Chapter 8

A FLIER IN STOCKS

It was as dazzling to Rimrock as a burst of sunshine to a man just come up from a mine--that look in Mary Fortune's eyes. He went out of her office like a man in a dream and wandered off by himself to think. But that was the one thing he could not negotiate, his brain refused to work. It was a whirl of weird flashes and forms and colors, like a futurist painting gone mad, but above it all when the turmoil had subsided was the thought of going back. He had told her when he left her that he would come around again, and that fixed idea had held to the end. But how? Under what pretext? And would she break down his pretense with that smile?

Rimrock thought it over and it seemed best at the end to invite her to take a ride. There were certain things in connection with their mine which he wished very much to discuss, but how could he do it in the hotel lobby with the Gunsight women looking on? Since his rise to affluence one of them had dared to speak to him, but she would never do it again. He remembered too well the averted glances with which they had passed him, poor and ragged, on the street. No, he hated them passionately as the living symbols of Gunsight fraud and greed; the soft, idle women of those despicable parasites who now battened on what he had earned.

But Mary Fortune, how else was he to meet her without envious eyes looking on; or stealthy ears of prying women, listening at keyholes to catch every word? And out on the desert, gliding smoothly along in the best hired automobile in town, where better could he give expression to those surging confidences which he was impelled against his judgment to make? It was that same inner spirit that made all his troubles, now urging him he knew not where. All he knew for certain was that the shy woman-look had crept back for a moment into her eyes; and after that the fate of empires was as nothing to the import of her smile. Did she feel, as he felt, the mystic bond between them, the appeal of his young man's strength; or was that smile a mask, a provocative weapon, to veil her own thoughts while she read through his like a book? He gave it up; but there was a way of knowing--he could call out that smile again.

The idle women of the Gunsight Hotel, sitting in their rockers on the upper porch, were rewarded on that day for many a wasted hour. For long months they had watched McBain's typist, with her proud way of ignoring them all; and at last they had something to talk about. Rimrock Jones in his best, and with a hired automobile, came gliding up to her office; and as he went tramping in every ear on the veranda was strained to catch his words.

"Aw, don't mind those old hens," he said after a silence, roaring it out that all could hear. "They're going to talk anyway so let's take a ride; and make 'em guess, for once, what I say."

There was nothing, after that, for the ladies to do but retire in the best form they could; but as Mary Fortune came out in an auto' bonnet with a veil and coat to match they tore her character to shreds from behind the Venetian blinds. So that was her game--she had thrown over McBain and was setting her cap for Rimrock Jones. And automobile clothes! Well, if that wasn't proof that she was living down a past the ladies would like to know. A typewriter girl, earning less that seventy dollars a month, and with a trunk full of joy-riding clothes!

With such women about her it called for some courage for Mary Fortune to make the plunge; but the air was still fragrant, spring was on the wind and the ground dove crooned in his tree. She was tired, worn out with the deadly monotony of working on day by day; and she had besides that soul-stirring elation of having won in the great game for her stock.

"It'll be a stockholders' meeting," Rimrock had explained in her ear. "We represent a majority of the stock. I want to tell you something big, where nobody else will hear. Come on, let your typewriting slide!"

And Mary Fortune had laughed and run scampering up the stairs and come down with her gloves and veil, and as the automobile moved off she had that joyous sensation of something about to happen. They drove out of town on the one straight road that led to the Gunsight mine and Rimrock was so busy with the mechanics of his driving that she had a chance to view the landscape by herself. The white, silty desert, stretching off to blue mountains, was set as regularly as a vineyard with the waxy, dark-green creosote bushes; and at uncertain intervals the fluted giant cactus rose up like sentinels on the plain. All the desert trees that grew near the town--the iron-woods and palo verdes and cat-claws and mesquite and salt-bushes--had been uprooted by the Mexicans in their search for wood; but in every low swale the grass was still green and the cactus was crowned with gorgeous blossoms.

"Isn't it glorious?" she sighed as she breathed the warm air and Rimrock looked up from studying his clutches.

