and rails. Great construction trains
congested all the sidings as they dumped off tools and supplies. A
track-laying machine followed close behind them, and the race for the
Tecolotes was on. What a pity it was that poor Rimrock Jones was not
there to see the dirt fly!

And there were other changes. From a plain office drudge, Mary
Fortune, the typist, suddenly found herself the second in command.
Every day from Geronimo there came letters and telegrams from the
prisoner in the County Jail and his trenchant orders were put into
effect by the girl who had worked for McBain. Nothing more was said
about her mysterious past, nor the stigma such a past implies; the
women of the hotel now bowed to her hopefully and smiled if she raised
her eyes. Even Jepson, the superintendent, addressed her
respectfully--after stopping off at the County Jail--and all the
accounts of the Company, for whatever expense, now passed through her
competent hands.

She was competent, Jepson admitted it; yet somehow he did not like her.
It was his wife, perhaps, a proud, black-eyed little creature, who
first planted the prejudice in his breast; although of course no man
likes to take orders from a woman. To be sure, she gave no orders, but
she kept the books and that gave her a check on his work. But
Abercrombie Jepson was too busily occupied to brood much over this
incipient dislike, he had men by the hundred pouring out to the mine
and all the details of a great plant on his hands.

First out across the desert went the derricks of the well-borers, to
develop water for the concentrator and mill; and then diamond-drill men
with all their paraphernalia, to block out the richest ore; and after
them the millwrights and masons and carpenters, to lay foundations and
build the lighter parts of the plant; and, back and forth in a steady
stream, the long lines of teamsters, hauling freight from the end of
the railroad. It was an awe-inspiring spectacle, this invasion of the
desert, this sure preparation to open the treasure-house where the
Tecolotes had locked up their ore. But Rimrock was missing from it all!

There came a time when Mary Fortune acknowledged this to herself; and,
without knowing just why, she took the next train to Geronimo. The
summer had come on and the jail as she entered it was stifling with its
close, smelly heat. She sickened at the thought of him, caged up there
day and night, shut off even from light and air; and wh