Sold!' says a feller that's standing next to me, and began to make signs to a fellow in a second-story window and writes something down on a pad. I asked a man that was taking me around--they treated me right in that town--what in the world was going on, and he told me they'd made a trade in stock. The first fellow says:

"'Sell five hundred shares of So-and-So at seventy-nine!' and the second man raises his right hand like an Indian how-sign and there's a twenty thousand-dollar trade pulled off. They both write it down on a slip of paper and the man in the window does the telephoning. Say, I'm going back there when I got a stake, and try my hand at that game."

An expression of pain, as of some evil memory, pa.s.sed swiftly over Mary Fortune's face and she turned from gazing at the mountains to give him a warning shake of the head.

"Don't you do it!" she said; but when he asked her why not she shut her lips and looked far away.

"You must've got bit some time," he suggested cheerfully, but she refused for the moment to be drawn out.

"Perhaps," she replied, "but if that's the case my advice is all the more sound."

"No, but I'm on the inside," he went on impressively. "I know some of those big ones personally. That makes the difference; those fellows don't lose, they skim the cream off of everything. Say, I ought to know--didn't I go in there lone-handed and fight it out with a king of finance? That's the man we're in with--I can't tell you his name, now--he's the one that owns the forty-nine per cent. They're crazy about copper or he'd never have looked at me--there's some big market fight coming on. And didn't he curse and squirm and holler, trying to make me give up my control? He told me in years he had never gone into anything unless he got more than half _for a gift_! But I told him 'no,' I'd been euchered out of one mine; and after his expert had reported on the property he came through and gave me my way. And after that! Say, there was nothing too good for me. He agreed to spend several million dollars to pay for his share of the mine and then he gave me that roll of bills to bind the bargain we'd made. By George, I felt good, to go there with two thousand dollars and come back with a big roll of yellowbacks; but before I went away he introduced me to a friend and told him how to show me the sights.

"This friend was a broker, by the name of Buckbee, and believe me, he's on the inside. He took me around and showed me the Stock Exchange and put me wise to everything. We were up in the gallery and, on the floor below us, there were a whole lot of posts with signs; and a bunch of the craziest men in the world were fighting around those posts. Fight?

They were tearing each other's clothes off, throwing paper in the air, yelling like drunk Indians, knocking each other flat. It was so rough, by George, it scared me; but Buckbee told me they were selling stocks.