"Now, just to show you how it works," he went on, "take me, for instance. I was just an ordinary ranch kid, brought up so far back in the mountains that the boys all called me Rimrock, and I found a rich ledge of rock. I staked out a claim for myself, and the rest for my folks and my friends, and then we organized the Gunsight Mining Company. That's the way we all do, out here--one man don't hog it all, he does something for his friends. Well, the mine paid big, and if I didn't manage it just right I certainly never meant any harm. Of course I spent lots of money--some objected to that--but I made the old Gunsight pay. "Then--" he raised his finger and held it up impressively as he marked the moment of his downfall--"then this McBain came along and edged into the Company and right from that day, I lose. He took on as attorney, but it wasn't but a minute till he was trying to be the whole show. You can't stop that man, short of killing him dead, and I haven't got around to that yet. But he bucked me from the start and set everybody against me and finally he cut out Lon Lockhart. There was a man, by Joe, that I'd stake my life on it he'd never go back on a friend; but he threw in with this lawyer and brought a suit against me, and just naturally took--away--my--mine!" Rimrock's breast was heaving with an excitement so powerful that the girl instinctively drew away; but he went on, scarcely noticing, and with a fixed glare in his eyes that was akin to the stare of a madman. "Yes, took it away; and here's how they did it," he went on, suddenly striving to be calm. "The first man I staked for, after my father and kin folks, was L. W. Lockhart over here. He was a cowman then and he had some money and I figured on bidding him in. So I staked him a good claim, above mine on the mountain, and sure enough, he came into the Company. He financed me, from the start; but he kept this claim for himself without putting it in with the rest. Well, as luck would have it, when we sunk on the ledge, it turned at right angles up the hill. Up and down, she went--it was the main lode of quartz and we'd been following in on a stringer--and _rich_? Oh, my, it was rotten!" He paused and smiled wanly, then his eyes became fixed again, and he hurried on with his tale. "I was standing out in front of my office one day when Tuck Edwards, the boy I had in charge of the mine, came riding up and says: "'Rim, they've jumped you!' "'Who jumped me?' I says. "'Andrew McBain and L. W.!' he says and I thought at first he was crazy. "'Jumped our mine?' I says. 'How can they jump it when it's part their own already?' "'They've jumped it all,' he says. 'They had a mining expert out there for a week and he's made a report that the lode apexes on L. W.'s claim.'