some
reporters were women--it all went down and came out the same evening,
at which Rimrock Jones was dazed. If he had telegraphed ahead, or let
anyone know that he planned to return to New York, it would not have
been surprising to find the reporters waiting, for he was, of course, a
great man; but this was a quick trip, made on the spur of the moment,
and he hadn't told a soul. Yet in circumstances like these, with a
roomful of newspapers and your name played up big on the front page, it
is hardly human nature to enquire too closely or wonder what is going
on. Still, there was something up, for even coincidence can explain
things only so far. Leaving out the fact that Mrs. Hardesty might have
sent on the telegram herself, and that Whitney H. Stoddard might have
motives of his own in inviting his newspapers to act; it did not stand
to reason that the first man Rimrock ran into should have had such a
sweet inside tip. Yet that was what the gay Buckbee told him--and
circumstances proved he was right. The money that Rimrock put up that
night, after talking it over in the cafe, that money was doubled within
the next three days, and the stock still continued to advance. It was
invested on a margin in Navajoa Copper, a minor holding of the great
Hackmeister combine that Stoddard had set out to break.

Stoddard was selling short, so Buckbee explained, throwing great blocks
of stock on a market that refused to break; and when the rush came and
Navajoa started up Rimrock was there with the rest of his roll. It was
a game that he took to--any form of gambling--and besides, he was
bucking Stoddard! And then, there was Buckbee. He knew more in a
minute than some brokers know in a lifetime; and he had promised to
keep him advised. Of course it was a gamble, a man might lose, but it
beat any game Rimrock had played. And copper was going up. Copper,
the metal that stood behind it all, and that men could not do without.

There was a movement on such as Rimrock had never dreamed of, to
control the copper product of the world. It had been tried before and
had ended disastrously, but that did not prove it impossible. There
were in the United States six or eight companies that produced the bulk
of the ore. Two or three, like the Tecolote, were closed corporations,
where the stock was held by a few; but the rest were on the market, the
football of The Street, their stock owned by anybody and everybody. It
was for these l