Rimrock Jones Part 9

"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 pa.s.s!" 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 G.o.ds 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 a.s.sociated 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 trespa.s.s 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 a.s.sociates 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 h.e.l.l over nothing."

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

"Nope! Nope!" p.r.o.nounced Ha.s.sayamp 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 Ha.s.sayamp 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 Ha.s.sayamp 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.