The Joyous Trouble Maker/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
A TOAD IN THE FLOWER GARDEN
STRIFE, as a fledgling in its aerie, is no evil-looking bird. During the first few hours after passing from the shell out into the sunlight and blue air it is often enough as innocent appearing and winsome as any other little baby thing. In its initial flight, become already the ill-willed, double-headed, iron-beaked bird of prey, it requires but the flimsiest of wings, pinions more diaphanous than the dream-stuff of hopes. Here it appeared that one Billy Steele, a man of vast good humour, had merely taken that which was his own by right and by law, that which was not Beatrice Corliss', which never was hers, which she did not need. And already had strife essayed its pinions … because, more than for any other reason, Billy Steele was given to mirthful ways of dealing with life, because he had teased her and she was not accustomed to such treatment from a mere man.
Then, to be sure, there was Joe Embry. A man the keynote of whose character was mastery of self and consequently of others, who in the good old homely phrase was quick to note which side his own bread was buttered on. Such as Embry would not do otherwise than take swift stock of the situation, cast a keen eye forward seeking out incipient possibilities from the haze of futurity, bending opportunity to his purpose. And so far as just the two men were concerned that purpose was never once in doubt.
"I am very much afraid, Miss Corliss," said Embry, as with Beatrice he went down through the boulders lining the bed of Thunder River, "that this fellow is going to make trouble for you. I even had what the gentlemen of the green table call a 'hunch' in that regard when I warned you against him yesterday. Soon enough, no doubt, he will be coming to you for a nice lump sum to pay him to crawl off the hem of your garment."
Beatrice did not answer. Embry, watching her, saw that her lips were compressed, that her eyes glowed. There was much of interrogation in Embry's look, interrogation of the sort that is determined to have its answers now or later.
"Just what his game is," continued Embry quietly, "I don't know. But I do know that he is an undesirable nighbour. Furthermore," and he made no attempt to soften his voice to the words, seeing in her attitude no need, "there is not and there never will be room enough in the same county for Steele and me."
"You two men hate each other," said Beatrice thoughtfully. "Why?"
"Why does a dog hate a cat?" replied Embry. "We're perhaps just two essentially different types, naturally antagonistic. And, though making no pretences at godliness, I draw the line at his sort of work."
Beatrice frowned. For a little they went on in silence. Finally she suggested:
"After all, I fail to see why I should care what he does. He can't really injure me and I'll see that he has no further opportunities of annoying me."
"You said that if it took every cent you had—"
"And I will! Am I just some little country girl to be played with as he has sought to play with me? Am I meekly to suffer his impertinence? One way or another I'll drive him out of the country. I have the power to do it."
"Meaning pretty nearly unlimited wealth?" mused Embry.
"Just that," said Beatrice coolly.
"You won't."
"No. That will not be necessary. If you care to come with me to Camp Corliss and then to Summit City this morning you will begin to understand what I have in mind, Mr. Embry."
When they came to their horses they did not wait for Stanton and Hurley, but mounted and rode down among the big trees, hurrying back to the road and the waiting automobile. It was still early, but Beatrice meant to return to her guests well before noon and so informed Parker crisply as she and Embry, leaving their horses at the roadside for Stanton and Hurley to take charge of, stepped into the car.
Camp Corliss, a meagre settlement where a score of shanties housed mining crews and kindred workmen, stood in a little flat just out of sight of the main shaft of the new mine. Here Beatrice and Embry stopped but a moment, the big car trembling in its impatient pause before the door of the camp store. To the man who came out in response to the drumming of the motor Beatrice spoke briefly.
"There is a man named Steele camping up by the Goblet. You are to sell him no supplies of any sort, to see so far as in your power that he gets no provisions or tools here. If so much as a tin of tobacco goes to him out of Camp Corliss you can ask for your time. That's all. Drive on, Parker."
