ice. Its thoughts were not of
love but of money.

The dusty team of mules passed down the street, dragging their
double-trees reluctantly, and took their cursing meekly as they made
the turn at the tracks. A switch engine bumped along the sidings,
snaking ore-cars down to the bins and bunting them up to the chutes,
but except for its bangings and clamor the town was still. An aged
Mexican, armed with a long bunch of willow brush, swept idly at the
sprinkled street and Old Hassayamp Hicks, the proprietor of the Alamo
Saloon, leaned back in his rawhide chair and watched him with
good-natured contempt.

The town was dead, after a manner of speaking, and yet it was not dead.
In the Gunsight Hotel where the officials of the Company left their
women-folks to idle and fret and gossip, there was a restless flash of
white from the upper veranda; and in the office below Andrew McBain,
the aggressive President of the Gunsight Mining and Developing Company,
paced nervously to and fro as he dictated letters to a typist. He
paused, and as the clacking stopped a woman who had been reading a
novel on the veranda rose up noiselessly and listened over the railing.
The new typist was really quite deaf--one could hear every word that
was said. She was pretty, too,--and--well, she dressed too well, for
one thing.

But McBain was not making love to his typist. He had stopped with a
word on his lips and stood gazing out the window. The new typist had
learned to read faces and she followed his glance with a start. Who
was this man that Andrew McBain was afraid of? He came riding in from
the desert, a young man, burly and masterful, mounted on a buckskin
horse and with a pistol slung low on his leg. McBain turned white, his
stern lips drew tighter and he stood where he had stopped in his stride
like a wolf that has seen a fierce dog; then suddenly he swung forward
again and his voice rang out harsh and defiant. The new typist took
the words down at haphazard, for her thoughts were not on her work.
She was thinking of the man with a gun. He had gone by without a
glance, and yet McBain was afraid of him.

A couple of card players came out of the Alamo and stopped to talk with
Hassayamp.

"Well, bless my soul," exclaimed the watchful Hassayamp as he suddenly
brought his chair down with a bump, "if hyer don't come that locoed
scoundrel, Rimrock! Say, that boy's crazy, don't you know he is--jest
look at that big sack of rocks!"