"The finest God ever made!" he said as his engine chugged smoothly along. "By George, I was glad to get home. Ever been in New York? Well, you know what it's like then; give me Arizona, every time. But say, that's some town; I stayed at the Waldorf, where the tips are a dollar a throw. Every time you turn around, or the boy grabs your hat, you give him a dollar bill. Say, I put up a front--they all thought I was a millionaire--have you ever been down to the curb market? Oh, don't you know what that is? Why, it's the place near Wall street where they sell stock in the middle of the street."

He negotiated a sand wash and nearly stripped a gear as he threw in the low by mistake.

"You bet, quite a country!" he went on unconcernedly. "I thought I knew sign language, but those curb brokers have got me beat. I can sit down with an Indian and by signs and sand-pictures I can generally make him savvy what I want, but those fellers back there could buy and sell me while I was asking the price of a horse. I was down there on Broad street and a man in the crowd jumped up and let out a yell.

"'Sold!' says a feller that's standing next to me, and began to make signs to a fellow in a second-story window and writes something down on a pad. I asked a man that was taking me around--they treated me right in that town--what in the world was going on, and he told me they'd made a trade in stock. The first fellow says:

"'Sell five hundred shares of So-and-So at seventy-nine!' and the second man raises his right hand like an Indian how-sign and there's a twenty thousand-dollar trade pulled off. They both write it down on a slip of paper and the man in the window does the telephoning. Say, I'm going back there when I got a stake, and try my hand at that game."

An expression of pain, as of some evil memory, passed swiftly over Mary Fortune's face and she turned from gazing at the mountains to give him a warning shake of the head.

"Don't you do it!" she said; but when he asked her why not she shut her lips and looked far away.

"You must've got bit some time," he suggested cheerfully, but she refused for the moment to be drawn out.

"Perhaps," she replied, "but if that's the case my advice is all the more sound."

"No, but I'm on the inside," he went on impressively. "I know some of those big ones personally. That makes the difference; those fellows don't lose, they skim the cream off of everything. Say, I ought to know--didn't I go in there lone-handed and fight it out with a king of finance? That's the man we're in with--I can't tell you his name, now--he's the one that owns the forty-nine per cent. They're crazy about copper or he'd never have looked at me--there's some big market fight coming on. And didn't he curse and squirm and holler, trying to make me give up my control? He told me in years he had never gone into anything unless he got more than half _for a gift_! But I told him 'no,' I'd been euchered out of one mine; and after his expert had reported on the property he came through and gave me my way. And after that! Say, there was nothing too good for me. He agreed to spend several million dollars to pay for his share of the mine and then he gave me that roll of bills to bind the bargain we'd made. By George, I felt good, to go there with two thousand dollars and come back with a big roll of yellowbacks; but before I went away he introduced me to a friend and told him how to show me the sights.

"This friend was a broker, by the name of Buckbee, and believe me, he's on the inside. He took me around and showed me the Stock Exchange and put me wise to everything. We were up in the gallery and, on the floor below us, there were a whole lot of posts with signs; and a bunch of the craziest men in the world were fighting around those posts. Fight? They were tearing each other's clothes off, throwing paper in the air, yelling like drunk Indians, knocking each other flat. It was so rough, by George, it scared me; but Buckbee told me they were selling stocks. There were thousands of dollars in every yell they let out, they talked signs like they were deaf and dumb, and every time a man held up his right hand it meant: Sold! And they wrote it down on a slip."

Rimrock paused in his description to make some hurried adjustments as his machine slowed down to a stop, but after a hasty glance he burst into a laugh and settled back in his seat.

"Well, what do we care?" he went on recklessly. "This desert is all the same. We can sit right here and see it all, and when it comes time to go back I'll shake the old engine up. But as I was telling you, playing the stock market is all right if you've got some one to put you wise."

"No, it isn't," she answered positively. "I've been there and I know."

"Well, listen to this then," went on Rimrock eagerly, "let me show you what Buckbee can do. I dropped in at his office, after I'd received my roll, and he said: 'Want to take a flier?'

"'Sure,' I said, 'here's a thousand dollars. Put it on and see how far it will go.' Well, you can believe me or not, in three days' time he gave me back over two thousand dollars."

He nodded triumphantly, but the woman beside him shook her head and turned wearily away.

