Mary Fortune sat alone, staring absently after him. What a contradictory man he was. And yet, how well he understood. He knew without telling that she would not take his hand so he kept it behind his back; but he knew at the same time that she would attend to his business while his address was the County Jail. And no plea for sympathy, no word of explanation; just business, and then he was gone. His life was at stake, and yet he spoke of nothing but the mine. "A little trouble!" And he had killed a man. Was he a savage or a superman? The mail the next day brought a note from him, written with a lead pencil on a piece of torn paper. It had the jail smell about it, a rank, caged-animal odor that she learned to recognize later, but there was no mention of any jail. He enclosed a check and a power of attorney, with directions for buying some land--and then there came a telegram from New York. M. R. Fortune, Gunsight, Arizona. Wire from Henry Jones intimating trouble Tecolote claims. Your appointment agreeable. Spare no expense safeguard claims. Jepson superintendent arrives Friday. Wire particulars. W. H. Stoddard. One look at that signature and the Wall Street address and Mary Fortune saw with sudden clearness what had been mystery and moonshine for months. W. H. Stoddard was Whitney H. Stoddard, the man who controlled the Transcontinental Railroad. His name alone in connection with the Tecolote would send its stock up a thousand per cent. And what a stroke of business that was--to make a feeder for his railroad while he built up a great property for himself. Now at last she understood the inexplicable reticence with which Rimrock had veiled his associate's name and her heart almost stopped as she thought how close she had come to parting with her Tecolote stock. Those two thousand shares, if she held on to them to the end, might bring her in thousands of dollars! Her brain cleared like a flash and she remembered Rimrock's instructions concerning land for the Company's office. The wire could wait--and Whitney H. Stoddard--the first thing to do was to get an option, for even telegraph operators have been known to talk. She slipped out quietly and a half hour afterward the papers were drawn up and signed, and the whole vacant block across the street from the hotel was tied up for the Tecolote Mining Company. And then the great news broke.