The Joyous Trouble Maker. Jackson Gregory
is on a paying basis?"
"Stanton can give you the figures. It netted me last year something over twenty thousand."
"Whew!" commented Steele. "I wish I had a mine like that."
Here being no question she offered no remark. Bradford, ever watchful, gave a signal with one of his expressive thin hands and a servitor in livery appeared with the next course. For a moment conversation died as Steele ate and pondered. Then,
"You manage all of your own affairs?"
"Yes. I have, of course, capable men under me to take my orders and give expert attention to the various branches of my work. I don't pretend to know anything about mining operations, for instance."
"The queen acknowledges the limitations of humanity," he chuckled. "Well, let's get on. Next question: You have lands along the upper waters of Thunder River?"
"Yes,"
"Near the place that is called Hell's Goblet?"
"Yes."
"At what figure do you hold those lands? They're mostly rock and big timber, aren't they?"
"They are not for sale."
"The world's for sale!" he laughed carelessly. "If the price happens to be big enough. Would you take, say twenty dollars an acre for a section in there? That's big money, you know, for wild, rough land so far from anywhere."
"No. I wouldn't accept twenty dollars. Nor yet fifty. I'm not selling, Mr. Steele."
"Why?" he asked curiously.
"Because," she flared out, "I don't want to. And I fail to see the drift of your questions."
"That should be plain enough." Under this second signal of her hot displeasure he was as cheerful as though she were smiling upon him, "You told me to ask what questions I pleased and you would answer them. I have naturally taken advantage of a pleasant situation. From the point of the lands about Hell's Goblet I was going to another pertinent one."
"Let us have it," she said sharply.
"Are you engaged?" asked Steele. "Or even in love?"
Never until now had she met a man like this one. Plainly, for one of those rare occasions in her life, she was uncertain of just what to do or say. Finally, speaking with a marked lack of expression she replied:
"I fail to see why the public should be interested in knowing about so intimate and purely personal a matter."
"Hang the public! I'm not the public. I'm just Bill Steele, and I want to know."
"Then, Mr. Bill Steele, may I answer that it is none of your business?"
"Sure thing. No harm done at all. Next … "
"Next," she interrupted before he could go on, "you will please confine your desire for information to such matters as your paper has instructed you to get."
Steele's laughter startled her, booming out suddenly. A look of sheer wonder came into her eyes; she began to think the man mad.
"Paper!" He choked over the word. "Why bless your soul, my dear girl, I'm no more a newspaper man than you are. 'Fess up, now; can't you remember having heard of Bill Steele? Knew your father for years Bill Steele, mining engineer, gentleman of adverse fortune, lord of an empty pocket and a full heart? Come now; think."
A dead silence fell in the little luncheon room after the merry burst of Steele's laughter. Beatrice Corliss looked at him with a sort of horrified expression of incredulity in her eyes. Her gasp and Bradford's, twin signals of consternation, had been lost in her guest's echoing enjoyment of the situation.
"Bradford told me," she said, her voice at last a trifle uncertain, "that you were representing the New York Sun."
"Bradford slipped up," cried Steele in hearty appreciation of the look he surprised just then in Bradford's eyes. "He simply guessed and guessed wrong."
Miss Corliss turned in her chair, her eyes upon Bradford. The major domo's face went a painful scarlet. For once in his life his two hands met in front of him, clasped and lifted in an attitude of prayer.
For the second time in so few moments the girl rose to her feet.
"You have done a very ungentlemanly thing … "
"Betrayed your trust, eh? Played spy and sailed under false colours?" laughed Steele. "Come now, Beatrice Corliss, be a good sport. I have only had my little joke and no harm done."
"Bradford," said Beatrice Corliss with crisp distinctness, "you may serve the remainder of my lunch in the breakfast room. And," the words reminding Steele of little separate bits of tinkling ice, "you may report to me in my office at one o'clock."
Her head lifted very high, with no further glance toward the table from which she turned, she left the room.
"Such a little Queen!" observed Steele dramatically.
Beatrice Corliss' cheeks as she went through the door which Bradford flung open for her were as red as Bradford's own.
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,