"Do you mind my cigar?" he asked, stopping awkwardly half way to her desk; and he suddenly came to life as she answered:
"Why, yes. Since you ask me, I do."
That was straight enough and Rimrock cast his fifty-cent cigar like a stogie out of the door. Then he came back towards her with his big head thrust out and a searching look in his eyes. She had greeted him politely, but it was not the manner of the girl he had expected to see. Somehow, without knowing why, he had expected her to meet him with a different look in her eyes. It had been there before, but now it was absent—a look that he liked very much. In fact, he had remembered it and thought, apropos of nothing, that it was a pity she was so deaf. He looked again and smiled very slightly. But no, the look had fled.
CHAPTER VI
RIMROCK PASSES
In the big moments of life when we have triumphed over difficulties and quaffed the heady wine of success there is always something—or the lack of something—to bring us back to earth. Rimrock Jones had returned in a Christmas spirit and had taken Gunsight by storm. He had rewarded his friends and rebuked his enemies and all those who grind down the poor. He had humbled L. W. and driven McBain into hiding; and now this girl, this deaf, friendless typist, had snatched the cup from his lips. The neatly turned speech—the few well-chosen words in which he had intended to express his appreciation for her help—were effaced from his memory and in their place there came a doubt, a dim questioning of his own worth. What had he done, or neglected to do, that had taken that look from her eyes? He sank down in a chair and regarded her intently as she sat there, composed and still.
"Well, it's been quite a while," he said at last, "since I've been round to see you."
"Yes, it has," she replied and the way she said it raised a more poignant question in his mind. Was she miffed, perhaps, because he had failed to call on her, that time when he came back to town? He had borrowed her money—she might have been worried, that time when he went to New York.
"I just got in, a little while ago—been back to New York about my mine. Well, it's doing all right now and I've come around to see you and pay back that money I owe."