ng back.
Rimrock watched it and wondered, then he simply watched it; and at last
he began to spend.

His first big blow-out was a raid on The Mint, where Ike Bray still ran
his games; and when Rimrock rose up from the faro table he owned the
place, fixtures and all. It had been quite a brush, but Rimrock was
lucky; and he had a check-book this time, for more luck. That turned
the scales, for he outheld the bank; and, when he had won The Mint, he
presented it to Old Hassayamp Hicks.

"They can talk all they please," he said in his presentation speech
which, though brief, invoked tremendous applause, "but the man don't
live that can say I don't remember my friends."

Yet how difficult it is to retain all our friends, though we come with
gifts in both hands! Rimrock rewarded Hassayamp and L. W., and Woo
Chong, and every man who had done him a kind act. If money can cement
friendships he had won over the whole town, but with Mary Fortune he
had failed. On that first triumphant night when, after their bout with
Stoddard, they realized the true value of their mine; in the dim light
of the balcony and speaking secretly into her ear, he had won, for one
instant, a kiss. But it was a kiss of ecstasy, of joy at their triumph
and the thought that she had saved him from defeat; and when he laid
hold of her and demanded another she had fought back and leapt up and
fled. And after that, repentance; the same, joyless waiting; and, at
last, drink again, to forget. And then humbler repentance and
forgiveness of a kind, but the sweet trustfulness was lost from her
smile.

So with money and friends there came little happiness, either for
Rimrock or yet for her. They looked at each other across a chasm of
differences where any chance word might offend. He had alluded at one
time to the fact that she was deaf and she had avoided his presence for
days. And she had a way, when his breath smelled of drink, of drawing
her head away. Once when he spoke to her in his loud, outdoor voice
she turned away and burst into tears; but she would never explain what
it was that had hurt her, more than to ask him not to do it again. So
it went until his wild, ungoverned nature broke all bounds and he
turned to drink.

Yet if the first phase of his devotion had been passed by Rimrock he
was not lacking in attentions of a kind, and so one evening as the
West-bound train was due Mary found herself waiting for him in the
ladies' balcony. Th