The Joyous Trouble Maker. Jackson Gregory
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is Miss Corliss of the Queen's Ranch," she said in answer to the operator's "Hello." "Take a message, please. To Attorney Stuart Rollins, Merchants' Exchange, San Francisco. Look immediately into ranch title. Especially extreme southeast section. Is anything wrong? Signed, Beatrice Corliss."
The first of the two touring cars was already upon the lower grade. She glanced swiftly at the clock upon the opposite wall. Then Stanton, walking quickly, came in at her door.
"What do you know of William Steele?" she demanded.
"The reporter?" asked Stanton.
"He is not a reporter," she retorted. "Who said that he was? Did he tell you so?"
"No. Bradford—"
"It seems," she interrupted icily, "that all the men I have about me are fools! That man Steele is a mining engineer, and he is here because he is after gold. Do you know anything about a miner named Steele?"
"Yes," said Stanton stiffly. "A good deal by hearsay. I have never seen him, though."
"You saw him today. I haven't time now for a lot of hearsay. What sort of man is he, do you know that?"
"Not first hand. His reputation is that of a square sort of chap."
Beatrice sniffed.
"I'm scarcely interested in his morals. Does he amount to anything out among men? Is he just a loud talker or does he mean what he says? Has he ever done anything?"
"He's done some rather big things, I believe. He hasn't the name of being a wind bag, if that is what you mean. Ed Hurley knows him; Hurley has mentioned him to me. Ed thinks he is a big man in his way."
"In the way of a boor!" cut in Beatrice. "That is all, Stanton. I'll get further information from Hurley when I have time for it. I have just instructed him to see that William Steele refrains from trespassing on my property. You will co-operate with him in the matter."
Then, as the first car rolled into the open court Beatrice drove the puzzled look from her eyes, summoned an expression of welcoming gaiety which was not entirely spontaneous, and hurried out.
Three young women in motor veils and two men in goggles greeted her, the women effusively and with skilfully hidden envy, the men warmly and with admiration in their eyes. While the car rolled away these stood in the courtyard awaiting the coming of the second automobile. One of the men, a keen eyed, massive jawed man of forty with a touch of grey at the temples and an air of quiet, confident mastery, whose manner bespoke his habitual experience of getting what he wanted, grasped a moment of much chattering to say quietly to Beatrice:
"I heard in White Rock that a man named Steele, William Steele, had ridden out this way. Not a friend of yours, is he?"
Quickly she lifted interested eyes to his.
"No. I have just met him today. Do you know him then, Mr. Embry?"
"I know something of him," said Embry as quietly as before. "Rather a good deal. Is he still here?"
"No. Tell me, what sort of a man is he?"
"Not just the kind I'd like to see hanging around you," was Embry's rejoinder. "He's a crook, Miss Corliss; look out for him."
Then the others came and Joe Embry turned with his hostess toward them.
So William Steele was just plain crook, then? Joe Embry had said so, and Joe Embry was a man in whose opinions Beatrice Corliss placed more faith than in most men's. A boor first, a crook next. And she had let him lunch with her, he had had the assurance to behave toward her as he might have acted with a shop girl!
Could Steele have read her thoughts he must have been surprised that, while greeting her guests, she could give him so great a place in them. But William Steele, having pondered upon her more than he realized since leaving the ranch house, had now other matters to occupy him. In the first place this trail turning off into the mouth of the cañon was one little travelled and none too well remembered by him. Not for full five years had he ridden it, it was crossed and recrossed by numerous stock trails, the simplest matter in the world being for a man to lose it and after an hour's mistaken travel find himself at the end of a blind path in some tangle of brush. Unless he meant to be the entire afternoon in coming to the spot where he had planned to camp he must keep his wits about him.
"Five years," he mused, even while his eyes, running far ahead, picked up the monument of a flat stone upon a trailside rock marking the way for him, "and it's as safe as if it were tucked away in the United States treasury! I guess, old man, you wouldn't have plunged quite so recklessly if you hadn't had this to come back to. Lord, won't little Trixie throw a fit!"
The thought seemed to tickle his own sort of a sense of humour, for he chuckled his amused satisfaction with the probable approaching condition of affairs. But when he had reached the rock sign-post his eyes were merely keen and watchful again. A herd of young steers just ahead of him had trampled out all sign of path in a little grassy meadow and he was uncertain. Somewhere hereabouts the trail left the bed of the cañon, climbing steeply to mount and cross the ridge, making the short cut to the Goblet. To be sure it was no great matter if he for a little lost his way; inevitably he must come to the particular spot he had set his mind upon since he had his general directions. But to a man like Steele, who knew more of the mountains than of city streets, it was a deeply pleasant sensation to find that, even after five years, he could follow on old, once travelled trail.
He reined in his horse, eased himself sideways in the saddle and sat for a little, sending his questing regard this way and that along the rugged, timbered slopes. The trees were big here about him, pine and fir and an occasional cedar, rising upon splendid, tapering boles a hundred, a hundred and fifty feet against the blue sky, filling the cañon with a pleasant duskiness. In the open spaces between the thick trunks the lush grass was dotted with the spring's blue and yellow flowers, threaded with thin streams, trampled by browsing cattle. Stamped cleanly and freshly at the edge of a sand-bedded rivulet where no cattle tracks had obliterated it was the hoof print of a big buck. Steele's eyes brightened. From far off on the mountainside he heard the liquid call of a quail.
"And we build ourselves thick walled houses to shut all of this out!" he muttered. "God, it's good to be back! Bill Steele, listen to me: this time you're going to stay put."
He had quite forgotten to seek his trail. But now, the memory of the bigger, vaster, more solitary woods of the Goblet country upon him, their murmurous voices calling to him across the five years of absence, he again sought the way that led to them. He swerved to the right, crossed the floor of the cañon, reined in again at the foot of the slope where were fewer big trees, wider spaces between where mountain brush and boulders allowed the vision wider range. Again the light of satisfaction came into his eyes. Yonder, a short distance ahead and higher up, was a landmark to be remembered, two giant cedars standing straight and close together, a long splinter of granite wedged in between them and gripped securely for many long years to come, lifted twenty feet above the ground.
"Hello, old boys," laughed Steele. "I remember you, all right. No, I'm not going to stop to answer your riddle today, but I'm just as much obliged to you."
For the Goblet trail ran close to their trunks and from this point on there need be no hesitation. Steele swung down from the saddle. Leading his horse over the uneven ground, climbing in as straight a line as slope and brush would permit, he came in ten minutes to the cedars and their imprisoned rock. A moment he laid a big hand against a massive bole, looking up into the gnarled branches quite as one might turn glad eyes upon the weathered visage of an old friend. Then again he mounted, riding toward the south, keeping well up on the mountainside.
Half an hour later he passed over the ridge and dropped down into a country which had grown abruptly wilder, more rugged, infinitely eloquent of solitude. Beyond and below stretched away the big timber which man had left in its own dark browed dignity because its stronghold stood behind bulwarks of mountains which had defied the making of roads. As he rode down to the rim of the thickening forest the whispering of its countless million singing tongues set the strings vibrating