controlled
the Transcontinental Railroad. His name alone in connection with the
Tecolote would send its stock up a thousand per cent. And what a
stroke of business that was--to make a feeder for his railroad while he
built up a great property for himself. Now at last she understood the
inexplicable reticence with which Rimrock had veiled his associate's
name and her heart almost stopped as she thought how close she had come
to parting with her Tecolote stock. Those two thousand shares, if she
held on to them to the end, might bring her in thousands of dollars!

Her brain cleared like a flash and she remembered Rimrock's
instructions concerning land for the Company's office. The wire could
wait--and Whitney H. Stoddard--the first thing to do was to get an
option, for even telegraph operators have been known to talk. She
slipped out quietly and a half hour afterward the papers were drawn up
and signed, and the whole vacant block across the street from the hotel
was tied up for the Tecolote Mining Company. And then the great news
broke.

It is a penal offense, punishable by heavy fine and imprisonment, for a
telegraph operator to disclose the secrets of his files; but within ten
minutes the whole street knew. The values on property went up in
meteor flights as reckless speculators sought to buy in on the ground
floor. All the land along the railroad, instead of being raw desert,
became suddenly warehouse sites; the vacant lots along the main street
were snatched up for potential stores and saloons, and all the drab
flats where the Mexican burros wandered became transformed to choice
residence properties. It had come at last, that time prophesied by
Rimrock when Gunsight would be transformed by his hand, but the prophet
was not there to see. After all his labors, and his patient endurance
of ridicule and unbelief, when the miracle happened Rimrock Jones the
magician was immured in the County Jail.

But it made a difference. Even Mary Fortune came to think of him with
more kindness in her heart. The Geronimo papers suddenly blossomed out
with accounts of the Gunsight boom; and Rimrock Jones, though held for
murder, was heralded as a mining king. The story was recalled of his
discovery of the Gunsight and of his subsequent loss of the same; and
the fight for the Old Juan, with the death of McBain, was rewritten to
fit the times. Then the grading crew came with their mules and
scrapers, and car-loads of ties