The Joyous Trouble Maker/Chapter 26
CHAPTER XXVI
TWO MEN AND A GIRL
DIRECTING the varied endeavours which went forward unceasingly, Bill Steele found that while his hands were full of mining operations and town building and timber cutting, there were times when he came perilously near losing interest in all this on which he had planned so long and with such ardour. The reason was the simple reason, the old reason, the vital reason; it was a great deal pleasanter to think of a girl than of a shaft driven into the earth or of the ore that came out of it or of crude timbers outlining tourist hotel and cottage.
Between him and Beatrice there stood a wall. His own careless hands had piled it there. Now came the inevitable query: How high was this wall? Might he reach over it? How massive a thing was it? Might he push it aside?
He wanted to ask Bob Carruthers how he had won Sylvia; he wanted to be told by Ed Hurley how he had gained Rose's consent. Of course these two fellows had had no such problem as his, since they were sane men and he wasn't. At least he hadn't been until now. He wanted to demand many explanations from them … and kept his lips locked. It began to appear to him that he was losing his nerve!
"Good Lord," he groaned inwardly. "If this flabby degeneration in me goes on much longer I'd be afraid to grab her hand and talk to her if she gave me the chance!" And, paraphrasing the old bard, he decided that this tender passion makes cowards of us all. …
"Just the same I'm going to have you, Beatrice Corliss," he said to himself over many a stubborn pipe. "All to myself … somehow … sometime. …"
Then a man would come to him for orders or with a report of something gone wrong or the telephone would ring and for a little he would seek to force Beatrice Corliss to the rim of his consciousness. But, the work done, she always came back to become the centre of his thoughts.
He had made money swiftly and largely, quite as a man of his calibre must make or lose money. He had prospered. His ventures were going forward smoothly, promising further golden harvests. And now, as before. Bill Steele in many a fresh, fragrant dawn and in many a serene star filled evening, admitted that money didn't count overmuch and that he was very, very far from having that which did count.
Forced to take on a temporary mining superintendent in Hurley's place, he began operations on a big scale at the cave on the river, which sprang immediately into local fame as Steele's Cache. There a vein was promptly uncovered which promised well from the beginning and from now on there was a regular hauling to the railroad. Putting this portion of his efforts into the hands of the new man and of Bill Rice, he devoted several days to planning with Carruthers for further improvements at Indian City and Bear Town, where lots were being laid out and sold off to interested speculators. And from the beginning he sought tirelessly to come a little closer to Beatrice Corliss.
But when he tried to telephone he was told briefly by Booth Stanton that she "was away"; just where or for how long was not made clear. When he wrote she must have marked an absence of impudence, and yet no answers came to his notes.
He got into the habit of dropping in to chat with Carruthers' wife and watch the Twins when he could.. Sylvia, alert and quick as a flash, was not long in coming to a certain understanding of Bill Steele's altered manner. Times were when he'd sit still for ten minutes with a Twin clinging to a big forefinger; when he'd forget to be the old Bill Steele whom she knew. And the look in his eyes which Sylvia surprised there repeatedly was a wide open book in her own mother tongue to that keen witted young matron.
"He is in love, Bob," she told her husband.
"Sure," laughed Carruthers. "Didn't I tell you when he showed up in San Francisco that he had the case of his life on some Italian widow woman?"
"Pooh!" scoffed Sylvia, frankly revealing her utter feminine contempt of the species masculine. "It's Beatrice Corliss!"
"Can't be," said Carruthers, the masculine. "Why, Bill himself told me they're deadly foes or something like that. They've been fighting each other ever since he came up here."
"Which settles it positively," cried Sylvia in full triumph. "Isn't it splendid!"
"Is it?" Carruthers supposed it was, but promptly forgot the whole matter under discussion as he went to hang over the Twins' double bed. "Sure they look like me, Sylvia?" he wanted to know.
