When Rimrock had caught the first train for New York he had thought it was to seek out Mary Fortune--to kneel at her feet and tell her humbly that he knew he had done her a wrong--but as the months went by and his detectives reported no progress he forgot his early resolve. The rush and excitement of that great gambling game that goes on in the Stock Exchange, the plunges on copper and the rushes for cover, all the give-and-take of the great chase; it picked him up as a great flowing stream floats a leaf and hurries it along, and Gunsight and Tecolote and the girl he had known there seemed far away, like a dream. He was learning the game from the gamblers about him, all the ins and outs of The Street; the names and methods of all the great leaders and how they had won their success; and also, bold gambler that he was, he was starting on a career of his own. In days gone by, at roulette or faro, or in frontier poker games, he had learned to play with big chances against him and, compared to them, Wall Street was safe. The money that he staked was less than six months' earnings of his share of the Tecolote Mine; and from the brief notes of L. W., who was acting as his agent, there was more of it piling up. So he played it carelessly, like the plunger he was, and fortune--and Mrs. Hardesty--smiled. He won, on the Street; and, though the stakes were not specified, he seemed to be winning with her. It was a question with him whether a woman of her kind ever thought of such a thing as marriage. She had money of her own, and all that money could buy; and her freedom, whatever that was. In this new world about him all the terms of life seemed changed and transposed and vague, and he never quite knew what she meant. Every word that she said when they discussed life and love seemed capable of a double intent, and whether by freedom she meant to yield or to escape something he had never made out. All he knew was that at times she seemed to beckon him on and at others to fend him away. She was fickle as fortune which, as he plunged and covered, sometimes smiled and again wore a frown.