"That's only the beginning," she answered sadly, "the end is--what happened to me."

"What was that?" he asked and she gazed at him curiously with a look he did not understand.

"Well, you can see for yourself," she said at last, "this is the first pleasure I've had for a year. I used to have a home with servants to wait on me; and music, and society and all, and when my father died and left me alone I might even then have kept on. But--well, I'll tell it to you; it may make you stop and think the next time you meet one of those brokers. My father was a judge and the ethics of his profession prevented him from speculating in stocks, but he had an old friend, his college classmate, who had made millions and millions on the Stock Exchange. He was one of the most powerful financiers in New York and when my father died he made the request that Mr. Rossiter should invest my legacy for me. My father knew that the money he left would barely keep me, at the best; and so he asked this old friend of his to see that it was safely invested.

"So when the estate had been administered I went to see Mr. Rossiter and, after discussing different investments, he told me of a plan he had. It seems he was at the head of a tremendous combination that controlled the price of a certain stock and, although it was strictly against the rules, he was going to give me a tip that would double my money in a few weeks. I was afraid, at first, but when he guaranteed me against loss I took all my money to a certain broker and bought forty-three thousand shares. Then I watched the papers and every day I could see the price of it going up. One day it nearly doubled and then it went back, and then stopped and went up and up. In less than a month the price went up from twenty-three cents to nearly fifty and then, just at a time when it was rising fastest, Mr. Rossiter called me to his office again. He took me back into his private room and told me how much he had loved my father. And then he told me that the time had come for me to take my profits and quit; that the market was safe for a man of his kind who was used to every turn of the game, but the best thing for me now was to get my money from my broker and invest it in certain five per cent. bonds. And then he made me promise, as long as I lived, never to buy a share of stock again."

She paused and sighed.

"Can you guess what I did?" she asked. "What would you do in a case like that? Well, I went to the broker and sold back my shares and then I stood watching the tape. I had learned to read it and somehow it fascinated me--and my stock was still going up. In less than two hours it had gone up twenty points--it was the only stock that was sold! And when I saw what I could have gained by waiting--what do you think I did?"

"You turned right around," answered Rimrock confidently, "and bought the same stock again."

"No, you're wrong," she said with a twist of the lips, "I'm a bigger gambler than that. I put up all my money on a ten-point margin and was called and sold out in an hour. The stock went tumbling right after I bought it and, before I could order them to sell, the price had gone down far below my margin and the brokers were in a panic. They wouldn't stop to explain anything to me--all they said was that I had lost. I went back home and thought it over and decided never to let him know--Mr. Rossiter, I mean; he had been so kind to me, and I hadn't done what he said. I found out afterwards that, shortly after I had left him, he had deliberately wrecked the price; and he, poor man, was thinking all the time, what a favor he had done his old friend's daughter."

She laughed, short and mirthlessly, and Rimrock sat looking at her, his eyes once more big with surprise. She was not the inexperienced creature he had taken her for, she was a woman with high spots in her career.

"Well, then what did you do?" he enquired at last as she showed no disposition to proceed. "How'd you come to get out here? Did you know old McBain or----"

"Say, can't you start that engine?" she spoke up sharply. "Let's go on and forget about the rest. I'm here, we know that; and I only told you what I did to break you of gambling in stocks."

"No, that engine is stalled," he said with authority, "but I'll get it to go, when it's time. But say, tell me something--we're going to be friends, you know--does Rossiter know where you are now?"

"Oh, yes," she answered, "I write to him frequently. He thinks I'm out here for my health. I have this trouble, you know, and the doctors advised me to come out where the air is dry."

"Well, you're a peach," observed Rimrock admiringly. "And the old man still thinks you're rich? What'll he say, do you think, when he hears of your latest--getting in on this Tecolote strike?"

"Oh, I won't dare tell him," she answered quickly. "I'm afraid he wouldn't approve. And may I make a suggestion? If you'll throw on your spark I think your engine will run."

"Say, you scare me!" said Rimrock with a guilty grin. "You're so smart you make me afraid. I'll crank her up, too--do you think that would help some? Huh, huh; I get caught every time!"