Steele, fancying that his secret was safe in his own breast, had gone from Indian City, where the Carruthers were, to Summit City to look in on Hurley and Turk. He found them both doing well and left, saying bluntly to both of them as he went out:
"Take a good vacation while you're at it; your pay goes on just the same."
He had not stopped with the Hurleys over twenty minutes. But Rose had said to her husband before Steele had ridden out of sight:
"I wonder who the girl is, Ed?"
Again was Steele ready to forget Joe Embry in the demands made against him by the present. But such oblivion must be brief, so long as he held his unchanged opinion of the man and so long as events in a rough and rapidly developing community hinted at lawlessness. So it was that Joe Embry came back prominently into his thought.
Since that night in the gambling house at Boom Town the paths of the two men had not crossed; again Embry seemed to have passed out of the new town's affairs. But when, just seven days after the roulette game of which men still talked, two messages came close together over Steele's telephone, he explained two unfortunate episodes by the one word, "Embry!"
It was after a day's work at the hour when dusk had thickened into dark and the lights were ablaze in the sky above and the camps below. Steele, taking up his instrument in his cabin-office, with a careless "Hello," was greeted by Carruthers' voice saying sharply:
"Don't know what to make of it, Billy … fires all over town … we've saved the hotel, I think. Don't know about the store yet. Half a dozen cottages gone. Better come over, hadn't you?"
And that was about all from Carruthers. Except, of course, that he heartily cursed "somebody" for the job; houses didn't set themselves on fire.
Steele was drawing on his coat preparatory to riding immediately to Indian City when the second disquieting message came over the telephone line. This time from the railroad town of Selby Flat; the man speaking excitedly was a stranger to him.
"Hansen my name is," came the hurried explanation. "Work down to the railroad yards, you know. Howard Wendall told me to tell you …"
"Well?" demanded Steele sharply. "What now?"
He half guessed what the reply would be; Howard Wendall was his paymaster-general, the man under himself who saw to the distribution of the pay rolls for the men at the Goblet, Indian City, Bear Town and the lumber mills.
"He's right bad hurt," said the man Hansen. "All beat up, you know. Found him layin' senseless on the street; he'd tried to get help an' went out …"
But at last Steele had the story. Wendall had gone as usual into Selby Flat for the moneys required to pay off the men, had gotten the amount in gold and bank notes and, planning on riding early in the morning, had carried it with him to his room. He had been robbed by men whose faces he had not seen, men who had broken into his room and had beaten him into insensibility. … Hansen hadn't all of the details yet; Wendall was still too weak to talk much. …. He had been on his way to get help when he had fainted and Hansen stumbled over him. … Hansen didn't know how much money …
The money was the least of it just then to Bill Steele; for already had the word "Embry" shaped large in his brain. He gave orders for Wendall to be taken care of, then rang up his foreman in Bear Town, telling him curtly to lose not a second in posting men to see that the fires of Indian City were not duplicated. Then he jerked off his coat, sat down and thought.
Just how big the pay roll was he himself did not know. Some of the men accepted a monthly wage; others were paid up each Saturday night. Wendall might have had only a couple of thousand dollars with him or he might have had five thousand.
"Joe Embry's work as sure as water runs down hill," he grimted angrily. "Arranged to pull off both jobs and, as usual, hired the jobs done. And, by the Lord, it looks as if he were playing safe, too, with Jim Banks muzzled … and Embry with an alibi! Damn that kind of a man!"
Embry was heard from, Embry would be heard from again. Of that, at least, he was sure.
"There's just one thing," he cried out suddenly, flinging out of his chair. "If the law has gone rotten in Jim Banks' hands and can't run Joe Embry out, it's up to me!"
He swept up his hat and went out, striding swiftly toward Boom Town. He'd learn if Embry were in town or when he had been here last, he'd get Flash Truitt and make him talk. And when he found Embry, Embry was going to walk out of the country.
