"Oh--" Rimrock choked back an oath and then fell back on personalities to refute her maddening logic.
"Say, your father was a judge," he burst out insultingly. "Was he a promoted lawyer, too; or did you learn that line of talk from McBain?"
"Never mind about that. You haven't answered my question. Wasn't my money just as necessary as his? It was! Yes, you know it. Well, then, why should you choose me for the very first person that you ever intentionally wronged?"
"Well, by grab," moaned Rimrock, slumping down in his chair as he saw his last argument gone, "it was a black day for me when I took that four hundred from you. I'd have done a heap better to have held up some Chinaman or made old L. W. come through. And to be trimmed by a woman! Well, gimme your paper and I'll sign whatever you write!"
She drew in her lips and gazed at him resentfully; then, sitting down at her typewriter, she thought for a minute and rattled off a single sentence. Rimrock took the paper and signed it blindly, then stopped and read what it was.
"I, Henry (Rimrock) Jones, for value received, hereby agree to give to Mary Roget Fortune, one per cent. of the total capital stock of the Tecolote Mining Company."
"Yes, all right," he said. "You'll get your stock just as soon as I get it from the East. And now I hope, by the Lord, you're satisfied."
"Yes, I am," she answered and smiled cryptically.
"Well, I pass!" he exploded and, struggling to his feet, he lurched out upon the street.
From the highest pinnacle of success to the black depths of despair is a long way to drop in one hour and if Rimrock Jones went the way of all flesh it is only another argument for prohibition. All the rest of the town had got a good start before he appeared on the scene and to drown that black thought--defeated by a woman--he drank deep with the crowd at the Alamo. At the end of the bout when, his thoughts coming haphazard, he philosophized on the disasters of the day, his brain slipped a cog and brought two ideas together that piled Pelion on the Ossa of his discontent.
The first vision to rise was that of the lady typist, exacting her full pound of flesh; and then, groping back to that other catastrophe, his mind fetched up--Andrew McBain! And then he remembered. She worked for McBain. He straightened up in the bar-room chair and gusty curses swept from his lips.