up her papers and ran out of the room and Stoddard caught
up the 'phone.

"Give me Mr. Lockhart!" he said. "Yes, Lockhart, the banker. Mr.
Lockhart? This is Mr. Stoddard. If you pay Henry Jones a cent of that
money I'll break you, so help me God. And listen! If you value your
rating with Bradstreet, you make him apologize to that girl!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

A GIFT

Mary Fortune was pacing up and down her room in something very like a
rage. Her trunk, half-packed, stood against the wall and her pictures
lay face down on the bed, and she hovered between laughter and tears.
It seemed as if every evil passion in her nature had been stirred up by
this desperate affray and in the fierce swirl of emotions her joy in
her victory was strangely mingled with rage at Rimrock. After scheming
for months to prove her superiority, and arranging every possible
detail, she had been cut down in her pride and seen her triumph turned
to nothing by his sudden decision to sulk. Just at the very moment
when she was preparing to be gracious and give him his precious mine
back he had balked like a mule and without sense or reason stormed off
on his way to Old Mexico.

She returned to her packing and was brushing away a tear that had
fallen somehow on a fresh waist when there was a trampling in the lobby
and she heard a great voice wafted up from the corridor below.

"Come on!" it thundered like the hoarse rumbling of a bull. "Come on,
I tell ye; or you'll tear my arm loose where it's knit. You dad-burned
cub, if I had two good hands---- Say, come on; ain't you got a lick of
sense?"

It was L. W. Lockhart and, from the noise in the hallway, he seemed to
be coming towards her door. She listened and at a single rebellious
grunt from Rimrock she flew to the mirror and removed the last trace of
the tear. He was bringing Rimrock for some strange purpose, and--yes,
he was knocking at her door. She opened it on a struggle, Rimrock
begging and threatening and trying gingerly to break away; and
iron-jawed L. W. with his sling flying wildly, holding him back with
his puffed-up game hand.

"Excuse me, Miss Fortune," panted L. W. brokenly, "but I just had to
fetch this unmannerly brute back. He can't come, like he did, to my
place of business and speak like he did about you. You're the best
friend, by Gregory, that Rimrock Jones ever had; and I'll say that for
myself, Miss, too. You've been a _good_ friend to me and I'll never