With the one long, straggling street of Boom Town under foot, with the saloon in front of him, he stopped dead in his tracks, stopped and stared. For there over the unsightly building was a great new sign which he knew had not been there three hours ago, and so that the big letters might draw every chance eye a lantern swung at each end of the inscription. The letters themselves were
THE QUEEN'S SALOON
"Now what in thunder does that mean!" he wondered. And then the red colour of rage ran up into his cheeks and he came on, striding swiftly, his two big, fists bunching involuntarily. For he knew as well as if Joe Embry himself had told him; knew that the whole country was to see and laugh and drag Beatrice Corliss' name after them into the bar room; knew that Embry would tell her of it, crying out, "Some more of the impudence of that man Steele!"
Over the front door was a low shed roof like an awning. He caught it with both hands and swung up. Men at the door saw and came out to watch; some one laughed; others came out, Flash Truitt with them. And they saw Bill Steele fling a burning lantern across the street, yank the other down and lay his hands on the sign.
"Hey there!" shouted Truitt angrily. "Leave that sign alone."
Steele made no answer, but jerked the thing loose, ripping a plank away with it, and lifting it high over his head brought it smashing down on the ridge of the house so that it cracked and split from end to end. The halves he split again, making kindling wood of them while Truitt cursed and threatened from below. Then he came down.
"Have you anything to say?" he demanded hotly, standing close to the gambler, his eyes flashing, his voice vibrant. "You damned contemptible cur, have you anything to say?"
And Flash Truitt, seeing the look in the eyes glaring into his own, sensing the wrath in Steele's soul, turned quickly and went back into his saloon.
The next morning early, to be before any chance rumours of what had befallen in Boom Town, Joe Embry appeared at Beatrice's home. Cool, self-sufficient, well groomed, still there was a light in his eyes almost as of an inner fever. Told that Beatrice was not up yet, he asked that his name be carried to her and that she see him as soon as possible.
Beatrice, coming into the drawing room, found him pacing back and forth; as he turned sharply she saw the tense look in the man's face.
I have been expecting you," she said lightly, telling herself that perhaps Joe Embry, too, being a mortal like herself, had trying days. "I have had a number of guests with me for three days now and have wanted you to meet some of them. There's a Mrs. Denham, a young widow," and she smiled, "in particular. …"
He waved the words aside, looking at her gravely.
"Steele has come out into the open a bit," he told her slowly, his eyes steady on hers. "With his string of gambling houses, you know. I hear that he has placed insulting signs over every one of them. The place in Boom Town is placarded for the world to read as the Queen's Saloon; the one in Summit City, though closed now, as Queen Trixie's Road House. I … Beatrice …"
Beatrice gasped.
"What!" she cried. "What!"
"Yes," said Embry. "He has done everything else he could think of and now … this! Miss Corliss, give me the right to deal with him. You have no father, no brother to teach that man a lesson; let mine be the right. I love you, you know how I love you. We have been the best of friends, you and I; can't we be something more than friends? I have spoken before; I have waited, giving you time to think. Hasn't the time come now? Can't you say what I want you to say, Beatrice?"
He had put out one of his strong, beautiful hands to hers while she stood listening to words which no longer were slow. She had felt the man's force; she had acknowledged, in her anger with Bill Steele, that Embry and she stood together against a common enemy. She was asking herself if she could say what Joe Embry wanted her to say?
And then his hand, the most beautiful man's hand she had ever seen, touched hers … and through her whole being ran that swift, uncontrollable shudder that was almost … no, not almost, now that it touched her, but positively loathing. …
Never had he touched her before as he was touching her now; never could she let him so touch her again.
"No!" she cried sharply, drawing back, staring at him with frightened eyes. For she was afraid, of what she did not definitely know. "No. I thank you, Mr. Embry; I appreciate what your offer means; I am sorry. But I can only say now what I should have said long ago; no."
And then, her breast tumultuous with a conflict of emotions into which entered a burning, passionate anger at Bill Steele, she did what she had never done before in her life: she whirled and ran from a mere man like a flustered school girl.
"Bill Steele," she cried out when in her own room, "I hate you, hate you, hate you! And Joe Embry … if you ever dare touch me again …"
She broke off with a shiver.