From the camp, weaving in and out of cañons, densely wooded, murmurous with wilderness sounds, they mounted to the graded roadway leading to Summit City, climbed steeply through the further wooded slopes with nothing but the roadbed under them to give sign that they were not in the heart of a vast forest many miles from human habitation. Then, suddenly, having at last climbed to the crest of the ridge, they burst from the stronghold of the wild into as pretty, as spick and span a little hamlet as one could imagine outside an artist's folio given over to picturesque and charming villages. Perched high above the surrounding broken country, each and every detail lingeringly and lovingly gone over by its maker before it leaped forth into actual birth from Sydney Perrier's water-colours, Summit City was at once as pure a surprise here and as purely in harmony with its environment as any unexpected Alpine village. Beatrice's eyes brightened as they always did at the first steep-roofed, leaded-windowed cottage.
Now, under the rolling wheels of the car was a smooth gravelled road, young firs in proper rows stood on either side, and beyond them were clean sidewalks. The cottages, no two alike, all in harmony, were as bright and pretty as their prototypes in Perrier's watercolours, showing shutters which were not afraid to be frankly blue and pink and tender green, lifting gay red brick chimneys, hiding behind screens of foliage or standing out boldly to catch the golden sunshine. If it seemed some bright dream-town, such in truth it was, being Beatrice's dream come true. And, like other dream-stuff, it had its flaw, woven into its fabric. Beatrice, having smiled, frowned.
The car raced on along the almost level road, whizzed by the two-story, steep-roofed, balconied edifice which, bearing no sign over its open door, needed none to instruct the newcomer that here was to be had the hospitality of the community's "inn," made its brief journey between the rows of cottages and stopped in front of the store. This time, when a storekeeper came forth after seeing who it was at his door, Beatrice was slow in giving her order. For the frown had deepened in eyes which, passing on and beyond the last of Summit City's cottages, caught but a glimpse of the unpainted, rude wall of a building that was an interloper here, a leper among the clean. It was not five hundred yards from where she sat, it alone among buildings here bore a big painted sign, and though intervening branches concealed all but a mere hint of the walls, Beatrice remembered every sprawling, defiant letter placarding it as Summit City Saloon.
Every inch of land upon which Summit City itself stood belonged to Beatrice Corliss. She had bought it that she might build a town here, a town to drowse in silence through the winter snows, to awake and stir and grow noisy with tourist merriment in the full springtime and warm summer and rich fall. Here was a hotel with an already wide famed cuisine, with clean linen and impeccable service, with telephone and telegraph at the disposal of the holidaymaking city man; here were cottages with every convenience and attraction; a store with well filled shelves and accommodating clerks; here was a dancing pavilion for the summer merryrmakers. And down yonder, less than a mile away, was Corliss Lake, purchased at the time that this high tableland became hers, with blue and white row boats and launches and slim bodied, graceful canoes, with big trout to be had in season by the accomplished and fortunate fisherman. Then, everywhere about were racing streams for those who loved solitary rambles and the song of the water, woods where small game teemed and in which one might find the track of deer and even of the occasional bear and big mountain cat. And, on the slope at the far edge of the lake, the "Tent City" which had proven so popular last season.
Here was Beatrice Corliss Lord Mayor and board of aldermen. That this venture into the uncertain field of tourist interest had shown itself profitable was less satisfying to her than the fact that "she had made Summit City and it was hers." But one can not own all of the lands in the California Sierra, and not even Beatrice Corliss could expect to acquire unlimited ownership. Here or there, near or far, there must be an outer fringe to the greatest holding. Just beyond the line of her property, squatted in ugly, misshapen, stubborn fashion, a veritable toad leering into her flower garden, was the Summit City Saloon, as secure from the flare of her wrath as though it had conducted its riotous and disorderly existence a score of miles away.
"Is that place open already?" Beatrice asked of the man who had come out of her store.
"Yes," he answered. "Opened last week. And I hear some pretty big games have been played, too."
