Several months went by and, patient Indian that he was, Rimrock still followed on Stoddard's trail. He looked up his connections with the Transcontinental railroad and there he made his first strike. Although he moulded the policies of that great corporation and seemed endowed with unlimited power his actual holdings in the stock of the company were almost ridiculously small. Yet he took advantage of his dominating position and the influence it gave him with the directors to make such coups as he had made with the Tecolote, building the branch line which had given value to his mine. As a business proposition it was a good investment for the Company, but who was it that reaped the big profits? By the investment of less than three million dollars--which he had borrowed as he went along--Whitney Stoddard had acquired practically a half interest in a property which he valued at a hundred millions. And now he was bucking the Hackmeisters! The thought of this man, who had come up from nothing and was even yet barely on his feet, deliberately attempting to break the great copper combine was hardly credible to Rimrock. He marveled now at the presumption of Stoddard in offering him fifty millions for his half and the control of the mine. From what he could gather Stoddard had never possessed fifty millions, nor did he possess them then. He was trading on his name and traveling on a shoestring; quite the common thing in New York. But Rimrock knew as well as he knew anything that a man like Stoddard was dangerous. As sure as the time came, by some hook or crook, he would beat him out of his mine. The thing to do was to beat him to it--to raid his newly acquired Navajoa stocks and then pinch him until he let go of Tecolote. But it must be done secretly, not a word to anybody, not even to Buckbee or Mrs. Hardesty. They were friends of Stoddard's as well as his--it was safest to work alone. So, while outwardly the same good-hearted plunger, Rimrock began his campaign of revenge. It opened with a series of secret orders to outside brokers that he knew and soon, by selling Navajoa short, he had hammered the asking price down. Then he bought it in, a little at a time, until the market began to rise; and then, vindictively, he slaughtered it again and gathered in more at the bottom. Not for nothing had he listened to Mrs. Hardesty and Buckbee and learned how the market riggers worked, but neither to her nor to Buckbee did he so much as hint of his purpose. His day would come when the Tecolote dividend was voted, when he got his million dollar check; and the only thing that could keep him from a notable revenge was some slip-up in connection with the dividend.