nd I'm not going to back down on it now. It won't be
re-located and the man that jumps it will have me to deal with,
personally. Now if you don't like the way I'm running this
proposition----"

"Oh, it isn't that!" broke in Jepson hastily, "but I'm hired, in a way,
to advise. You must know, Mr. Jones, that you're jeopardizing our
future by refusing to re-locate that claim."

"No, I don't!" shouted Rimrock, jumping fiercely to his feet, while
Mary Fortune turned pale. "It's just the other way. That claim is
good--I know it's good--and I'll fight for it every time. Your courts
are nothing, you can hire a lawyer to take any side of any case, but
you can't hire one to go up against this!" He patted a lump that
bulged at his hip and shook a clenched fist in the air. "No, sir! No
law for me! Don't you ever think that I'll stand for re-locating that
claim. That would be just the chance that these law-sharps are looking
for, to start a contest and tie up the mine. No, leave it to me. I'll
be my own law and, believe me, I'll never be jumped. There are some
people yet that remember Andrew McBain----"

He stopped, for Mary had risen from her place and stood facing him with
blazing eyes.

"What's the matter?" he asked, like a man bewildered; and then he
understood. Mary Fortune had worked for Andrew McBain, she had heard
him threaten his life; and, since his acquittal, this was the first
time his name had been mentioned. And he remembered with a start that
after he came back from the killing she had refused to take his hand.

"What's the matter?" he repeated, but she set her lips and moved away
down the hill. Rimrock stood and watched her, then he turned to Jepson
and his voice was hoarse with hate.

"Well, I hope you're satisfied!" he said and strode savagely off down
the trail.

CHAPTER XIV

RIMROCK EXPLAINS

It had not taken long, after his triumphant homecoming, for Rimrock to
wreck his own happiness. That old rift between them, regarding the
law, had been opened the very first day; and it was not a difference
that could be explained and adjusted, for neither would concede they
were wrong. As the daughter of a judge, conservatively brought up in a
community where an outlaw was abhorred, Mary Fortune could no more
agree to his program than he could agree to hers. She respected the
law and she turned to the law, instinctively, to right every wrong; but
he from sad experience knew what a broke