INTO THE WILDERNESS
53
lord, old fellow, Bill Steele, King of the Universe! What have we to do with petty Queens?"
As though in answer to him there came, faint in his ears through the din of the water, a man's voice shouting to him. Steele's eyes darkened as they had not darkened that day, clouded to an anger such as the man seldom experienced. For the moment he was, in sober earnest, as a king into the privacy of whose meditations some offending mortal had intruded.
"I don't believe in being inhospitable," he grumbled deep in his throat, "but they'll just have to clean out and leave us alone, old goblet."
There were two of them and he turned to watch as they came on toward him across the tableland.
