n his plunges he was caught short of funds the
bank made him loans on his note. They took no chances, for he was
rated at millions as half owner of the Tecolote Mine, but it helped out
mightily as he extended his operations and found his margins
threatened. But all this buying and selling of stocks, the
establishment of his credit and the trying out of his strength, it was
all preliminary to that great contest to come when he would come out
into the open against Stoddard.

Whitney Stoddard was a man rated high up in the millions, but he was
fallible like the rest. His wealth, compared to Rimrock's was as a
hundred dollars to one, but it was spread out a hundred times as far;
and with his next dividend, which was due in December, Rimrock would
have nearly a million in cash. To Stoddard, at the same time, there
would come nearly the same amount of money, but it would be gone within
a few days. There were obligations to be met, as Rimrock well knew,
that would absorb his great profits and more. The Tecolote Mine,
before it began to pay, had cost several million dollars in dead work.
That money had been borrowed, and while Rimrock took in velvet,
Stoddard was obligated to pay his debts.

Several months went by and, patient Indian that he was, Rimrock still
followed on Stoddard's trail. He looked up his connections with the
Transcontinental railroad and there he made his first strike. Although
he moulded the policies of that great corporation and seemed endowed
with unlimited power his actual holdings in the stock of the company
were almost ridiculously small. Yet he took advantage of his
dominating position and the influence it gave him with the directors to
make such coups as he had made with the Tecolote, building the branch
line which had given value to his mine. As a business proposition it
was a good investment for the Company, but who was it that reaped the
big profits? By the investment of less than three million
dollars--which he had borrowed as he went along--Whitney Stoddard had
acquired practically a half interest in a property which he valued at a
hundred millions. And now he was bucking the Hackmeisters!

The thought of this man, who had come up from nothing and was even yet
barely on his feet, deliberately attempting to break the great copper
combine was hardly credible to Rimrock. He marveled now at the
presumption of Stoddard in offering him fifty millions for his half and
the control of the