The Joyous Trouble Maker/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
CONCERNING HELL'S GOBLET AND TWO PROMISES
ESSENTIALLY an outdoors-man, William Steele's mental attitude toward the class of people whom he grouped and branded as the "soft-handed sort" was pleasantly tinged with amused toleration. Which was natural and, since he himself was no less human than another, to be forgiven him. It was not that he looked down upon these other fellow beings sneeringly or even with conscious condescension; rather was he prone to ridicule them mirthfully and without venom, realizing that they had their privilege as he had his of living life as it pleased them. In his many bouts with fortune there had been too frequent and undisguised defeats for him to nourish any overweening sense of his own superiority. He was just plain man, was Bill Steele, which means that a great deal of the boy lived on in him, joyously and perhaps impudently.
The blood of the outdoors-man, be he man of the plains, mountaineer or one who takes his chances with the sea, is likely to be ruffled by the calm gaze of authority. Too long has he recognized but the one majesty of the natural world, too long has he battled with hard hands at that, to accept any other. Dictatorial mandates irritate, anger or … as in Steele's case … amuse him. Kingly attitudes assumed by his own brother mortals are little enough to his liking. "Here below there is no sovereign but Earth," sums up his unformulated doctrine of existence, "and against her I wage unceasing and rebellious warfare." So Steele, without asking himself the clear-cut reason, was prepared to laugh at the serene graciousness of Beatrice Corliss, a girl.
A chance situation had tempted him and it was not his jovial way to refuse such invitations. Had he been a different sort of man in this particular he would not have remained, as he put it, "lord of an empty pocket and a full heart." Without premeditation he promptly acted the part of William Steele as the blood of his ancestors and his own life had made him. That his lot had been to incur the blazing anger of Miss Corliss brought him no visible regrets.
"It's good for her soul," was his cheerful way of thinking. "She'd be a corking fine girl if she wasn't so damned queenish."
He finished his meal alone and with hearty appreciation, conscious now and then of a horrified stare from the passing Bradford, filled his pipe and strolled outside. That he did not go by the billiard room for the hat he had left there bespoke his decision not to accept just yet his unwilling hostess' emphatic desire for his departure. He went back to his chair, rested his heels as before upon the chain strung between the concrete posts and with contented eyes gave his attention to the valley lands spread out below him.
Meantime Beatrice Corliss, having given Bradford his opportunity for an explanation which failed somewhat to placate her, sought to shut out of her mind all thought of William Steele and his "boorish rudeness." In the first grip of her anger, before she had had time for the nicer selection of a word, she termed him to herself as just "fresh." It had not been her lot before to meet a man like him, a man who in his first talk with her should manifest toward her a degree of unpleasant familiarity so marked and so "insufferable." The adventure left no memories she cared to treasure. And yet, through its very novelty, the episode maintained a stubborn place in her thought. Seeking to plan in her former cool, untroubled, clear way for her interviews with her foremen, she found herself asking of a kind fate the joy of someday having in her two hands the opportunity of meting out to Mr. William Steele the punishment he so plainly merited.
She heard Steele go out and a few minutes later, having pushed her dessert aside, she went through the house to the front veranda. Here, set out in the cheer of the sun, was her chair whence, upon occasion, she could look across certain miles of her possessions and dream the dreams which pleased her. Today, however, she did not even seat herself; out yonder, his broad back turned upon her like a further rudeness, was Steele. She whirled and returned to the living room, resurgent annoyance reddening her cheeks.
"Bradford," she instructed her head servant coolly, "Mr. Steele is waiting outside. You will take him his hat and anything else he may have left here. You will tell him that he is free to go as soon as he chooses. If he fails to understand you may add that if he makes it necessary I shall have him put off the ranch."
Bradford bowed and departed, a look of eagerness in his eye, a new elasticity in his walk. Beatrice, without paying Mr. Steele the compliment of watching while he received his hat and her ultimatum, went to her office. Here, in an atmosphere of austere dignity created by massive furniture, her high-heeled slippers falling soundlessly upon the thick carpet, she walked restlessly back and forth, again seeking to gather her thoughts. She was to talk with Hurley of the Little Giant mine, with Brown, her cattle foreman, with Emmet Trent, her horse foreman, all due within a few moments. Further, she was to be in readiness for the coming of a dozen guests sometime during the afternoon. Bradford had assured her that everything was in readiness, or would be before her friends arrived, but …
Through the still air came William Steele's answer to her emissary, a joyous roar of laughter. And soon thereafter appeared Bradford himself, the look of eagerness in his eye having given place to one of uncertainty.
