mine."

In his parting excuses to Miss Balfour, Ridgway's audacity crystallized in
words that Hobart could only regard as a shameless challenge. "I regret
that an appointment with Judge Purcell necessitates my leaving such good
company," he said urbanely.

Purcell was the judge before whom was pending a suit between the
Consolidated and the Mesa Ore-producing Company, to determine the
ownership of the Never Say Die Mine; and it was current report that
Ridgway owned him as absolutely as he did the automobile waiting for him
now at the door.

If Ridgway expected his opponent to pay his flippant gibe the honor of
repartee, he was disappointed. To be sure, Hobart, admirably erect in his
slender grace, was moved to a slight, disdainful smile, but it evidenced
scarcely the appreciation that anybody less impervious to criticism than
Ridgway would have cared to see.



CHAPTER 2. THE FREEBOOTER

When next Virginia Balfour saw Waring Ridgway she was driving her trap
down one of the hit-or-miss streets of Mesa, where derricks, shaft-houses,
and gray slag-dumps shoulder ornate mansions conglomerate of many
unharmonious details of architecture. To Miss Balfour these composites and
their owners would have been joys unalloyed except for the microbe of
society ambition that was infecting the latter, and transforming them from
simple, robust, self-reliant Westerners into a class of servile,