"Mr. Stoddard," she cried with almost tearful vehemence, "there's only one condition on which I'll even think of giving you back your mine, and that is that Rimrock shall run it. Mr. Jepson must be fired, Mr. Jones must have full charge, and all this chicanery must stop; but if Rimrock goes away without taking his mine I'll—I'll make you wish he hadn't!"
She snatched 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.