s positively to lay off. I'll buy or sell as much Navajoa
as you want for the regular brokerage fee, but get this straight--when
you go up against Stoddard you stand to lose your whole roll. Now
shoot, and I give you my word of honor to execute your orders to the
letter."

"All right," said Rimrock, "sell ten thousand shares short. Dump 'em
over--I want Navajoa to go down."

"It'll go down," answered Buckbee as he scribbled out the order. "At
what point do you want me to buy?"

"Don't want to buy," replied Rimrock grimly and Buckbee shook his head.

"All right, my boy," he said debonairly, "there'll be wild doings this
day in Navajoa. But it's people like you that makes the likes of me
rich, so divvel another word will I say."

Rimrock returned to his room and sat watching the tape as the ticker
champed it out and soon he saw Navajoa. It had been quoted at
thirty-two and a half, but this sale was made at thirty. He watched it
decline to twenty-eight, and twenty-five, and soon it was down to
twenty. He called up Buckbee.

"Sell ten thousand more," he ordered and Buckbee went on with the
slaughter. Navajoa went down to eighteen and sixteen and then it
jumped back to twenty. Big buying developed, but still Rimrock sold
short and again Navajoa slumped. At the end of the day it stood at
twenty and he prepared for the next step in his campaign. He had
beaten Navajoa down to nearly half its former price and without parting
with a single share. He had at that moment, in stock bought and paid
for, enough to cover all his short selling--this raid was to call out
more. When stock is going up the people cling to it, but when it drops
they rush to sell. Already he could see the small sales of the pikers
as they were shaken down for their shares. The next thing to do, as he
had learned the game, was to buy in; and then hammer it again.

On the twenty-fourth, the day before Christmas, he bought till he could
buy no more; and still the price stayed down. It was the holidays
slump, so the brokers said, but it suited him to a nicety. The next
day was Christmas and he wired once more for his money, for L. W. had
not answered his first telegram; and then he went out with the boys.
Since his break with Mrs. Hardesty he had taken to dodging into the
bar, where he could be safe from her subtle advances; but on Christmas
eve he went too far. They all went too far, in the matter of drinking,
but Rimrock went too far w