_ set out to find Mary Fortune he'd be
almost sure to do it."

"Hm," said Rimrock. "I'd better watch him, then. I'll call up about
that to-morrow. Just have a man there to watch the door--she might be
going in or out."

"What a sleuth you are!" she answered gravely, and then she broke down
and laughed. "Well, well," she said, "'tis a battle of wits, but love
may find a way. Do you believe in love?" she went on abruptly as
Rimrock showed signs of pique. "I just wanted to know. You great, big
Western men seem more fitted, somehow, for the part of copper kings.
But tell me honestly, I feel so trifling to-night, do you believe in
the great love for one woman? Or do you hold with these drawing-room
philosophers that man is by nature polygamous? Never mind my
feelings--just tell me."

She coiled up lazily in her soft plush great-chair and regarded him
with languid eyes, and Rimrock never suspected that the words he had
spoken would go straight to Stoddard that night. He forgot his
rejection of a get-together plan and his final refusal of common
stocks; all he saw was this woman with her half-veiled glances and the
firelight as it played on her arms. He had confessed his hope of still
finding Mary and of winning her back to his side; but as he gazed at
the tiger lady, sprawling so negligently before him, his fickle
thoughts wandered to her. He denounced the theory of these latter-day
philosophers that man is essentially a brute and, still watching her
furtively, he expressed the conviction that he could love the One Woman
forever.

CHAPTER XIX

WHERE ALL MEN MEET

When Rimrock had caught the first train for New York he had thought it
was to seek out Mary Fortune--to kneel at her feet and tell her humbly
that he knew he had done her a wrong--but as the months went by and his
detectives reported no progress he forgot his early resolve. The rush
and excitement of that great gambling game that goes on in the Stock
Exchange, the plunges on copper and the rushes for cover, all the
give-and-take of the great chase; it picked him up as a great flowing
stream floats a leaf and hurries it along, and Gunsight and Tecolote
and the girl he had known there seemed far away, like a dream.

He was learning the game from the gamblers about him, all the ins and
outs of The Street; the names and methods of all the great leaders and
how they had won their success; and also, bold gambler that he was, he
was starting on