"Well?" asked Miss Corliss sharply.
"I gave him his hat, Miss Corliss," said Bradford. "And he … he said …"
"Well?" she repeated quickly. "Go on."
"He said, 'Thanks, old man.'"
Bradford, a man not easily upset, blurted the words out as though to get his mouth clean of them with all possible dispatch.
Beatrice Corliss was guilty of the suspicion of a sniff.
"You should have resented the familiarity, Bradford," she said briefly. "You gave him my message?"
"Yes, Miss Corliss. And he … perhaps you heard him? … he just laughed."
The eyes of a thwarted Corliss were not pleasant to look into.
"He said nothing?"
"I repeated your words. To make certain he had understood. Then he said …"
"Well?" cried the girl impatiently.
"He said," stammered Bradford, "'Go chase yourself, old party. I'm no rattlesnake. Besides, I want a talk with … with …"
Bradford mired down, floundered, grew silent. But, in a moment under the compelling eyes of his mistress he continued hurriedly, tone and manner alike apologetic:
"With Trixie before he went! He called you … Trixie!"
The frown upon the girl's brows was one now of sheer perplexity. She dismissed Bradford with a gesture, suddenly aware that the situation was rapidly becoming absurd … ridiculous. Steele's crime was not one which would warrant his being bundled off, under armed escort, to jail. To put a man off of a thirty-thousand-acre ranch has its difficulties, especially when that man is of the William Steele type; it is quite another matter than having one's servants thrust him down the front steps into a city street and lock the door against his return. She could send for Booth Stanton, she could have a couple of cowboys take Steele into their custody and ride with him to her boundary line, half a dozen miles across the mountains. Perhaps she would do it. For the moment but one thought restrained her: what she could not do was guard against his return. For, under the sunny good nature in the man she had sensed a stubbornness of determination which she suspected was as indomitable as her own. As matters were she was impressed with the wisdom and efficacy of simply ignoring him for the present.
The mine superintendent and the two stock foremen … she had them all come in together … had a very bad half hour of it. She dismissed them abruptly at last with a final admonition to report here again ten days later, with a blunt warning to Brown that he would be given just those ten days to show cause why he should not be discharged. The next hour she spent with Booth Stanton, touching upon a score of ranch matters. Stanton's tanned cheeks were flushed dully when he went out, his head held stiffly.
Miss Corliss, with Bradford at her heels, going through the many rooms of the big house upon a tour of inspection; found fault wherever possible because of the mood upon her. Then she went to her own bed room, dismissed her maid and sat down at her window, looking out at the rugged slope of Thunder Mountain where it rose into broken cliffs.
"I'll get you, Mr. William Steele," she said quietly. "And I'll get you right!"
They were the words of her father, Ben Corliss, money maker. She had heard him use them more than once, just as she was using them now, his voice dispassionate and hard. Ben Corliss had bequeathed to his daughter much besides a fortune in gold, stocks, bonds and lands. He had given her himself as an object lesson, he had passed into her hands the keen ability to hold the great investments of his millions in an integral bundle destined to swell and increase because of its potential force and her acumen. His present to her upon her sixteenth birthday was ten thousand dollars in mining shares. With it went a few words of advice to which she hearkened and which she assimilated because she was Ben Corliss' daughter. His ways, being eminently successful, became her ways, his methods her methods. For nearly four years before his death Ben Corliss had trained her as he would have trained a son and on his death bed he told her simply: "You have got it in you to be a bigger figure in the financial world than I could ever be. It's born in you, Beatrice, bred in the bone."
He and Beatrice's mother had learned to be autocratic; Beatrice was born to autocracy. They had learned the power of wealth; she knew it instinctively. They were clear thoughted, capable parents; she was the expression of their union. She loved them sincerely; perhaps she respected and admired them more. Where they had led she followed, blazing new trails here and there.
As Corliss had dealt with men, so did Beatrice deal with them. If a man defied Ben Corliss, why then, soon or late, Ben Corliss "got him and got him right." He could afford to bide his time. So could Ben Corliss' daughter.
She rang for her maid. Her cheeks were cool now, her eyes on the verge of a smile.
"Tell Bradford to inform Mr. Steele that I shall be glad to talk with him in the office," she said. "That is, of course, if he still cares to speak with me."
