"I don't wish to sell," she answered quietly and the two men glared at each other.
"Mr. Jones," began Stoddard in the slow, measured tones of a priest who invokes the only god he knows, "I'm a man of few words—now you can take this or leave it. I'll give you—fifty—million—dollars!"
"Nothing doing!" answered Rimrock. "I don't want to sell. Will you take fifty millions for yours?"
For a moment Stoddard hesitated, then his face became set and his voice rasped harshly in his throat.
"No!" he said. "I came here to buy. And you'll live to wish you had sold!"
"Like hell!" retorted Rimrock. "This has been my day. I'll know where I'm at, from now on."
CHAPTER XVI
THE TIGER LADY
The winter came on with its rains and soft verdure and desert shrubs bursting with bloom and, for a man who professed to know just exactly where he was at, Rimrock Jones was singularly distrait. When he cast down the glove to Whitney H. Stoddard, that glutton for punishment who had never quit yet, he had looked for something to happen. Each morning he rose up with the confident expectation of hearing that the Old Juan was jumped; but that high, domelike butte remained as lifeless as ever, without a single guard to herd the apex claim. Then he fell to watching Jepson and talking to the miners and snooping for some hidden scheme, but Jepson went ahead with his machine-like efficiency until the Tecolote began to turn out ore.