Mary Fortune looked at him curiously and smiled once more, then rose quickly and went to the safe.
"Very well," she said as she came back with the records, "but I wonder if you quite understand."
"You bet I do," he said, laying off his big hat and spreading out the papers and books. "Don't fool yourself there—we've got to be friends—and that's why I'm going the limit."
He searched out the certificate where, to qualify him for director, he had transferred one share of the Company stock to Buckbee, and filled in a date on the back.
"Now," he went on, "Mr. Buckbee's stock is cancelled, and his resignation automatically takes place. Friend Buckbee is all right, but dear friend W. H. Stoddard might use him to slip something over. It's We, Us and Company, you and me, little Mary, against Whitney H. Stoddard and the world. Do you get the idea? We stand solid together—two directors out of three—and the Tecolote is in the hollow of our hand."
"Your hand!" she corrected but Rimrock protested and she let him have his way.
"No, now listen," he said; "this doesn't bind you to anything—all I want is that we shall be friends."
"And do you understand," she challenged, "that I can vote against you and throw the control to Stoddard? Have you stopped to think that I may have ideas that are diametrically opposed to your own? Have you even considered that we might fall out—as we did once before, you remember—and that then I could use this against you?"
"I understand all that—and more besides," he said as he met her eyes. "I want you, Mary. My God, I'm crazy for you. The whole mine is nothing to me now."
"Oh, yes, it is," she said, but her voice trailed off and she thought for a minute in silence.