The maid departed with customary speed, noting and wondering at the change a few moments had worked in her mistress. Beatrice, her eyes at last unmistakably smiling, her lips curving for the first time in some hours to lines which were not scorn's, rose and went to her glass. Her hands she lifted swiftly to her hair, fluffing it a little, winding a bronze curl about a forefinger. She was still smiling when, in answer to her maid's assurance that Mr. Steele had been shown to her office, she left her room.
She kept him waiting a moment, not too long so as to hint at premeditated intention but merely a sufficient time to suggest that she would come as soon as she finished some trifling matter which detained her. He looked at her curiously as she came in. She saw the expression which leaped into his eyes … he did not seek to hide it … and paid him back for it with a quick smile.
"There were two dimples," said Steele, nodding approval. "I thought so."
She had planned to remain standing during a brief interview. But he had come a step closer and his great bulk towering above her gave her a certain troublesome feeling of helplessness which she knew would not do at all. So, swiftly changing her campaign like any capable general, she moved to her chair at the long table.
"Yes," she answered lightly. "But the poor little things don't get much of an opportunity to show themselves these busy days. Now, Mr. Steele, though every one knows that a girl would rather talk about her own irresistible charms than speak of anything else in the world, I very much regret that I have but a few minutes I can give you. I have some guests coming this afternoon and you know what that means."
He moved around the table so as to stand on the far side of it facing her. Again she noted the bigness of him, sensing the power that lay in the wide shoulders. Taking swift stock of him just as Ben Corliss had ever taken stock of a man in his path, she judged that in Bill Steele there was besides a large happiness a certain dynamic forcefulness of character which it might chance to be as well not to overlook.
Steele had been regarding her intently; she marked in him that little trick of holding his words until he had sought to look at what lay back of one's eyes.
"You are Ben Corliss' girl, up and down," he said abruptly. "Only I wonder if there got squeezed out of your ego something which made him the fine chap he was? Or," he added thoughtfully, "if the spark in poor old Ben burnt out before you knew him?"
"I don't quite understand you, Mr. Steele," she said quietly.
How could she? Here was Bill Steele, a confessed penniless gentleman of misfortune, speaking of her father as "poor old Ben"!
"He had a soul when I knew him," said Steele simply. "But that was before he got both hands full of money."
"I believe," said Beatrice, "that you will find other voices than your own lifted in decrying money and money making; I believe, also, that you will find that the owners of the voices are either miserable failures or are still putting in their spare time grabbing for what nickels they can get."
Steele laughed.
"Money's all right," he answered. "Why, I am always chasing the rolling discs and find it one of the best sports a man can devise. Only it doesn't happen to be the whole game. I just made a goodly pile down in Mexico myself, tried to double it speculating, slipped up and went broke, and now what am I doing? Why, trying for another pile! Great little game, Trixie, great little game! But, Lord! there's another thing or two!"
It seemed to her that that "Trixie" just slipped out without intention and without Steele's consciousness of it. She wished that she knew. She decided quickly not to notice it.
"You made your money mining, I suppose?" she offered.
"Sure thing. That's the only right way … go find it and take it. I'd done it before; I'll do it again. But the trouble is," and a cheery grin accompanied the words, "I always go busted again."
"Speculating?"
"Who's playing at representing the press now?" he challenged brightly. "Sure; bucking the other man's game. You juggle with stocks, don't you? Yes, and get richer all the time. I monkey with them and go back to work. Moral: having got my fingers burnt two or three times I now know enough to keep them out of the fire. Next wad I keep."
"It is some mining matter which brings you up into these mountains?"
"First thing," he said, frankly dodging her direct question, "I'm up here to have a good time. I'm off into the woods for a spell to eat my own cooking over my own fire, to sleep under the stars, to rampse around with plenty of elbow room and nobody to listen if I want to turn loose my voice and sing. I'm taking a vacation. Next thing, I want to grab some land and build me a cabin. After that … we'll see what we see."
What Beatrice Corliss saw and saw clearly was that he was a man who could keep his own counsel if it pleased him. If he had some knowledge or dream of gold hereabouts he would keep the matter to himself until he saw fit to divulge it. She waited for him to go on.
"When I asked you about your acreage in the vicinity of Hell's Goblet," he resumed, "I was talking business. I've been in that country. I know it rather well. I want it. I'll take a section off your hands there for twenty dollars the acre. Are you on?"
