be just like making a present of it to Ike Bray."

"Oh, but my dear Mr. Jones!" burst out Jepson in dismay, "you surely
wouldn't stop the smelter now?"

"Well, I don't know why not," answered Rimrock briefly. "Don't you
think so now, yourself?"

He gazed at his superintendent with an unwinking smile and Jepson bowed
his head.

"Oh, very well, sir," he said with a touch of servility, "but Mr.
Stoddard will be greatly put out."

"You're working for me!" spoke up Rimrock sharply, "and we'll spend
that money for something else."

"Spend it?"

"Yes, for lawyers! I hate the whole outfit--they're a bunch of lousy
crooks--but we'll see if money don't talk. I'm going to hire, Jepson,
every lawyer in this Territory that's competent to practice in the
courts. Now look at it fairly, as a business proposition; would it be
right to do anything else? Here's a copper property that you could
sell to-morrow for a hundred million dollars gold, and the apex claim
is jumped. The whole title to the mine is tied up right there--they
can claim every shovelful you mine, and your mill and your smelter to
boot. What kind of a business man would I be if I left this to
McVicker and Ord? No, I'm going to send to San Francisco, and Denver,
and Butte, and retain every mining attorney I can get. It's the only
thing to do; but listen, my friend, I'm not going to tell anybody but
you. So if Stoddard finds this out, or McVicker and Ord, or whatever
blackleg lawyers Ike Bray has, I'll just know where to go. And one
thing more--if I find you've split on me, I'll kill you like a
Mexican's dog."

He rose up slowly and looked Jepson in the eye with glance that held
him cold.

"Very well, sir," he said as he started to his feet. "And now, if
you'll excuse me----"

"All right," nodded Rimrock and as he watched him pass out he gave way
to a cynical smile.

"Good enough!" he said. "They can all go back on me, but there's one
man I know I can trust!"

CHAPTER XXVI

A CHAPTER OF HATE

It was a source of real regret to Mary Fortune that she could not keep
on hating Rimrock Jones. In the long, weary months that she had been
away from him she had almost dismissed him from her mind. Then she had
met him in New York and the old resentment had flashed up into the
white heat of sudden scorn. She despised him for all that she read of
his life in that encounter face to face--the drinking, the gambling,
the cheap, false amusements, a