She looked at him sharply. Long ago an order had gone forth that any man working for her who was seen so much as entering the Summit City Saloon was to be summarily discharged. The storekeeper returned her look innocently.
With no further reference to this thorn in her flesh, Beatrice repeated the instructions given in Camp Corliss, making emphatic that Steele was to be considered with hostility equal to that which she showed the unsightly gambling house. Then, having his instructions, Parker whizzed them back to the hotel. Here, again, a man came out, the clerk who was also the manager, a young, capable looking chap with a bright nod for his employer. He, in turn, was told that Bill Steele must find neither food nor bed under his roof. And, like most men taking their monthly wage from Beatrice Corliss, he knew how to obey orders.
"I might have telephoned this," said the girl to Embry, as the clerk went back to his office. "But I wanted to come over anyway. I am going to have more cottages put up; the hotel must have another wing. … Home, Parker."
"Just a minute, Parker," said Embry. "Miss Corliss, you wouldn't think me rude if I asked you to leave me here? I'd like to stay at the hotel a day or so. By that time my machine will have come and I'll run back to the ranch house for a call and to get my traps, if I may? Do you know," and for a moment one of his infrequent smiles brightened his sombre eyes, "I have another hunch. And I want to find out about it."
"Concerning that man Steele?" asked Beatrice.
He nodded.
"You have never found out who is the real owner and operator of this string of gambling houses through the mountains here, have you?" he asked significantly.
Beatrice started, her suspicions pricked by the insinuation. Again Embry nodded.
"It's like his work," he said quietly, stepping out to the sidewalk. "And it would explain his plan to accumulate further property in the neighbourhood. Also, perhaps, his desire to annoy you. You have made it rocky sledding for the saloon here and for one or two others, I believe."
"Mr. Embry," said Beatrice thoughtfully, "I have no sufficient claim upon you to expect you to put yourself out—"
"Need I remind you," cut in Embry, his tone cool but hard, "of Steele's words to me in your presence a little while ago? I am going to make him pay for them. As I told you then, I think that you and I have a common cause."
While Joe Embry had but suggested that Steele was the man financing the ill-famed string of composite saloon, dance hall and gambling house which during the last year had lengthened through the neighbouring settlements, the seed fell in fertile soil. The girl, already angered with Steele, told herself that the work showed a hand like his; in her mind there was a telltale sameness of method in the way he himself camped on the rim of her lands at the Goblet, just beyond her vengeance, and the way in which the Summit City Saloon, defiant and ugly, squatted yonder in plain sight but beyond her jurisdiction. She believed that Joe Embry was right, for the large reason that she was a little more than willing to believe it. …She beckoned to Sawyer, the hotel clerk.
"Mr. Embry is my guest," she explained, as he came out again. "You are to remember that and all that it implies." She put out her hand to Embry, smiled and repeated, "Home, Parker."
Joe Embry's eyes, as he watched her go, were filled with low lidded speculation. Then, abruptly, he turned to Sawyer.
"What's the name of the man running the Summit City Saloon?" he asked.
"Truitt," answered Sawyer. "He's called Flash Truitt more than anything else, I believe."
"Hm," said Embry. "Friend of this man Steele, isn't he?"
"Why, I don't know," admitted Sawyer cheerfully. "I don't know either of the gentlemen personally." His eyes twinkled as he concluded. "And, being a wise little boy with my best job, the chances are I am not likely to know them very well."
"Truitt would probably be at his place now?"
"I'd imagine so."
"I think," mused Embry, taking out a large cigar and giving his attention to the nice cutting of the end, "that I'll stroll over and have a word with him."
Sawyer, being as he put it a wise little boy with due appreciation of his job, merely lifted his eyebrows involuntarily. But within his heart he was asking himself what Beatrice Corliss' guest had to do with Flash Truitt of the Summit City Saloon and gambling house. A question which it would be long before Sawyer could answer.