"I think I am," she smiled back at him. "Decidedly on, as you put it." She scribbled a note upon a pad in front of her. "I'll have Hurley send some men over to prospect that country again. Thank you."
"They've combed it many a time," said Steele, evenly. "That land is lying idle now; you don't even run stock on it to make it worth your while. There's big timber in there, but it's hard to get out. I want it. What's the word? Twelve thousand eight hundred dollars, spot cash, for the section about Hell's Goblet."
She noted in his eyes an expression to which she had no key. For answer she returned him a cool look while she thought. He was offering twice the price which such land would bring on the open market. She was not asking herself why; rather, what she sought to imagine was just where in that square mile of rugged land the gold lay.
"As I told you before," she said after a little pause, "the land is not for sale."
"That means that my bid isn't high enough. What do you want for it?"
"It is not for sale."
"Ben Corliss' girl up and down," chuckled Steele. "Well, well, we won't fight over it. But you see I mean to have that section, and I wanted your good will to go with it. Oh, I like a good scrap as much as the next fellow, but I don't hanker after bad blood between neighbours. Come ahead, be a sport; you don't need that land, you've got land enough, money enough without it. You'd never miss it. Better give in gracefully. I'm going to have it, anyway, you know."
In spite of her determination to appear unruffled this man angered her more than any other man she had ever known. Having given over making fun of her he now had the assurance to inform her coolly that in spite of her he meant to have a square mile of her mountain lands! Obviously he was talking sheer nonsense. And yet his manner, rather than an absurd statement, for the second time that day drove a hot flush up into her cheeks. It is one thing to guard one's temper, another to hold it securely in check in the face of such provocation.
"Do you expect me to continue to listen to such ridiculous talk, Mr. Steele?" she asked sharply.
"It's not ridiculous by a jug full," he told her, his eyes twinkling. "Remember that after all you're just a little girl who doesn't know all of the simple facts of the universe. Oh, you're as sharp as tacks, I'll admit, but you're bright and new and haven't explored all of the dark corners. Now listen a minute and I'll be clearing out: I'm going to have that little chunk of land with all the water, dirt, rocks, trees and brush that go with it. And I want you to know at the jump that I wouldn't take it if you needed it. You're rich without it, got more millions right now than I have thousands. If you were down on the rocks I wouldn't take a penny off you. But your queenly affluence make this a different proposition."
"Once and for all I'm not going to sell. And," her eyes growing as hard as Corliss eyes could grow as she sprang to her feet, "I'll sell to any man in the world for ten cents an acre rather than to you at twenty dollars! I think that this ends our talk, Mr. Steele?"
"I liked you better while the queen was away," said Steele. "You have got the makings of a first class girl in you … if you ever wake up to it. Say, I'm going to get my cabin started within a week or so. That's a promise. Suppose you ride out to see me and spend an afternoon? I'll show you how to do a lot of things you don't know beans about; how to make a fire, how to cook over it, how to take a trout, how to live, by thunder! It's lots of fun living … just living!"
"When you get a cabin builded on the Goblet section," said Miss Corliss, looking him steadily in the eye, "I'll come and spend an afternoon cooking for you. That is another promise! In the meantime I am giving strict orders that trespassers on my land will receive all of the attention which they have a right to expect at the hands of the law."
"Good!" cried Steele. "I'll be going now. And, remember, I'll look for you within three or four weeks. I'll rush work on the cabin. And, say: make them quit calling you the Queen. That sort of stuff cheapens you. You're too nice a girl to stand for a baby make-believe game like that. Show the bunch that, even if you haven't got the most amiable disposition in the world and even if you're not as pretty as some others, there's something to you besides your dad's money. Come out of the ice box and use your dimples a little. … You just keep in touch with me and I'll make life worth while for you."
"You are very kind, Mr. Steele," said the girl, her pulses hammering, her voice low in her throat with the constraint she put upon herself.
"Not at all," laughed Steele. "Only you see I'm not in love with you, I'm not planning to fall for your quaint charm, I'm not trying to curry favour for any reason in the world. So I can talk to you straight out! It's good for your soul to have a man like me around. Good-bye, Neighbour."
She did not move as she watched Bill Steele, the most maddening of men she had ever met, go out. As he strode down the veranda he was humming and snatches of the little song, the most maddening of songs, came back to her in his rich untrained voice; it was La Donna e mobile.
"Ugh!" said Beatrice Corliss. "The brute!"